Fenton Crackshell is Scrooge McDuck's accountant, M'Ma Crackshell's son, and also the secret identity of Duckburg's local superhero, Gizmoduck, who appears as a regular in the second and third seasons of DuckTales and as an occasional guest star on Darkwing Duck.
Background[]
Biography[]
Fenton is introduced in "Liquid Assets", the first installment of the "Super DuckTales" serial, as a literal bean counter who works at the Duckburg bean factory. Fenton hates his current occupation and wants a bigger job, desiring status, recognition, and the chance to date the woman of his dreams, Gandra Dee. When he learns that Scrooge is looking for an accountant to help him move the contents of his Money Bin when he is forced to relocate the building (thanks to the Beagle Boys having altered the city's freeway blueprints), Fenton is all too eager to apply for the job. Scrooge at first refuses to give Fenton the job, but after seeing Fenton's superhuman ability to accurately count things very quickly in action.
Fenton having become Gizmoduck for the first time.
Sometime later, in the very next episode of the serial, "Frozen Assets", Fenton makes the mistake of using Scrooge's Number One Dime to call him on a pay-phone. Scrooge orders him to get the dime back, threatening to fire him if he doesn't. After learning that the phone company has already sent its earnings to the bank, Fenton heads over there, only to find it being robbed by the Beagle Boys. He spend the rest of the day trying to steal back the bag of dimes containing the Number One Dime from the Beagles, to no avail. When he then learns that Gyro Gearloose has built a mechanical suit called the Gizmosuit, Fenton decides to borrow the suit so he can use it against the Beagles. However, Fenton does not know at this point that Gyro has configured the suit to only be worn by anyone who says a mysterious codeword - which, as it turns, is "blatherskite", a word that Fenton frequently uses as the second half of his catchphrase, "Blabberin'/blatherin' blatherskite!" After initially failing to put the suit on at first, Fenton frustratedly mutters his catchphrase, resulting in him becoming Gizmoduck for the first time (it takes him until midway through the next episode, "Full Metal Duck", for him to figure out that saying his catchphrase triggers his transformation). As Gizmoduck, he manages to retrieve the Number One Dime and return it to Scrooge, after which he defeats the GICU-2, the renegade robot guardian Gyro previously built to guard the Money Bin. Scrooge hires Gizmoduck as the new guard for the Money Bin, an occupation he keeps even after the Money Bin is dropped back on Killmotor Hill at the end of the serial. Outside of guarding the Money Bin, Gizmoduck becomes beloved by the people of Duckburg, thanks to his superheroics.
After DuckTales, Gizmoduck would make a few guest appearances on Darkwing Duck, starting with the episode "Tiff of the Titans". The episode finds Fenton, under the guise of paying his old friend Launchpad a visit, traveling to St. Canard to stop the agents of F.O.W.L. from stealing a mechanical machine called the Egret. For most of the episode, Gizmoduck does not trust Darkwing Duck, thinking he may be a criminal himself, and his suspicions are seemingly confirmed to him by Steelbeak staging a bomb scare at a movie theater with the help of an Eggman disguised as Darkwing. Gizmo eventually learns that Darkwing is a good guy too, even though he still disagrees with Darkwing's methods of fighting crime, and helps him defeat Steelbeak. Gizmo's later appearances on Darkwing Duck show him fully willing to team up with Darkwing, despite Darkwing's continuing one-sided rivalry with him.
Development[]
Gizmoduck (along with Bubba and an unused character named Alien Duck) were created by Tad Stones around the same time Chip and Dale were added to Rescue Rangers. Originally, Gizmoduck was intended to be an artificially intelligent robot (and, indeed in the series, Scrooge originally intended to use a security robot designed by Gyro with the designation of GICU-2 until he realized it "didn't have a brain", as it was so dedicated to its directive that it wouldn't even let Scrooge himself into his Money Bin), but the idea was later changed to the current one, akin to Iron Man or RoboCop.
Gizmoduck was originally called RoboDuck, which, coincidentally, was kept as his name in the Netherlands and Japan. This is also why there is an "R" shaped insignia on the Gizmosuit's chest.
Appearances[]
TV episodes[]
DuckTales[]
- "Super DuckTales"
- "The Land of Trala La"
- "Allowance Day"
- "My Mother the Psychic"
- "Metal Attraction"
- "Dough Ray Me"
- "The Big Flub"
- "A Case of Mistaken Secret Identity"
- "Blue Collar Scrooge"
- "The Unbreakable Bin"
- "The Masked Mallard"
- "Attack of the Metal Mites"
- "The Duck Who Knew Too Much"
- "New Gizmo-Kids on the Block"
- "Scrooge's Last Adventure"
Darkwing Duck[]
Comics[]
- "The Littlest Gizmoduck" (Disney Adventures Volume 1, Number 2)
- "Just Us Justice Ducks" (Disney's Cartoon Tales)
- "A Switch in Time" (Disney Adventures Volume 2, Number 1)
- "Super Union Blues" (Disney Adventures Volume 3, Number 6-7)
- "Watt's the Problem!" (Disney Adventures Volume 3, Number 8-9)
- "The Power of the Pyramids!" (Disney Adventures Volume 3, Number 11)
- "The Legend of the Chaos God" (Disney Adventures Volume 5, Number 1-2)
- "Dangerous Currency" (DuckTales #5-6, Darkwing Duck #17-18)
- "Dawn of the Day of the Return of the Living Spud" (Darkwing Duck #7-8)
- Darkwing Duck: "F.O.W.L. Play" (2023)
Video games[]
- DuckTales
- DuckTales: The Quest for Gold (cameo)
- DuckTales Remastered
- Disney Emoji Blitz (playable)
- Disney Heroes: Battle Mode (playable)
- Disney Sorcerer's Arena (playable)
Gallery[]
External links[]
- Disney Wiki: Fenton Crackshell
- DuckTales Wiki: Fenton Crackshell (1987)
- Darkwing Duck Wiki: Fenton Crackshell
- Gizmoduck on Wikipedia