Spiff and Hercules is the English translation of a French comic strip titled Pif et Hercule, featuring an anthropomorphic brown-yellow dog ("Pif") and a black-white cat ("Hercule") who, despite being best friends, are constantly fighting in a friendship/hate relationship. The character of Pif was created by José Cabrero Arnal for the French Communist Party newspaper L'Humanité on March 28, 1948, and the cat Hercules was introduced two years later. The adventures of Pif also appeared in the British communist newspaper the Daily Worker (later The Morning Star) until the mid-1970s. Spiff later got his own magazine ("Pif Gadget"), which was very popular as not only did it include several different comic strips, but offered a toy gadget in each issue. Hercules also got his own version of Spiff's magazine, this one called "Super Hercule", but his magazine was more joke-oriented. A series of 65 26-minute animated cartoons featuring the characters was produced in 1989 by Europe Images/M5 in France. Each program consisted of two episodes. United Kingdom television station Channel 4 aired the series in 1993.
