Spliced - Fairly Odd Princesses

I was looking through my older posts and realized that, even though I really like this show, haven't talked about it in a while.

I'll be honest. The last time I talked about the show and made a post about the show, I didn't feel it did the source material justice. Oh, the post isn't bad, I'm not saying that I already hate my own material now. It's just I felt that something was lacking from that post and some of my old jokes are just plain not holding up. I'm personally blaming it on the fact that it was one of the first posts I ever did for this site (Internet writing has a very steep learning curve) so now I hope I can appease the Spliced fanbase (all five of you) by writing a better post!

And what a better way to talk about the show than by actually talking about the episode that really introduced me to the show.

Now, while Stuck Together (the last episode I talked about when introducing the show in my blog) is a good episode and is technically, being a part of the first episode, how most people were introduced to this show, I myself consider this episode to be my show starter. It was the episode that helped prove to me that this was a show worth watching, because it had a giant gorilla with a pony hand making diamonds in its huge monkey fists while a dolphin wore a dress and performed fairy magic. No other cartoon has that, and I doubt no cartoon ever will.

That being said, let the show reference a completely different cartoon in this episode's title while I talk at length about fairies in...

Fairly Odd Princesses

Loonatics Unleashed - Cape Duck

While driving my Rolls Royce through the suburbs of Beverly Hills and sipping the finest aged champagne from a wine glass made entirely out of diamonds (disclaimer: the following may be slightly exaggerated), I thought to myself  "How most unorthodox, I haven't talked about Loonatics Unleashed in a while" and I kindly ordered my butler to fetch me my blog writing tuxedo. So here I am.

Well, at least it's not Baby Looney Tunes...

Fans of the show will note that this episode isn't at all within the same season as the previous two episodes ("Going Underground" and "The World Is My Circus") I've done. I'm not one to do shows in order, but even then, this is quite a big jump to go from some of the first episodes all the way to episode 19 out of a 26-episode series.

That's why I'm going to be honest here and say that I chose this episode entirely based off my own self-interest because it's an episode that effectively talks about three major beefs I have with this show. Despite the fact that the two episodes I've done honestly weren't the horrible steaming piles of excrement the Internet made this show out to be (but then again, this is coming from someone who can deprive enjoyment out of such classics as Street Sharks and Creepy Crawlers; I doubt anyone takes me seriously anymore), three things still lingered on my mind.

One, Danger Duck was largely devoted to comic relief in my episodes and he seemed to only exist to be continually crapped on by his fellow team members for being a total screw-up in everything he does. Two, Tech E. Coyote's inventions and how they just instantly saved the day in both episodes I did just bugged the hell out of me and I wanted to see an episode where his inventions actually do the opposite and cause something bad to happen.

Finally, I had to know what happened with Dr. Dare, the main villain of Going Underground. You know, the dumpy, bald little dweeb who loves rocks and the color green? That guy.

I blame the fact that Simon Templeman did his voice, personally. That man can do no wrong.

Luckily, there exists an episode that tries to answer all of these questions and more. And trust me, the way it handles all three of these questions is nothing short of unique. Dr. Dare returns, but it's not handled in the way you would expect (and before you ask if they actually explore some of this character's backstory by giving him heavily severe mental disorders from the sudden transformation caused by the meteor and later, his years of isolation...no, they don't) and in a way that may surprise you. Tech screws up, but not in the way you would expect. It's a smorgasboard of shattered expectations and makes for quite the delightful viewing experience if you're into coyotes wearing skintight leather clothing and Danger Duck gloating how awesome he is for an entire freaking episode.

Therefore, I doubt anyone's gonna mind if I talk about a Season 2 episode. And so, with an episode name that involves "Ducks" (invoking Disney Afternoon flashbacks), I bring you...

Cape Duck

The Batman - The Big Dummy

Okay, okay, I assume when people said "Something New" in the polls, they expected something within this decade, not something that their parents grew up with. And, to sweeten the deal, it'll even be about superheroes.

