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    The Wacky World of Tex Avery

    The Wacky World of Tex Avery (French: Le Monde fou de Tex Avery) is a 1997 French-American animated television series created by Robby London, and produced by DIC Entertainment and their French subsidiary Les Studios Tex, in which this studio was named after this show. The series was named after the well-known Warner Bros./MGM animator, Tex Avery, and the creator describes the show as "an homage to the brilliant, hilarious and groundbreaking animator Tex Avery and the wonderful squash-and-stretch cartoons of his era".

    Premise

    The show is an anthology series that stars numerous characters such as Tex Avery (distinct from his namesake, the real-life animator of the same name), Einstone, and Pompeii Pete. There are several segments in this show.

    The show's main segment is the self-titled Tex Avery. It features the titular cowboy, his rival Sagebrush Sid, and Texan girlfriend Miss Chastity Knott in various escapades and scenarios.

    The second segment, Einstone, centers on the titular caveman genius, who attempts to teach his fellow cavemen to be more civilized through the use of his inventions.

    The third segment, Pompeii Pete, follows a small, bumming Centurion who finds himself in modern day after being buried alive for thousands of years after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Pete usually goes from job to job, often getting on the nerves of a business man named Dan, whose role varies as well.

    Genghis and Khannie, the fourth segment, is named after the Mongolian ruler, Genghis Khan. Genghis is a lion warlord that's attempting to conquer empires and countries in the name of his emperor, while Khannie is a small, innocent looking panda that foils Genghis at every turn.

    The fifth segment, Freddy the Fly, has the titular fly square off against the ridiculously uber rich Amanda Banshee.

    The penultimate segment, Power Pooch, stars a dog that can turn into a superhero by licking (or swallowing) one shoe. Along for the ride is a blue cat named Little Buddy that acts as Power Pooch's sidekick.

    The seventh and final segment, Maurice and Mooch, is a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner parallel. Mooch is a wolf that is constantly searching for a meal, while Maurice is a young chicken that Mooch constantly tries and fails to eat.

    Why It's Too Wacky (and Not in a Good Way)

