It was less than a week ago that cameras happened to catch a fan holding a sign during a live broadcast of AEW Dynamite on TBS. “Bring Toonces Back for SNL50” read the sign, screenshots of which quickly ricocheted across social media—both for its incongruity at a professional wrestling match, and because so many apparently agree with its message.
“Incredible sign,” wrote Chris Harrington, an SVP at AEW in an initial Twitter/X post. “I agree, random AEW fan,” wrote another fan on Threads. “America needs Toonces more now than ever.” Images of the sign have since been re-shared hundreds of times across various platforms, including Reddit, where it’s already become something of a meme.
But who’s the Toonces superfan behind the sign and why exactly did he choose to share his message at a professional wrestling event? His name is Jose Echavarria—and LateNighter caught up with him over the weekend.
For anyone who missed Seasons 14-18 of Saturday Night Live, “Toonces, The Cat Who Could Drive A Car” was a recurring sketch penned by Jack Handey that aired between 1989-1993. The premise was simple: Toonces was a cat who could drive a car. By the end, we’d learn he can’t drive well, and his car would always wind up careening off a cliff (with the same piece of footage being used each time.)
Toonces proved popular with SNL viewers—so much so that in 1992, NBC devoted a primetime special to the character, Saturday Night Live: The Best of Toonces and Friends. All in all, ten Toonces sketches were staged on SNL proper, and another five new shorts were created for the primetime special.
These days, however, Toonces is arguably one of those ‘whatever happened to…’ characters lingering in moderate obscurity in the annals of SNL. It’s that obscurity that inspired Echavarria to spotlight the cat in his sign.
“I see a lot of pop culture signs about yesteryear at AEW shows,” the 39 year-old Pennsylvanian explained, which prompted him to think about making one himself. “We haven’t seen Toonces on SNL since 1993, so I felt that Toonces was the way to go.”
“I thought about making a Simpsons reference, which I have done in the past at a WWE RAW show,” he added. “But a year ago, I saw someone on social media repost a Toonces gif and that’s what got the juices flowing.”
Echavarria’s moment in the sun during last Wednesday’s live AEW Dynamite broadcast came during a sequence that saw wrestlers Chris Jericho and Tomohiro Ishi pass by his spot in the crowd. “AEW shows the TV angles on their big screen during the broadcast, so I knew exactly when I was in frame so I could put up the sign,” he told LateNighter. “When Jericho and Ishii passed me as they were going down the stairs during their segment, I knew for sure that my sign was going to be prominently displayed on TV.”
And so it was, and it didn’t take long for video and screenshots of the moment to find their way to social media.
Despite being the face of a burgeoning campaign, it seems Echavarria himself doesn’t think about Toonces as much as one might expect. “I haven’t seen an actual Toonces sketch since the early 2000s,” he reveals when asked about his favorite Toonces sketch. “If I had to pick one, it would be the “Tooncinator” sketch when Linda Hamilton hosted.” As for how he envisions Toonces’ long-awaited comeback, Echavarria told LateNighter, “I’m fine with a one-off return.”
In addition to being a fan favorite, Toonces the cat also proved influential to the comedy world, as SNL and Late Night with Conan O’Brien writer Robert Smigel recently revealed on LateNighter’s podcast Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff.
“I have to admit that I was obsessed with Toonces,” Smigel recalled. “I was obsessed with, particularly, the opening credits, where they used the live cat and they had the two arms operating the steering wheel. I mean, I’d never seen that done before.” Smigel went on to suggest that Toonces was a primary inspiration for his most famous creation, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
Toonces hasn’t visited Studio 8H since April 17, 1993, when the cat led host Kirstie Alley over a cliff in a horse-drawn carriage. By the time Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary primetime special rolls around in February, that will have been nearly 32 years ago.
As for Echavarria, you never know where he might pop up holding a new sign. He’s got another pop culture obscurity on his mind that he’d like to see given the modern treatment: “Degrassi Junior High remastered in HD.”
