Count Duckula
Cound Duckula is a short, green-colored duck with black parted hair and the traditional vampire evening wear, complete with a cape. He has no fangs, although his more old-fashioned relatives did. His favorite food is broccoli sandwiches. He has occasionally been seen wearing pyjamas with a DangerMouse logo, a reference to the character's origin (and somewhat based on the fact that David Jason voiced both characters).
Count Duckula himself is a deliberate send-up of many traditional vampire traits. As his name would suggest, he is an anthropomorphic duck. Besides his vegetarianism and aspirations of fame, he is very squeamish and often cowardly. The Duckula family motto is Per Ardua ad Sanguina, which means "Work Hard for Blood".
He has a very modern outlook and often despairs over the traditional vampire image that he is expected to embody. He hates living in a dark, gloomy castle, and finds the behaviour of his servants to be depressing. Although he retains vampiric powers and qualities such as teleportation and not being able to appear in front of a mirror, he rarely uses them. In fact, the only one he has been shown using is teleportation, which consists of him plunging up into a small storm cloud and reappearing in a flash of lightning elsewhere (as opposed to his predecessor on DangerMouse, who appeared in a vertical explosion of flames). This ability is used only when the Count truly desires speed, and is sometimes implied to be involuntary.
He often goes outside in the daytime without suffering any ill effects, but this is likely because of his own personal oddities. In one episode, a living statue of the previous Count Duckula crumbles into a pile of stone when exposed to sunlight. In the episode "Doctor Goosewing and Mr. Duck", Count Duckula briefly turns into a "proper" vampire, desiring blood from the villagers outside the castle, but turns away from the door when he discovers that the sun is still out. On the other hand, the episode "Transylvanian Homesick Blues" features a prehistoric "first vampire duck" who goes out in daylight, and only returns to his coffin, because Igor advises him to.
While often egotistical and selfish, Duckula is good natured. He often tries to help people, although he usually succeeds only in making them hate him. He is prone to short lived obsessions, in a manner somewhat similar to Toad of Toad Hall, which often form the plots for episodes attempting to become a blues musician in New Orleans, prospecting for gold, becoming a cowboy, etcetera.
The character differs considerably from his predecessor on the DangerMouse show. In fact, the only similarities the two share are that they are vampire ducks with ambitions in show business, little actual talent in that area, and both are named Count Duckula. The previous version was an outright villain, willing to blackmail and force his way into stardom (as opposed to the current Count, who merely tries to get in the legitimate way) and was fixated on being a TV star, rather than settle for fame in some other branch of entertainment. He had far greater magical powers and made much more use of them, as well as having a thick accent consisting of lisping, stuttering and occasional squawks. Most notably, he was not a vegetarian; in his very first appearance he threatened to drink DM's blood, only to be chased away by the sun, which may suggest he was the previous ancestor/incarnation before being reincarnated as the accidental vegetarian Duckula.
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