    1. Despite the series being intended to pay homage to Tex Avery and his cartoon creations, it is nothing more than an insult rather than a homage to Tex Avery's work, due to its various issues as listed below.
    2. Poor grasp of the source material: Aside from having the classic Tex Avery gags, the show has nothing else to do with Tex Avery and, for legal reasons, none of his trademark characters like Bugs Bunny and Droopy Dog are included in this show. There's a character who's a cowboy named after Avery, and that's pretty much it.
      • The show uses all the gags, jokes, and every element of the Tex Avery cartoons they were well-known for, all without actually understanding the context of each gags' used and why Tex Avery's Looney Tunes and MGM cartoons and their wild comedic style as a whole worked so well.
        • A glaring example of such is that the series' titular character, Tex Avery, is always shown to be constantly lusting and doing wild takes exaggeratedly on his love interest Chastity Knott in nearly every episode just because the Wolf from Tex Avery's MGM cartoon "Red Hot Riding Hood" always does that to Red in each one of his appearances with her, with the writers failing to realize that the Wolf is a lecherous villain in the cartoons he appears in with Red (and a zoophile considering that the Wolf is an animal and Red is a human), hence making the Tex Avery character to come off as nothing but a lecherous girl-crazy pervert towards Chastity Knott and an unlikable protagonist whom viewers are forced to root for in his cartoons.
      • Even more insultingly, the real Tex Avery himself is very poorly represented via his same-named caricature in this show. In real life, Tex Avery, in contrast to the wild and wacky nature of his cartoons, is a rather quiet and reserved man who never actively sought out the spotlight in real life, with his cartoon creation Droopy being the closest character who is the most similar to Tex Avery's real-life persona. Here in this show, Tex Avery is instead represented as a wild, wacky, hyperactive, and obnoxious Bugs Bunny/Screwy Squirrel-esque Western hero type-comic relief character who comes off as more annoying and obnoxious than funny, which is a huge insult to the real-life Tex Avery and the type of person he was back when he was alive.
    3. Quantity over quality: DiC didn't run this show properly, as all 195 segments of this show were produced in the littlest of time possible and were aired for four months of their original broadcast from September-December 1997, making the production of each episode extremely rushed and poorly executed as a result.
    4. The title sequence shows the characters repetitively stomping and bouncing on the ground in an extremely hyperactive manner.
    5. This show uses too many stock cartoon sound effects (mostly from the Hanna-Barbera library) and even uses them at inappropriate times.
    6. Billy West and Scott McNeil do poor jobs voicing Tex Avery, Freddy the Fly, and Amanda. Notably, McNeil sounds very annoying and unconvincing as a woman.
    7. The character designs, while very appealing and reminiscent of a Looney Tunes cartoon, are rather ugly looking, especially with Tex Avery, who has an unsettling smile on his face, Freddy the Fly, Einstone, and the cavemen.
    8. The segments, in general, are pretty bad, forgettable, and unoriginal. They mainly copy other classic cartoons from the Golden Age and don't try many new things to keep them from being too formulaic:
      • Tex Avery is this to Looney Tunes' Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam cartoons.
      • Pompeii Pete, while not a direct rip-off, borrows elements from The Ren & Stimpy Show.
      • Einstone uses the concept of cavemen making modern inventions from The Flintstones.
      • Genghis and Khannie is this to Tom & Jerry in terms of character design but without any chase scenes.
      • Freddy the Fly is this to Screwy Squirrel.
      • Maurice and Mooch is this to the Looney Tunes' Tweety and Sylvester cartoons, with some elements from Baby Huey.
      • Power Pooch is this to the Earthworm Jim animated series.
    9. There are various instances of racism, which is something you should never have in a kids' show.
      • There are plenty of racial and annoying stereotypes:
        • Tex Avery (the main character) is just a cliché stereotypical Texan/Old West character.
        • Pompeii Pete is a Roman/Italian stereotype.
        • Einstone is a German stereotype based obviously on Albert Einstein.
        • Maurice is a Swedish stereotype.
        • Other offensive stereotypes on this show include Asians, Canadians, Mexicans, British, Samoans, Jews, Irish, and even Native Americans as well.
      • In "The Not-So-Great Train Robbery", Tex hires a stereotypical Indian tracker to help him get back to his train.
      • The episode "Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Wall" begins with a montage of Genghis attacking other countries. In the first clip, Genghis's army kills a stereotypical Persian man and his cow, after which a sign reading "Rug-Sale: Cheap!" drops down. In the second, Genghis throws a bomb at Mumbai (called Bombai in this episode), and a nearby sign changes to "Bombed Out" after the explosion.