Time for me to talk about an often-forgotten section of an incredibly huge franchise, Batman. The Dark Knight is considered one of the most important characters when it comes to superhero cartoons, if only because he's been in so many influential cartoons. I won't get too much into just how powerful his shows were, if only because there are entire websites designed to talk about the impact Batman: The Animated Series has had on animation (ones more coherent and better-written than my blog, might I add) just as there are entire websites designed to talk about how stupid (whether delightfully stupid or just stupid stupid) the 70's Superfriends show is.

Most Batman cartoons, at least according to Batman fans, fall under one of three categories: Crap that came before Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: The Animated Series, and Crap that came after Batman: The Animated Series. It's a pretty common fact that Batman hit its cartoony stride in Batman: The Animated Series, and I'm not confident I can tackle that show yet, lest I want people hunting me down for making the wrong joke or saying that the wrong character sucks.

So, to ruffle the least amount of feathers as possible, I'm choosing a cartoon that's not Batman: The Animated Series (instead I'm going with the Jackie Chan-esque Batman cartoon that came out around 2004) and, to double my protection, I'm going to talk about a character that not many people even notice.

Yep, instead of talking about The Joker, The Penguin, Poison Ivy, or even Bane (just going to say it right now, but I think Bane is stupid), I'm choosing, well...this guy.

Pictured: Seriously a Batman villain.

This character, at least according to my really brief research on the Internet, is like the character that fans can't agree whether he's (or they're) a really awesome or a really stupid idea. Arnold Wesker aka The Ventriloquist and Scarface have appeared on as many Best Batman Villain Lists as Worst Batman Villain Lists. While the Batman nerds can pretty much agree that Crazy Quilt is a stupid idea and that The Joker is full of awesome, no one's really sure if a mentally disturbed middle-aged man who has a murderous personality manifest through his left hand is a good idea or a bad one. Even the writers can't seem to agree, because I've seen just as many Batman stories where this character was played for laughs as there are stories that are really tragic.

So I'm going to talk about Warner Brother's third most controversial cartoon (because even a Batman made by the creators of Jackie Chan can't reach the level of infamousness that Coconut Fred and Loonatics Unleashed have) for a change, because if there's anyone who can make a strange blend of good and bad mixed into one cartoon, it's Warner Brothers.


Let's look at...

The Big Dummy

WordGirl -Tobey's Tricks and Treats

Since I'm playing catchup with my blog, I'm going to cover a Halloween special that's short and sweet, which is appropriate considering those descriptors also apply to most pieces of Halloween candy.

So I figure, why not do something different and cover a recent Flash cartoon that's not in my age group but somehow manages to have a pretty sizable adult fanbase, a show that's considered just as fun to watch as a kid and as an adult. And before any bronies can get all excited and think I'm talking about THAT show, here is a show that people really overlook too much, WordGirl.

Oh no, the TV's trying to educate me! Quick, change the channel!

I discovered this show entirely by accident, because I happened to be babysitting a four-year old and the four-year old happened to love PBS. Before I was enlightened, I figured that PBS plays the game similar to how Nick Jr. does it, where the shows feel about as engaging as a drill to the eye and the characters expect you to do the thinking for them. Long story short, I was wrong, and not once did I run into a show where a character was standing still for five seconds because they couldn't locate the red ball behind them. Instead, Dinosaur Train showed me species I never knew before, Cyberchase has Christopher Lloyd as the main villain, and WordGirl actually has a character with full-blown schizophrenia. Truly this is the channel Nick Jr. wishes it was.

WordGirl basically answers the question of whether it's possible to have a superhero show aimed at little kids considering the inevitable violence and crime associated with that genre. Long story short, it is. Because come on, there was a generation of little kids that watched Batman: The Animated Series and they turned out okay. It's still educational, but it's also fun to watch. WordGirl doesn't just teach the children new words; she also thwarts world domination plans and fights various themed villains.

I consider WordGirl to be Dora the Explorer's alternate universe self on steroids. They share the same ethnicity and have a monkey companion, but while Dora thinks that saying "go" in Spanish is an achievement worthy of a traveling mariachi band consisting of frogs and snails, WordGirl will teach you the meaning of the word "immaculate" while tying a streetlight around a half-mouse mutant with an exposed brain. Also, Huggyface? I'm pretty sure if he fought Boots, Dora would have to rename her talking monkey companion "Bucket of Unidentifiable Monkey Organs".

