Nos livros e nos filmes, os Oompa-Loompas sempre foram humanos. No entanto, sua aparência ilustrada mudou ao longo do tempo. O livro "Charlie e a Fábrica de Chocolate" foi publicado pela primeira vez em 1964. Elementos de viagens espaciais / temporais, como alienígenas, não foram realmente introduzidos na série até o livro "Charlie and the Glass Elevator".
De acordo com Wikipedia :
Oompa-Loompas are known for their short stature, green hair, orange skin and white pants with protruding knees. In early editions of the novel, Oompa-Loompa are shown as African pygmies. Following growing controversy and criticism, in later editions of the book, Oompa-Loompa are white skinned and golden haired.
Oompa-Loompa come from Loompaland, which is a region of Loompa, a small isolated island in the Atlantic Ocean. ... Oompa-Loompa are only knee-high, with astonishing haircuts, and are paid in their favourite food, cacao beans, which were extremely rare in their island. Oompa-Loompa insist on maintaining their native clothing: men wear skins, women wear leaves, and children wear nothing (in the 1971 film, the Oompa Loompas wore Germanic clothing with stripped shirts and baggy lederhosen-like pants, in the 2005 film, the Oompa Loompas wore tribal clothing in their native Loompaland and typical factory worker uniforms in the factory). In the 1971 film the male Oompa-Loompas are seen working in the factory, in the 2005 film only one female worker, a secretary Mr. Wonka addresses as Doris (when the Great Glass Elevator passes through the administration offices) is seen, though in Quentin Blake's illustrations both male and female Oompa-Loompas are shown rolling away Violette Beauregarde after her transformation into a blueberry. Presumably the females remain in the village seen briefly from the Great Glass Elevator.
De um artigo sobre Evolução do Oompa Loompa :
"In the version first published, [the Oompa–Loompas were] a tribe of 3,000 amiable black pygmies who have been imported by Mr. Willy Wonka from 'the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before.' Mr. Wonka keeps them in the factory, where they have replaced the sacked white workers. Wonka's little slaves are delighted with their new circumstances, and particularly with their diet of chocolate. Before they lived on green caterpillars, beetles, eucalyptus leaves, 'and the bark of the bong–bong tree.'"
Source: Jeremy Treglown's Roald Dahl: A Biography
A aparência deles mudou nos anos 70:
It wasn't until 1972, nearly a decade later, that a wide–ranging attack on the book was published by American writer Eleanor Cameron and the political agenda of the story finally began to be debated.
After Dahl and Cameron had many public back–and–forths in various American literary journals (over much more than just charges of racism - see the Horn Book's excellent virtual exhibit to read the letters for yourself), Dahl's publishers decided that "to those growing up in a racially mixed society, the Oompa–Loompas were no longer acceptable as originally written. The following year, to accompany its new sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, a revised edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory appeared, in which the Oompa–Loompas had become dwarfish hippies with long 'golden–brown hair' and 'rosy–white' skin."
Source: Jeremy Treglown's Roald Dahl: A Biography
O link para as letras acima mencionadas foi quebrado, mas o Wayback Machine ainda tem uma cópia deles .