    10. The animation is sub-par and rather cheap looking, with some unfinished backgrounds and frames missing.
      • There are numerous animation errors:
        • In the opening, the top of Pompeii Pete's helmet disappears for three frames.
        • In "Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Wall", the animation frames of Khannie playing with her puppets appear to be chopped off from the top.
        • In "Martial Blitz", part of the man the bride is to marry landing after being kicked by Amanda disappears for a frame.
      • Some of the animation doesn't sync up with the backgrounds properly.
      • The show would occasionally use some strange transitions or special effects that look out of place for the show's animation style:
        • In "Water You Gonna Do?", the second-to-last scene "disintegrates" for no explained reason.
        • In "The Wrath of Khannie", the text "3 sequels ago in a galaxy not too far away" zooms away from the viewer to recreate the prologue text of a Star Wars film, but it looks as if it is slowly being sucked up to the top of the screen.
    11. The jokes and humor are both very poor and terrible, as they mostly consist of toilet humor and gross-out humor. Most of the jokes also fall flat or feel awkward due to the stiff and wonky animation. Examples include:
      • Maurice making armpit farts and blowing his nose in the intro
      • An ape vomiting
      • Almost every joke revolving around Freddy the Fly
      • Mooch peeing into a potted plant
      • A caveman shoving a pole up a dinosaur's butt
      • The classic Avery gags are in the show, but they're butchered beyond all belief:
        • In a scene from "Mine, Mine, Mine!", Sid accidentally runs out of the film projector like in the Droopy cartoon "Northwest Hounded Police", but the gag automatically falls flat since the show was originally watched on TV sets, which didn't use film reels or projectors.
        • In the "The Not-So-Great Train Robbery", there is also a scene where Tex Avery and Sid take turns pulling out bigger guns than each other, but they read out the name of the gun they pull each time, which slows the pacing and ruins the humor entirely.
        • The "_____, isn't it?" gag signs reappear, but they're not used properly:
          • In "Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Wall", there's one scene where the camera pans across the Great Wall and stops at a sign that reads "Great Wall, Huh?" two seconds later. To make this version of the gag work, the camera should be constantly panning at a slow pace even when passing by the sign and have said sign come in after about five or seven seconds as demonstrated in two of Tex Avery's cartoons, "The Early Bird Dood It!" and "The Shooting of Dan McGoo".
          • In "Silence of the Lames", there's another version of this gag where an extremely long limousine arrives at the entrance of the library and only stops when the door comes into view. In that episode, a hand holds a sign reading "Pretty Long Car, Isn't It!" while the car is still driving. Since the sign is supposed to serve as a punchline, this ends up ruining the gag by displaying the sign/punchline too early. Again, there's a much better version of this gag seen in the Tex Avery cartoon "The Shooting of Dan McGoo" where the phrase "Long, Isn't It?" appears on the wolf's limousine once it stops.
    12. A lot of content is too weird, disturbing, nonsensical, and inappropriate for a kids' show:
      • In "The Dis-orderly", Dan the Man fakes a cut and squeezes a ketchup bottle to simulate that he's bleeding, and made it worse by squeezing it very hard all over the other patients.
        • In the same episode, Pompeii himself slices a pizza using a buzzsaw, but the gag was a setup as if he was slicing Dan the Man instead.
      • In "Breakfast in Bedlam", Maurice cracks an egg open, which isn't that bad, but the previous scene implied he pulled it from his mother, which is technically cannibalism.
      • There are also various instances of gratuitous over-the-top violence, unsettling imagery, and disturbing facial expressions including:
        • Tex Avery and Sagebrush Sid flipping their lips in tune to the show's theme song, complete with saliva being shown
        • Cavemen and apes drowning in tar in "A Bird in the Brain Is Worth Two in the Bush" and "The Ugh-Lympic Games"
        • Genghis being shot by a big cannon with his mouth being all that is left in "Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Wall"
        • Genghis bulging out his eyes in "Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Wall"
        • Genghis having his tail get lit on fire by Khannie in "Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Wall" and then exploding
        • Freddy kissing the bride and making her fall over in "Martial Blitz"
        • Tex Avery setting fire in a bear's stomach in "Bottleneck Bear"
        • Einstone getting eaten alive by a Tyrannosaurus Rex and landing in its stomach in "Saur Loser"
        • Power Pooch swallowing an entire shoe whenever he needs his powers
        • Dan shooting a telephone with a gun in "Quiet Please"
        • Pompeii Pete killing an owl and mouse with a cannon (which is animal abuse) in "Quiet Please"