Since I'm getting into the holiday spirit, the first episode I cover of this wondrous slice of educational television tells a haunting tale of a boy who uses his massive intelligence and his abilities to build giant robots for evil. A boy who has a thirst for destruction just as much as he has a thirst for caramel. I'm talking about Tobey, and this is his story.

Tobey's Tricks and Treats

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command - Wirewolf

Why look, it's October. You know what this calls for? An entire month filled with nothing but Halloween specials! Those who are allergic to vampires and werewolves should probably avoid this blog for the next month on account the episodes I do are going to be all about the things that go bump in the night (and I don't mean that claymation show) and the strange, hostile creatures that celebrate the witching hour.

Now, while you enjoy your candy corn and chocolate bars shaped like pumpkins, consider the following. Suppose they made an animated series of a character in a Pixar movie without any of the original voice actors, with a completely new cast of characters, and in a completely different style to said Pixar movie. Sounds like it'd be pretty stupid and unwatchable right?

Allow me to prove you wrong by introducing you to Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.

This show sounds like one of those things that could've been terrible, could've been a horrible blemish on the face of Disney, and could've been considered another cash-in franchise like the many direct-to-video sequels that were coming out at this time. I mean, even the premise sounds dumb. It's supposedly the TV show that Buzz Lightyear the toy was based off of, which means we're dealing with sort of a different Buzz Lightyear but not really. And he's in a crimefighting team that includes a token chick, a talking robot comic relief, and a fat janitor alien. Bound to be crap, right?

Pictured: Not crap.

Instead, it was actually a decent show, probably because they actually had Tad Stones, the man behind Darkwing Duck, working on it. The people that do remember it remember it fondly, but unfortunately, since it wasn't a Disney afternoon show, therefore that means that it doesn't have the fanbase that say, Darkwing Duck or Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. And that's a real big shame, because in the years that have passed, they managed to tighten up the writing and animation in Disney shows. This was probably one of Disney's last great shows with the spirit of the 90's coursing through its veins before Disney decided that kids really want to see live-action pop stars in sitcoms.

Yeah, Disney. I'm a tiny bit pissed that you feel that having only two animated shows running at a time does the trick. It really doesn't. One of the reasons why the 90's was so great for you is because you had variety. Come back to school, get bombarded with like six different shows. Now, if you don't like Phineas and Ferb, you're pretty much out of luck.

Also unfortunately, since Disney afternoon show DVDs apparently didn't sell as well as Disney would've hoped (well, gee, Disney, maybe if you included the uncut episodes instead of porting the cut-for-TV cuts from Toon Disney and maybe if you had just a couple of extras...), this show never got a DVD release. If I sound a little bitter, that's probably because I am, on account Disney is usually really good at releasing DVDs and Blu-Rays with all of the bells and whistles...provided that they're well-known animated films. Come on, Disney. Warner Bros. was embarrassed by Loonatics Unleashed and they gave that show a full DVD release! The entire show of Loonatics Unleashed is on DVD and yet we can't get Season 3 of Darkwing Duck.

But I'm getting off-topic and ranting about cartoon politics instead of the actual episode. Buzz Lightyear! The first episode I'm going to do of this show was going to be, as expected, one of the first episodes in the series, but then October happened and I tossed that out in favor of a Halloween episode. I went with this one first because, like a lot of my posts, I chose it because the villain and the premise sounded neat.

Allow me to introduce you to an episode named after the villain, because this is...

Wirewolf

Fanboy and Chum Chum - Wizboy

Recent stuff! Whoo! This post should be a good enough reminder that while I do watch and review 90's and 80's shows, I can sometimes do something recent too. That's why I have a 2000's label after all.

Let's see how fast I can lose what little audience I have by talking about this show.

Ah yes, Fanboy and Chum Chum. For some reason this show gets hated on a lot. It's like a punchline. Every time someone says something like "TV animation sucks nowadays!", the first example they usually trot out is this particular show. Man, everything on the air is like Fanboy and Chum Chum! Why can't we have more 2D animation instead of crap like Fanboy and Chum Chum? Kids today have a terrible childhood because they have Fanboy and Chum Chum! I'm not defending the show (I don't really defend ANY show in this blog), but like Loonatics Unleashed, the hatred is a tiny bit overblown and silly.

