Possibly the most popular TV and musical cartoon of all time, The Chipmunks enjoyed two periods of prosperity -- the '60s era of adolescent Baby Boomers and the '80s, when the Boomers' children were growing up. The man who brought the Chipmunks to life, Ross Bagdasarian, began experimenting with a novel technique - recording normal vocals but then speeding up the playback on a tape machine.