        • Amanda having a fly's head in "The Tell-Tale Fly" and "Bored of the Flies"
        • Tex Avery putting a tapeworm inside Sagebrush Sid's mouth in "Fat and Fatter"
        • Tex Avery landing in a pile of manure in "Virtual Tex"
        • Tex Avery graphically scratching his nails on a chalkboard in "Not a Sporting Chance"
        • Dan swallowing a hot rod motor engine in "Mechanically Declined"
        • Genghis getting burned to the bone by Khannie's dragon in "A No-Etiquette Barbarian in King Arthur's Court"
        • Tex Avery stripping off all of his clothes to the point where a censor bar covers his private parts in "Sagebrush Sindy"
        • Tex Avery squeezing a bear's bottom in "Sagebrush Sindy"
        • Sagebrush Sid tearing off Tex Avery's mouth in "Fat and Fatter" and "The Tex-orcist"
        • Mooch eating a TV set in "My Dinner With Mooch"
        • Baby Tex and Sid punching and exploding each other while still inside their respective mothers' wombs in "Tex Babies".
        • Mooch getting his face burnt on a grill in "Teacher's Pest"
        • Natives using Amanda's money as toilet paper in "Bored of the Flies"
        • Einstone getting his head stuck to a mammoth's butt and the mammoth going to the restroom in "Frankeinstone"
        • Sagebrush Sid getting his head split in half by his ax in "Up a Tree Without a Paddle"
        • Dan's skin shattering and exposing his flesh in "Just Plane Trouble"
        • Einstone's mother having all of her blood drained in "Neanderthal Mom"
        • Amanda getting covered in manure in "Martial Blitz"
        • Genghis eating a talking banana in "Donkey Conqueror"
        • Maurice cracking Mooch's tooth with a hammer in "The Toothless Fairy"
        • Tex Avery eating a buzzard until it’s nothing but bones in "Water You Gonna Do?"
        • Tex's arms being torn off by Sid only to attach to the latter's face and attack him in "The Tex-orcist"
        • Mooch crashing into a truck filled with tacks and having tacks stuck on his behind then spitting out the tacks when getting forced into a train tunnel in "Toy Store Story"
        • Two toucans taking off their beaks to kiss each other in "To Ape or Not to Ape"
        • Mooch getting his nose bitten by snakes in "Chicken Scouts"
        • Genghis getting decapitated in "Courting Disaster"
        • An ape vomiting in "The Ugh-Lympic Games"
        • Genghis eating bugs in "You Take the High Road and I'll Take Cairo"
        • Einstone ejecting a needle into a caveman's butt in "Is There a Doctor in the Cave?"
        • Mooch peeing into a potted plant in "Backseat Bedlam"
        • Genghis getting his lower half-eaten by piranhas in "A Pain in the Rain Forest"
        • A cat getting frozen and turning into ice cubes in "Double-O Scussi"
        • Amanda unscrewing a butler's head and dropping it in "Cake Me a Bake"
        • A caveman throwing a scalpel at Einstone's bottom in "Neanderthal Mom"
        • Power Pooch peeing on Dr. Hydrant (albeit off-screen) in "Flea! Run Away!"
        • Power Pooch almost getting neutered in "Doggie Pounded"
        • And lastly, Power Pooch's laser vision hitting a woman and causing her bra and panties to be exposed in "Wrapped Up in His Work"
    13. False advertising: The intro sequence and promo images show Tex riding a horse, but he rides a goat in the show itself instead.
    14. This show was obviously made to cash in on the trend of Golden Age-style shows such as Animaniacs and The Ren & Stimpy Show, which have little to no involvement with Tex Avery or his cartoons, and were more of a homage to him. In general, this show is a worse-drawn Ren and Stimpy and worse-written Animaniacs -- completely lacking the fun, care, and charm those shows had.
    15. A lot of the characters are unfunny, unlikable, and obnoxious.
      • The worst offenders are Amanda Banshee, who is very lazy and short-tempered, Freddy the Fly, who is abusive and extremely sadistic towards Amanda, and Khannie, who is incredibly mean-spirited and sadistic towards Genghis.
    16. The soundtrack is obnoxious and insufferable, especially the theme song.
      • The theme song is incredibly annoying, obnoxious, and lazy. It even disrespects Jacques Offenbach, as it consists of the chorus of his song from Orpheus In The Underworld Can-Can (a.k.a. "Infernal Galop") with the line "Welcome to the Wacky World of Tex Avery" being repeated over and over again in tune to the music as its lyrics of the theme.
      • There's also barely (if ever) any background music playing in most of the episodes, hence failing to enhance the intended wacky-nutty tone and mood of the show and rendering the cartoons' atmospheres to be very bland and dull.
      • Speaking of the background music, it almost sounds like it was composed as a MIDI music file, and it would often be played in different pitches and speeds.
    17. A lot of the characters and segments are pretty unoriginal and ripped off other already existing cartoons or TV shows.
      • Tex Avery is a rip-off of Red Hot Ryder from the 1944 Looney Tunes cartoon "Buckaroo Bugs" (which was, ironically, directed by Bob Clampett) and copies a lot from Bugs Bunny (Looney Tunes).
