Rat Fink
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Rat Fink is one of the several hot-rod characters created by one of the originators of Kustom Kulture, Ed 39;39;Big Daddy39;39; Roth. After he placed Rat Fink on an airbrushed monster shirt, the character soon came to symbolize the entire hot-rod / Kustom Kulture scene of the 1950s and 1960s.
The Rat Fink is a green, depraved looking mouse with bulging, bloodshot eyes, an oversized mouth with yellowed, narrow teeth, and a red T-shirt with yellow 39;39;R.F.39;39; on it. Other artists associated with Roth also drew the character, including Rat Fink Comix artist R.K. Sloane and Steve Fiorilla, who illustrated Roth39;s catalogs. Rat Fink and Roth are featured in Ron Mann39;s documentary film Tales of the Rat Fink (2006). Jeannette Catsoulis reviewed in The New York Times: Ogling fins and drooling over fenders, the movie traces the colorful history of the hot rod from speed machine to babe magnet and, finally, museum piece and collector39;s item. Along the way we learn of Mr. Roth39;s lucrative idea to paint hideous monsters including the Rat Fink of the title on children39;s T-shirts, a sartorial trend that, in the 196039;s, had the added benefit of getting their wearers banned from school, thus giving them more time to play with Mr. Roth39;s model car kits.
Rat Fink39;s Dad, Rat Funk, by Steve Fiorilla
More instructive about the obsessions of teenage boys than the allure of steel and wheel, 39;39;Tales of the Rat Fink39;39; punctuates Michael Roberts39;s eyeball searing animation with a haphazard selection of old newsreels, photographs and automobile ads. Lending their voices to the cars themselves, a trick Mr. Roth, who died in 2001, might have found a tad cutesy, is an appropriately eclectic bunch of celebrities, including Tom Wolfe (who celebrated Mr. Roth in 39;39;The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby39;39;) and Ann Margret, while a strangely listless John Goodman serves as the voice of Mr. Roth. 39;39;Cars should have personality,39;39; he tells us, in a tone that suggests he39;s struggling to locate his own.
A Rat Fink revival in the late 1980s and the 1990s centered around the West Coast grunge / punk rock movements. The term fink was originally underworld slang for an informer, comparable to 39;39;stool pigeon39;39;, and ratfink is an intensified version of 39;39;fink.39;39; By the time Roth used this name for a character, the term had started to pass into more general usage.