Master Cylinder

Voiced by Jack Mercer, the Master Cylinder first appeared in the Felix the Cat television animated series in an episode when Felix and Poindexter crashlanded into a lunar crater that was a “lost world” of sorts, with its own atmosphere and gigantic plants and insects — and the Master Cylinder. A former student of The Professor, the Master Cylinder had been expelled for his dangerous recklessness with his experiments. In his first appearance, he revealed he had blown up his human body but transferred his supergenius brain to his current robotic body. The Master Cylinder harrassed the two heroes mostly out of petty spite and a grudge against Poindexter’s uncle The Professor. In this episode, the Master Cylinder proclaimed himself “King of the Moon” and demonstrated the technological genius necessary to have conquered the moon’s natural inhabitants, yet he left his entire cybernetic body dependent upon a single electrical outlet; naturally, Felix defeated him by unplugging him.

In nearly all his later appearances, the Master Cylinder had left the jungle paradise of his lunar crater for the barren fields of Mars (or an identical Venus), which somehow seemed to fit him better. Once again, he used his technological genius to conquer all the native inhabitants; the Martians either went into hiding disguised as rocks and furniture or else escaped the planet by way of “4-Dimensional” teleportation. The Master Cylinder soon acquired a lieutentant, a squidlike man called General Clang who may have been a Martian traitor or may have been an Earth human transformed into his current condition. General Clang had no organic soldiers under him, only oddly fragile robots and rocketships or missiles that never had enough fuel to make it anywhere. In these later appearances, the Master Cylinder had given up on perfecting a rocket fuel that would take his attack ships to Earth and kept trying to kidnap Poindexter to mix up such a fuel for him. The Master Cylinder was able to devise a teleporter that could transport people between Earth and Mars or Venus as well as devise his own spaceship and various newer bodies for himself, but never a workable rocket fuel.

Pettiness, recklessness, a perpetual ill temper, and an insatiable lust for power characterized the Master Cylinder. In the course of the series, he successfully conquered a “lost world” crater on the moon — which he then abandoned to conquer the entire planet Mars and the entire planet Venus. He then planned to abandon these barren worlds to conquer the entire Earth by missile barrage. Instead, he kept breaking his latest body while Felix the Cat successfully rescued Poindexter from each of his latest kidnapping schemes.

The Master Cylinder was an unusually dark character for a television series as cheerful as the Felix the Cat animated series, the only antagonist on the show that would genuinely frighten young viewers. He is the only villain on the series that even Felix actively distrusted and disliked.

A single odd episode shows the Master Cylinder attending a birthday party for Felix and smiling along with all the other guests. This appearance is so out of character from any of his other appearances that most fans simply dismiss it from continuity.