Probably because I've seen many other shows get similar hate because Western Animation fans just suck. Don't worry, Fanboy and Chum Chum, because Rocket Power, Jimmy Neutron, The Replacements, Teamo Supremo, ChalkZone, and El Tigre all got similar backlash. (Also Butt Ugly Martians and Super Duper Sumos, but they deserved it)

But I'll be honest. The reason I'm doing this show is not because I have any sort of interest in the show, that I'm curious as to why it gets hated on, or that someone requested it to me. Instead, my reasoning is a bit more shallow. I'm doing this review because my Computer Animation teacher was Lead Character Technical Artist on this show. I'm not going to make unfounded claims I can't back up, but if I remember correctly, he designed either Fanboy or Chum Chum. He's honestly proud of his work on this show (he also did work Tak and the Power of Juju, but in his opinion, this show is better) so I'm going to try to judge it more fairly than say, anyone who thinks that CGI is the cheap alternative to 2D. It's not.

Anyways, I'm going to watch what else but this show's premiere episode, Wizboy. This is yet another show that's divided into a two shows/ 11 minute format, so at the very least, it should give me a light, fluffy post after posting those monsters about the Loonatics and The Mask.

With that being said, will I end up being like every single 18 years and older cartoon fan who says that Invader Zim and Rocko's Modern Life is totally better than this new-aged, CGI drivel they're forcefeeding the children, or will I have a deep penetrating shame over the fact that I find something to like out of this show? Don't try to fight it folks, because I'm introducing you to...

Wizboy

Loonatics Unleashed - The World is My Circus

This may be the first show that I'm choosing to revisit on account of popular demand as opposed to me just picking out shows at random. Today, I'm going to once again tackle the show known as Loonatics Unleashed on account quite a few people liked it when I talked about the episode where a balding chubby nerd with a rock arm fought giant talking rabbits. Not only was the Going Underground post one of the most popular blog posts I've ever done, but I actually got an e-mail response about it saying that I was "a lot fairer than most cartoon review sites".

Which kind of says a lot when my site makes fun of everything I watch. When I said that Ace Bunny's lasers looked really ludicrous and that his personality was bland, that Lexi made some very stupid mistakes, or that Tech was being a pretentious smartass, that was still being a lot fairer than most sites that cover Western Animation. Probably because I actually said nice things inbetween the snark, but still...

But then again, considering how much the viewers of Cartoon Brew were collectively filling their underwear with raw anger over the release of The Looney Tunes Show, that really doesn't surprise me. And it's kind of sad that it doesn't.

For this post, I just happened to pick an episode that appealed to my interests on account I'm shallow and that going in episode order would be boring. In this case, there's evil circuses, Tim Curry, mutant animal hybrids, physical transformations, and superheroes, which I think sounds like just the coolest mixture of stuff in an episode. Again, not related to Looney Tunes at all, but you'd be lying if you said this didn't sound cool. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, witness the greatest show on the face of the Earth in...

The World is My Circus

Loonatics Unleashed - Going Underground

Okay, I've been making fun of DIC Entertainment for way too long. Time to make fun of yet another product from the animation company renowned for making some of the best shows in the 90's, Warner Bros. Animation.

No, Batman fans. This logo isn't going to turn into a police helicopter with
headlights shining down on Gotham City.

I don't think even Disney can really touch the versatility the Warner Brothers Animation brand has. I've seen a lot more people say they hate or love everything Disney stands for than their lead competitor just because of the level of variation in Warner Bros. On one hand, they're responsible for Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, and Tiny Toons. On the other hand, they're responsible for Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island, Johnny Test, and Baby Looney Tunes. It's really hard to say what my opinion is with Warner Bros. because they brought me both intense joy and intense sorrow. They can do it for the art and then whore off their characters in the very same breath.

So thus, instead of ripping into the really obvious bad cartoons Warner Bros. is responsible for, I want to first make fun of their show that honestly can't decide whether it's a bad cartoon and a good one, a cartoon that, like Captain Planet, everyone's heard of and laughed at but never actually sat down and watched it.

So thus, the punchline for every joke about trying to make aging cartoon characters more relevant for today's audience, Loonatics Unleashed.

They're tiny, they're toony, they're all a little-wait, wrong show.

I don't really have much to say about Loonatics Unleashed's sordid history, other than it had two seasons with 26 episodes and was cancelled after the second season on account Warner Brothers realized that everyone was making fun of this show and hopefully, by cancelling it, they can never speak of it again. It was one of those shows that suffered from a bad case of Multiple Personality Syndrome.

And ironically the fact that it was tied to Looney Tunes is probably what hurt it the most. Why? Because if it wasn't tied to the Looney Tunes brand and if the characters were not reimagined Looney Tunes characters, this would just be another superhero cartoon where a band of heroes with different personalities fight against a varied rogue gallery and people would've ate it right up. The 90's was ALL ABOUT the superhero cartoons, after all.

The people who made Animaniacs made this.

I'm going with this episode first because to be frank, loads of people covered this show's first episode before in other blogs (usually in blogs much snarkier than this one) and I don't want to do "Weathering Heights" until after I do The Mask: The Animated Series's "Rain on Terror" on account the plots are exactly the same.

So yeah, now that I talked about the show, let's talk about an episode that honestly has nothing to do with the Merrie Melodies shorts at all because it involves chinese food, earthquakes, and a mad scientist who turned half-rock (yeah, really) and therefore, of course, wants revenge on the entire world. Witness this unfold in an episode that the writers couldn't even think of a good name pun for, because this is...

Going Underground

Tak and the Power of Juju - Shrink a Dink

Time to talk about the big Nicktoon sensation that never happened, Tak and the Power of Juju.

Back in the early 2000's, Nickelodeon had been releasing a series of video games based on their then-upcoming show that was being produced in-house at that actual Nickelodeon studio. The games were decent (I've played the first two, and while not amazing, were a lot better than you would expect a Nickelodeon game to be) but they were all building up for something huge. Every single one of those games was teasing the upcoming release of the next big Nicktoon, the next big Rugrats, Nickelodeon's first fully CGI animated show, their 30th Nicktoon, and generally supposedly their biggest, most awesome idea for this decade.

...and no one watched it when it came on and now Nick knows not to hype their cartoons so much anymore. A valuable lesson.

But hey, it had more fans than Mr. Meaty at least.

The show never found an audience and was quietly cancelled after one 26 episode season. Now, no one really remembers this show's actual existence and it's extremely hard to find this show now. Now, normally a lot of the shows or movies I watch can be easily found on Youtube or, occasionally, on some Russian site located off of Google video. Not this show. Currently, the only way to see this show for free is to either do some shady backdoor Internet dealings with people who own fuzzy, video camera recordings off a TV screen of the show or to hunt down clips on the actual Nickelodeon website.

...course, there's also Amazon Instant Stream and a small DVD of the show, but I don't exactly want to plunk down money on a show that I've never actually seen.

This show's episodes were in two 11 minute segments an episode format, and after some hunting down, I finally found an entire episode. Instead of doing one of the earlier episodes like I try to do whenever I talk about a show, the episode I managed to find was a part of one of the last episodes aired before the show got axed.

So with that being said, let's see how this show ended its forgotten run with its strange tale of Spiffles, Phobia Jujus, and Grongo Snakes. And, if you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, then that makes two of us. Watch the strangeness unfold and nearly wreck existence in...

Shrink a Dink

Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island - Master of Disaster

Ooooh boy, where do I begin with this show?

I remember first learning about this show when I happened to flip through the channels while me and my family were staying in Maui. I saw an episode that involved bananas obtaining Thanksgiving vision and shooting cooked turkeys out of their eyes in order to battle a sentient blender, and by the time the episode was over, I immediately wondered if the TV was just giving us a taste of what it's like to be on LSD. I had written the show off as maybe some sort of fever dream and went along with my life pretending that this didn't exist.

But I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

It's Coconutbob Swimwearpants!

Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island is another cartoon that escaped the public's notice. It had 2 seasons and 13 episodes and then was quietly cancelled without so much of an audience to speak of. The show didn't get killed so much as quietly whimper and choke on its own vomit. The only reason I've seen people bring it up is because of two reasons.

1. It's a shameless ripoff of Spongebob Squarepants, with Rob Paulsen even saying so in an interview.
and
2. In an episode, a sentient piece of fruit dresses up as Sephiroth. I know this sounds silly, but this was a huge defining moment of this cartoon. I looked up this show's Wikipedia article and 80% of the article is going on and on about how an episode referenced so many different pieces from Final Fantasy 7, so much that a part of everyone's character profile is what video game character they dressed up as in that faithful episode. Square-Enix fans will support anything that even mentions the words "Midgar" or "Cloud Strife" and this is no exception.

As much as I want to take on the fateful episode where Coconut Fred dresses up like Cloud Strife, making several thousand Square fans go "KAWAII NO DESU NE!" and soil their pants in delight, I kind of want to hit the first episode first just to see what kind of maniacal piece of animation I'm subjecting myself to, especially after watching Spliced. The episodes are divided into 11 minute segments, but believe me, that's all I can probably manage of this show at a time. I'll either end up dead or craving like several thousand tons of fruit salad if I take on a full 22 minute episode. You don't want me to eat myself into a cherry and orange-induced coma, now do you?

I'm going with Master of Disaster since Coconut Fred's show has a freaking huge title (what, was "Fruit Salad Island" by itself already taken?) and Master of Disaster has the shorter title of the two 11 minute segments.

So yeah, Master of Disaster. How fitting.

Master of Disaster

Spliced - Stuck Together

You know, I've been talking about some pretty old shows recently. Shows that are almost 20 years old, with one cartoon even being older than I am. Shows that, if I keep talking about the 80's and 90's, might alienate my nonexistent audience into thinking that I some sort of bias towards this period of animation. (I do, but that's not what's being discussed here.)

So you know what? I'm going to cover a show that's only two years old.

You'd think with the advent of the Internet, less shows would escape notice. You'd think with more people coming out of the "I like cartoons and I'm over 18!" closet on the Internet, no animated series would be left unturned. Unfortunately, a lot of shows do, leading several people to believe that there just aren't as many cartoons as there were in the 90's. (which is actually sort of true, but still) You'd be surprised, but there are actually quite a few modern shows that ended up just like Creepy Crawlers; they surface, have a couple episodes, and then sink back into the mud pool of obscurity in which they were birthed from.

One such show is Spliced, a Teletoon cartoon that was barely even in the United States. Considering that at one point in time Teletoon cartoons had infested Cartoon Network like a bad infestation of fleas (remember Stoked, 6Teen, and those Total Drama shows that all looked exactly the same? I mean those), I'm actually rather surprised that Cartoon Network did NOT pick up the Teletoon show that wasn't produced by the same company. But then again, these are the same people who greenlit Problem Solverz and yet refused to renew Megas XLR, Robotomy, and Sym-bionic Titan so I have reason to believe that whoever runs Cartoon Network decided that brains weren't hipster and random enough and had them surgically removed.

Otherwise I'm going to have to come to grips that some person, who thinks and breathes just like you and I, thought that CN Real was a mighty good idea and would totally enhance the network.

It wasn't and it didn't.

But before I get off-topic again (I can rant about Disney Channel in another entry just to make it fair), what is Spliced actually about? Basically a mad scientist splices together a bunch of animals and made a bunch of horrific mutants until he was carted off to jail. So now the mutated animals, without the mad scientist running their lives, built their own society and go on wacky hijinks in the scientists' abandoned equipment. If you ever played any of the Crash Bandicoot games or watched the show "The Wuzzles", this premise will seem kind of familiar.

What has science done!?

Also the intro is extremely catchy AND manages to sneak in the word "crap". Any cartoon intro that manages to do that and not get yelled at wins brownie points in my book.

I figure the best way to look at this show is the first episode, and since this show is like Heathcliff in that it's divided into 11 minute segments, I'll look at the second segment of the first episode. Why the second segment? Because it introduces more of the characters than the first one and because I personally liked it better than the first segment. My cartoon blog, my rules.

Anyways, I present you a cartoon where one of the main characters has a giant udder for feet, a cartoon that goes from charming buddy adventure to a survival horror. I give you...

Stuck Together