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Mrs. Puff is a porcupine pufferfish and SpongeBob's driving teacher in the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. She has a criminal record due to SpongeBob's reckless driving and a romantic relationship with Mr. Krabs.
- Overview
- Production details
- Biography
- Description
- School
- Family and counterparts
- Relationships
- Trivia
Mrs. Penelope "Poppy" Puff is one of the ten main characters in the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise. She is SpongeBob's teacher at Boating School, where she teaches students how to drive boats like underwater cars. She’s a pufferfish who wears a sailor uniform. She is voiced by Mary Jo Catlett.
Teaching and driving are her passions in life, she’s talented at both, having taught every student other than SpongeBob how to drive. She and SpongeBob are always on an "endless quest" to get him a driver's license, but due to his reckless boating skills, they never succeed. Mrs. Puff's school is attached to a submerged lighthouse and surrounded by a stunt-driving course.
The idea for Mrs. Puff and her Boating School was what "saved" the show from being passed on by Nickelodeon. If Stephen Hillenburg (the series' creator) did not fulfill Nickelodeon's request that SpongeBob attends a school, they would not have agreed to greenlight the first season.
Mrs. Puff was the last one of the main characters to be created and designed by Stephen Hillenburg. She had not been created yet when Hillenburg finished his series bible, a book outlining the show's main concepts and setting. The June 2003 issue of Nickelodeon Magazine explained that Mrs. Puff was absent from his original cast sketches because Hillenburg "had yet to come up with the idea [for] Mrs. Puff." To account for her absence, a sketch was captioned "The gang's all here (almost!)."
After Hillenburg pitched the pilot episode, Nickelodeon executives did not immediately approve production and wanted to instate a major creative change: making SpongeBob a child who went to school. Hillenburg recounted in a 2009 interview: "Nick had decided it didn't want any more animal shows and wanted stories with kids, like Hey Arnold! They actually wanted to make 'Arnold under the sea' and make SpongeBob a child. I said 'no, that's not the show'... I put him in school – but it would be a [boat] driving school." Additionally, they wanted every episode to focus on his school life.
Hillenburg ended up "making concessions" with Nickelodeon by coming up with a driving school. This way, SpongeBob could regularly attend a school while remaining age-ambiguous. In 2012, he recalled that his compromise eventually improved the series: "A positive thing for me that came out of it was... it brings in a new character, Mrs. Puff, who I love." He explained that she added "a new aspect to the show" that he wouldn't have found otherwise.
Mrs. Puff's history is very mysterious and unknown, but it is clear that her past is a checkered and suspicious one full of misfortunes and criminal activity. All of her known relatives are no longer alive, but it is known that her family lineage has lived in and around Bikini Bottom since the days of the old west. However, Mrs. Puff did not grow up in Bikini Bottom as a kid. She was born in an unknown town with an unnamed father and an unknown mother and lived under an unspecified last name during her early years. In "Camper Gary," as Mrs. Puff was about to fall down the cliff, she mentions that her mom always said she'll go out like this, implying that they had a strained relationship. As a little girl, she adopted a purple pet snail, who lived for a long time afterward and was alive in "The Sponge Who Could Fly." She also was part of the "Kelp Bed Kids" during that time, along with GrandPat Star, Granny Tentacles ("Squigly"), Mr. Krabs ("Snappy") and Old Man Walker ("Hoops").
Later on, she and Mr. Krabs who was also part of the "Kelp Bed Kids" enter into a love relationship. The two were married until fishermen from the surface captured Mr. Puff and turned him into a novelty lamp cover ("Krusty Love"). At a later point, Mrs. Puff became a teacher and founded the first-ever underwater boating school. She ran this school until unspecified legal problems forced its closure, as mentioned in "No Free Rides." Without a job, she took up full-time bank robbery using a ski mask as a disguise (as seen in the comic Puff's Pageant). She still keeps her ski mask handy just in case things take a turn for the worse again. As revealed in "Lighthouse Louie" from a newspaper, Mrs. Puff lived in New Kelp City until she made a getaway, as stated in the New Kelp Post. In "Arbor Day Disarray", Mrs. Puff revealed she used to work in Shell City and also made a getaway, and she nearly got arrested after getting snitched by her tree pet.
Mrs. Puff later moved to Bikini Bottom in an attempt to start a new life. She started up a new school, Mrs. Puff's Boating School. She vowed to never give up "as long as a student is willing to learn," as seen in a flashback from "Doing Time." Immediately after saying this, she met her first student, SpongeBob. Since then, every student except for SpongeBob has passed her driving test. , Squidward, Plankton, and Mr. Krabs have all passed her class at some point.
During her time in Bikini Bottom, Mrs. Puff has become notorious and infamous among the police force. She has gone to jail a myriad of times, normally due to SpongeBob's tendency to crash boats and cause terrible townwide destruction in the process. Her criminal record is the largest of any character on the show, and her ever-expanding list of arrests is a frequent source of humor. Mrs. Puff has been on parole for a long amount of time and, as seen in "Bumper to Bumper," wears an ankle monitor on one of her fins.
Mrs. Puff and Mr. Krabs have been secretly dating each other for 16 years, as mentioned in "Whirly Brains." Eugene's love for her is enough to temporarily transcend his greed for money; however, he has been known to spend far too much on their dates.
It’s revealed in Kamp Koral that Mrs. Puff was a lifeguard and arts-and-crafts teacher before she was a boating school teacher. At Kamp Koral, Mrs. Puff was in charge of looking after the campers, including SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy.
SpongeBob has attended her school ever since its opening, yet has failed his final driving exam countless times, often injuring Mrs. Puff and/or damaging the school and other people in the process.
SpongeBob, Mrs. Puff's longest-standing student, is the bane of her existence. His distracting personality, reckless driving, fear of the driving course and inability to improve torment her to no end. SpongeBob has failed his driving test countless times, often sending Mrs. Puff to the hospital and causing immense property damage in the process. On multiple occasions, she has been sent to jail as a result of his actions. To make matters worse, SpongeBob has failed to come to terms with the reality that he cannot learn how to drive properly, largely due to his boundless optimism. Due to this, she and Squidward are on very good terms for good or evil since SpongeBob is also Squidward's bane of existence, so she has someone to relate to as seen in "Boating Buddies."
Mrs. Puff owns the Bikini Bottom boating school, which functions as a driver's education class under the sea. The schoolyard is made of a sunken lighthouse, a yellow school building, and a boardwalk. Maritime objects for décor, like buoys and anchors, make up the fence that surrounds the area. Just like Mrs. Puff's sailor outfit, most things at the boating school have a nautical theme.
Unlike real courses for driver's ed students, the enclosed test course at Mrs. Puff's school is a stunt track, exaggerated for comedic effect: there are bleachers for an audience of fans, stunt ramps, a race-style finish line, and even a hoop of fire. In some episodes, the testing course is even more elaborate with moving cutouts of obstacles and pedestrians ("Mrs. Puff, You're Fired").
Mrs. Puff's classroom building looks small, but it contains two floors, an entire hallway, and multiple rooms, the main one being her classroom. The hallways have lockers, photos of Mrs. Puff on the walls, and trophy cases. There are also two restrooms for boy and girl students. In "New Student Starfish," SpongeBob has names for all of the places at boating school: the Hallway of Learning, the Fountain of Learning, the Lockers of Learning, the Stairs of Learning, and—for the second flight of stairs—"just the stairs."
Boating school students spend the majority of their time in the classroom, where there are desks made of seashells. Mrs. Puff has a collection of posters on the walls that show labeled diagrams of boats and maritime signal flags. The walls are also decorated with ship paddles, steering wheels, and paintings of the ocean. She usually teaches the class by writing on her chalkboard, which looks like any other writing surface but is similar to a one-way mirror, allowing her to stand outside the classroom and watch students from behind it without them knowing.
Near the chalkboard is the board for Good Noodle star stickers, which Mrs. Puff awards to students for good behavior. Each student's name is written on the board and one star is added if they answer a question correctly or have outstanding classwork. If a student misbehaves, she takes one of their stars away. Most students only have a couple of stars, but SpongeBob has loads of them collected near his name on the board. He obsesses over the stars and can't bear to lose any.
The course at Mrs. Puff's school is divided into numbered lessons, each one taking up one full day of school. For example, the lesson of the day in "New Student Starfish" is Lesson 22: Docking. Her students only need a handful of specific school supplies: mainly their driver's manuals, which are similar to textbooks in a regular school, and writing utensils. Lessons usually involve a lecture from Mrs. Puff that students are expected to take notes on. She always says, "Good grades only follow diligent notes."
•Polene Puff - In "Pest of the West," Mrs. Puff's western ancestor was one of the main Bikini Gulch residents who helped SpongeBob's ancestor SpongeBuck SquarePants. She was very similar to the modern-day Mrs. Puff, with the same voice, mannerisms, and group of friends. She was a dancer at the Krusty Kantina who shared a seahorse-drawn carriage with Pappy Krabs and Hopalong Squidward Tentacles. She and her friends had a pronounced hatred for the western Plankton. After Dead Eye Plankton was defeated by SpongeBuck, she even paid just to step on him repeatedly. The western Mrs. Puff, along with the four other main residents of Bikini Gulch, was photographed for the book Family Histories of Bikini Bottom.
•Mr. Puff - Mrs. Puff used to be married to another pufferfish named Mr. Puff. Because he is dead, nothing is known about his personality or how he met his wife. He was captured by fishermen and turned into a novelty lamp, which Mrs. Puff does not like to talk about. However, she is known to have told SpongeBob about her husband's fate, because they are so close.
•Mrs. Puff's dad - Mrs. Puff's father appeared in a deleted scene of "Doing Time." It is unknown if her father appeared physically or through a flashback. It is assumed that he likely appeared during the sequence where Mrs. Puff asks herself where she went wrong in life, and then reflects on the founding of her school. He is listed in the credits of the episode, which credit Tom Kenny for voicing him. His dialogue had already been recorded when he was cut from the episode.
•Mrs. Fluff (CreamBob ConePants) - The counterpart of Mrs. Puff from the ice cream-themed land of Pint Bottom, seen in the comic "CreamBob ConePants." She was an anthropomorphic jar of marshmallow cream who worked as CreamBob's teacher. The real-world versions of SpongeBob and Patrick ended up eating Mrs. Fluff and the entire town of Pint Bottom, which was located inside a tub of ice cream.
Mr. Puff (husband)
Mrs. Puff is revealed to have had a husband in the episode "Krusty Love." However, he passed away and was turned into a lamp at a gift shop. She has since had trouble recovering from this tragedy with SpongeBob stating that she doesn’t like to talk about it.
SpongeBob SquarePants
SpongeBob SquarePants has attended Mrs. Puff's Boating School ever since its founding. He was the first student to show up when she announced it was open. He is a relentlessly obedient and well-intentioned student who knows the answer to every question, aces the oral exam every time he takes it, and obsesses over earning the Good Noodle stars that Mrs. Puff displays near her chalkboard. He often brings her apples as a courtesy, and she even has a whole crate of them below her desk. He would be her best student if it weren't for his tendency to freak out whenever he steps inside of a boat. He has failed his final driving exam countless times, often injuring Mrs. Puff and damaging her school in the process. He knows every rule of the road but wishes he could only drive as he knew them. SpongeBob does not just respect Mrs. Puff as a teacher; he idolizes her and she acts as a motherly figure to him. She is said to be his favorite teacher, as well as one of his best friends. In the book The Art Contest: No Cheating Allowed!, SpongeBob even paints a masterpiece resembling the Mona Lisa in Mrs. Puff's likeness. SpongeBob gets upset whenever she is not at school and has cried over her many times. He oddly seems to think her criminal record is a good thing; in a tweet from Nickelodeon, he said, " Mrs. Puff is no common criminal! She is the most unique criminal you will ever meet." In Class Confusion, SpongeBob bursts into tears after Mrs. Puff is absent at school. He tells Patrick, "Mrs. Puff wasn't at school today, and there was a sub who didn't do anything the right way, and I was supposed to stay after school for extra help!" Patrick calms him down, saying, "I'm sure Mrs. Puff will be back tomorrow...you'll be failing another driving test before you know it!" SpongeBob replies, "I hope so," giving the impression that he may be failing on purpose just so that he can continue to go to Boating School. One of the most important moments showing how deeply SpongeBob cares for Mrs. Puff is "Gone." SpongeBob finds that all of his friends have gone missing and vows to continue their legacies for them by carrying out their professions. He imitates the other Bikini Bottomites with ease, but it is Mrs. Puff's absence that makes SpongeBob crack. He goes straight from his happy demeanor to a sobbing mess while imitating her. He is unable to finish pronouncing Mrs. Puff's name without crying. He also states he will never be happy again as he cannot replace Mrs. Puff and his other close friends. SpongeBob longs to be Mrs. Puff's best student and occasionally becomes depressed over his helplessness behind the wheel. In "Burst Your Bubble," after crashing during his driving test yet again, SpongeBob solemnly walks home in despair. Behind his house, he blows up a bubble version of Mrs. Puff to tell him the words he longs to hear: "You're a very good driver, SpongeBob, and my favorite student!" Mrs. Puff, on the other hand, tends to find SpongeBob exasperating but tries to be patient and acts friendly around him. They have a very close bond since SpongeBob is her perpetual student. She knows his phone number ("Procrastination") and has visited his house countless times. It is shown in many episodes that she is a motherly figure that SpongeBob looks up to. Episodes such as "Hall Monitor" and "Oral Report" reveal that Mrs. Puff sees SpongeBob as her responsibility like a parent would view their child. In the Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years episode "First and Last Aid," Mrs. Puff is horrified when Mr. Krabs ignores SpongeBob's injuries and asks him to hire a nurse. In "Teacher's Pests," Mrs. Puff asks Krabs and Plankton to "be more like SpongeBob" and not act out in class, leading him to hug her. In the book Once Upon a SpongeBob, Mrs. Puff plays the role of SpongeBob's mother. When SpongeBob tries to explain that she is his teacher, she responds, "You mean you don't recognize your own mother? Poor boy. I guess not eating for two days has affected your memory. SpongeBob, I want you to trade Gary for some food for us." She then makes him go trade Gary for some magic beans. Although their relationship varies, Mrs. Puff wants SpongeBob to stop going to driving school so she can stop tutoring him, whether he has a driver's license or not, but she worries what might happen if SpongeBob starts driving.
Squidward Tentacles
Mrs. Puff tends to care for Squidward more than SpongeBob due to having good driving skills as opposed to SpongeBob. It is even shown that she portrayed him in a documentary as a "good boater." They also share a common dislike of SpongeBob, as he is always getting both of them into trouble for things that sometimes aren't even their fault. In "Sea-Man Sponge Haters Club," Squidward comforts Mrs. Puff by giving her a blanket after she reflects on a bad boating test with SpongeBob.
•Mrs. Puff's first name, Poppy, is revealed in the game SpongeBob SquarePants Typing and on SpongeBob SquarePants Krusty Cards Collection Sandy's Set card 8.
•In the episode "Yellow Pavement," her first name is revealed to be "Penelope." In real life, "Poppy" could be a nickname for Penelope.
•In "Lighthouse Louie," a newspaper about Mrs. Puff is shown with the headline "Deranged Boat Teacher Makes Getaway" and the subtitle "Distracts authorities with balloon animals." This refers to an incident Mrs. Puff mentions in "No Free Rides" where she moved towns and changed her name.
•In the original storyboard for the episode (shown right), Mrs. Puff's photo was captioned "Bobbi Blowfish," meaning that her original name may have been Bobbi Blowfish. Her cousin Moe Blowfish has this same last name.
•Four different Mrs. Puff plush toys have been released. In 2008, there was a normal beanie-sized plush, a jumbo plush pillow, and a mini keychain. In 2012, the standard plush was re-released but without her wig or nose.
•In "Patty Hype," Incidental 112 appears in the coloration of Mrs. Puff.
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Mrs. Puff is one of the show's ten main characters. She was first created in 1997, after the pilot was finished. Nickelodeon executives told Stephen Hillenburg that they would only greenlight the show if SpongeBob was a child who went to school, with his teacher as a main character. [1]
Mrs. Penelope Puff is a main character in SpongeBob SquarePants, voiced by Mary Jo Catlett. She is SpongeBob's teacher at Boating School, an underwater driver's education course in the town of Bikini Bottom. At her school, Mrs. Puff teaches students how to drive boats like cars. She is an...
