Gadget's personality was based upon the inventive character Jordan in the 1985 movie Real Genius. Gadget is an anthropomorphic mouse; she loves solving problems like an obsessed and quirky inventor. Her curiosity and fearlessness drive her to find solutions that others have simply overlooked, and her mechanical savvy makes her incredibly valuable to the team. There are a few people she doesn't like, but those few are typically villains. Gadget has a natural warmth about her that makes everyone welcome and pleased to see her. She's very loyal to her friends and frequently goes out of the way to help them.
At the same time, Gadget is constantly thinking. As exhibited in the episode "Gadget Goes Hawaiian", she has trouble focusing on just one way to do things. However, once her focus has come, she can invent at a staggering pace—for instance, her armored gyro-mobile in "The Case of the Cola Cult".
Gadget has her quirks. She thinks so much from an inventor's standpoint that it tends to make her naïve at times. She has upset Chip and Dale's romantic advances more than once, simply by not understanding what it was, they were after.
When Gadget is excited about her inventions, she's known to use scientific jargon freely and talk at an extremely rapid pace. This tends to leave anyone listening to her clueless as to what she actually meant, but it never seems to bother her.
Gadget can be easily angered at times as well. As seen in "Kiwi's Big Adventure", "The Case of the Cola Cult", "Dirty Rotten Diapers", "The S.S. Drainpipe", and "A Fly in the Ointment", Gadget has a limit beyond which her friendly veneer is lost, and she can become aggressive at times. Woe to the villain or anyone else who manages this feat, because once Gadget is riled up, she's a juggernaut—thankfully, such incidents are rare. Regardless, she remains a strong female character.
Gadget can also be nice to others, even though she may not be supposed to be involved.
Physical appearance[]
Gadget is a wax flower colored mouse with a geraldine nose and aquamarine blue eyes, while the color of her hair has frequently been a topic of discussion as it changes from episode to episode. In many episodes, her hair appears to be mango tango in color, and in others, it shows up as being a strawberry-blonde. At one point, Tad Stones, the producer of the show, was contacted by a fan and gave this explanation:
"I believe the intention was sandy-blonde. Because we work with a limited color palette, we pick the closest color to what we want. There was no intention of adding red. I did the first paintings of Gadget and she was completely blonde wearing blue coveralls."
Gadget usually wears a blue bell mechanic jumpsuit, a light eggplant colored belt, and a pair of cerulean goggles which she keeps on her forehead when she doesn't need them. A white shirt can often be seen under her coveralls, but it is even more inconsistent than her hair, sometimes disappearing and reappearing within one scene. Though she can occasionally be seen in different outfits matching the situation, she never wears a dress, high heels or make-up unless it is part of a disguise.
Biography[]
Gadget was the daughter of Geegaw Hackwrench, a famous mouse inventor and pilot. It is implied at the time that her father had passed away, as she mentions in "To the Rescue" that he had gone missing over a year ago and there's been no word on his whereabouts. She first meets Chip 'n Dale courtesy of Monterey Jack, a friend of her father's, as the group is in search of an airplane. Gadget helps the group solve the crime they are investigating by lending her inventive talents. Afterward, having nowhere else to go and no other obligations, she then became an official member of the Rescue Rangers, making their base in a tree in the City Park and they promised to be her guardians and take care of her.
From that point, Gadget usually assists the team via her numerous inventions. In addition to building and maintaining the Ranger Plane, Gadget is the one responsible for the various technological items used by the team and is regularly inventing new vehicles and tools for the team's use. She has the uncanny ability to take discarded and unrelated items and invent nearly anything with them. Unfortunately, her creations don't always work the way she intends and have sometimes failed at just the wrong moment to cause the team trouble. Both Chip and Dale are very attracted to Gadget and can be found often vying for her attention.
Gadget was the daughter of Geegaw Hackwrench, a famous mouse inventor and pilot. It was implied at the time that her father had passed away as he had disappeared over a year ago and there's been no word on his whereabouts. She first meets Chip and Dale courtesy of Monterey Jack, a friend of her late father, as the group is in search of an airplane to pursue Fat Cat and Aldrin Klordane to prove the innocence of their friends Donald Drake and Plato. Gadget helps the group solve the mystery they are investigating by lending her inventive talents. Afterward, having nowhere else to go and no other obligations, she then became an official member of the Rescue Rangers, making their base in a tree in the City Park and they promised to be her guardians and take care of her.
From that point, Gadget usually assists the team via her numerous inventions. In addition to building and maintaining the Ranger Plane, Gadget is the one responsible for the various technological items used by the team and is regularly inventing new vehicles and tools for the team's use. She has the uncanny ability to take discarded and unrelated items and invent nearly anything with them. Unfortunately, her creations don't always work the way she intends and has sometimes failed at just the wrong moment to cause the team trouble. Both Chip and Dale are very attracted to Gadget and can be found often vying for her attention.
Gadget and the other Rescue Rangers appear in the Season 3 episode "Double-O-Duck in You Only Crash Twice!". Within the show's universe, the Rescue Rangers were lab animals granted intelligence by a device created by F.O.W.L. scientist Black Heron, with Gadget's transformation being shown in demonstration footage to Steelbeak, who subsequently asks whether she made the jumpsuit herself.
After the end of the Rescue Rangers series, the team disbands and Gadget married Zipper (despite all the ship teases she had with Chip and Dale in the original show), becoming mother to numerous housefly-mouse hybrid offspring. The two then settled down into a quieter life, with Gadget working at an auto shop and Zipper working as a stay-at-home father. Both were later recruited by Dale to rescue Chip and Monty, and after they reunite and end the reign of the uncanny valley gang the five begin to make the best of their newfound stardom.
Gadget was the only member of the Rangers whose original voice actress reprised the role in all scenes, with the rest being either one-offs (Chip, Dale, and Zipper) or complete recasting (Monty).
Gadget started making appearances at the Disney Parks in 1989 through the Hooray for Disney Stars Parade at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom park. She also appeared in 1990 through the "Mickey's Magical TV World" show at the Magic Kingdom in 1990 and at Disney Afternoon Avenue at Disneyland in 1991. In 1993, she got her own attraction at Mickey's Toontown in Disneyland, Gadget's Go Coaster. Tokyo Disneyland got its own version three years later. Both versions are still operating, but Gadget herself rarely appears in the parks today.
In the spin-off novel series of the Rescue Rangers, Gadget is the founder of an elite group of high-tech international crimefighting rodents known as The Mouse Watch. She only makes a cameo appearance in the book, since the series focuses on new recruit Bernadette (Bernie) Skampersky who idolizes Gadget and who's thrust into a real-life crisis before she can even officially get sworn in.
Video games[]
Rescue Rangers games[]
Gadget Hackwrench appeared in the following video games: