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

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