      • Sagebrush Sid is a lazy clone of the wolf from Tex Avery's Droopy cartoons and usually serves as a stand-in for Yosemite Sam (Looney Tunes).
      • Miss Chastity Knott's design heavily resembles Red's design, also from the Droopy cartoons.
      • Pompeii and Genghis look too similar to Stimpy (The Ren & Stimpy Show).
        • Pompeii himself looks like the Indian from the Screwy Squirrel cartoon "Big Heel-Watha" and is rumored to be based on Shorty from the original Popeye the Sailor cartoons.
      • Genghis greatly resembles the lion from Slap Happy Lion, which was directed by Tex Avery himself.
      • Dan's design has a strong resemblance to Dick Dastardly's design from Wacky Races.
      • The Einstone segments (or more precisely, the name) are an obvious ripoff of The Flintstones.
        • The face of Einstone himself was likely based on Little Miss Muffet from the 1940 Looney Tunes cartoon "A Gander at Mother Goose".
      • Genghis and Khannie are both plagiarized copycats of Tom and Jerry.
        • Khannie is a ripoff of Andy Panda and is a stand-in for Elmyra Duff from Tiny Toon Adventures to the point where they even share the same voice actor.
      • Freddy the Fly is likely a poor man's version of the gremlin from the Looney Tunes cartoon "Falling Hare".
      • Amanda Banshee looks like a stolen character drawn by Don Martin from an issue of the MAD magazine.
      • Maurice's design is a ripoff of both Tweety (Looney Tunes) and Baby Huey's designs.
      • Mooch is a copy of Sylvester J. Pussycat (Looney Tunes).
      • Maurice's father bears a few similarities to Foghorn Leghorn. (Looney Tunes)
      • Power Pooch is an obvious ripoff of Underdog and Superman (design-wise) and seems like a potential knockoff of mh:greatcharacters:Earthworm Jim (personality-wise, without any of the charm and good humor).
        • Little Buddy can also be seen as a potential clone of Spot from Hong Kong Phooey and Peter Puppy from Earthworm Jim.
      • Boney and Dr. Hydrant are lazy clones of Pinky and The Brain from Animaniacs, and they even share a few similarities in terms of character design and personality.
      • In the Tex Avery segment "Bottleneck Bear", one of the background characters that briefly appear in two scenes is a grey rabbit whose character design is a plagiarism of Bugs Bunny's (Looney Tunes) early-1940s design.
      • At the beginning of the Maurice and Mooch segment "True or False Alarm", there is a brief appearance of a hunter whose character design is a rip-off of Elmer Fudd's (Looney Tunes) design. There are also a wolf-like animal and a cat holding a bird, who resemble Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, and Tweety respectively.
    18. Ton of spelling errors and typos on the background objects:
      • In "Bottleneck Bear", "Grizzly Bear" is misspelled as "Gbizzly" in one of the signs on a mountain.
      • This happens twice in "Flychiatry"; On the psychiatrist's calendar, "Judgement Day" is misspelled as "Judement Day" and "November" is misspelled as "Novenber".
      • "Tallywho?" has a sentence with a misspelling: "Our guns are loaded and so are we" is misspelled as "Ours guns are loaded and so are we" on a sign.
      • In "The Wrath of Khannie", the sign on Uranus is misspelled as "Upanus" in one shot.
    19. Most of the animals (especially in the Einstone segments) are usually poorly drawn and have huge probosci's human-like noses, especially with the dinosaurs and saber-toothed cats.
    20. A few of the plots are even copied from other shows: a glaring example of this would be "Carnivores Anonymous", where Mooch attends a club to give up his addiction to chicken, being a copy of the Looney Tunes cartoon "Birds Anonymous" (even sharing a much similar name).
    21. Like with Angelica Pickles from Rugrats, Khannie's teeth always being shown whenever she moves her mouth contrasts heavily with the character's adorable appearance. This can also become uncanny to watch over time.
    22. The Arabic dub of the show had a lot of scenes cut or censored to comply with the stringent censorship rules that most Arabian countries have. Even then, it still does a poor job at censorship to beyond-laughable results, like repeating scenes, freeze-framing them at the wrong times, and not even editing the audio to compensate:
      • "Rodeo, Rodeo, Where For Art Thou Rodeo?" is the biggest example of this. Every scene with Miss Chastity was removed because her skimpy clothing was deemed inappropriate, and the entirety of the Pig Wrestling scene was cut because pork wasn't considered lawful, leading the plot to be changed from Tex and Sid trying to win her affections by trying to be the best rodeo clowns to just Tex and Sid trying to prove which one can ride a bull the longest. This also leaves the scene of Tex wearing the clown nose he got from Chastity unexplained.

    Redeeming Qualities

    1. The characters in the show are at least original in some respects, even though most of them are obnoxious in a bad way.
    2. Very good voice acting, except Billy West as Tex Avery and Freddy the Fly and Scott McNeil as Amanda Banshee.
      • The narrator (Maurice LaMarche) can be decent at times.
    3. The Italian theme song sung by Cristina D'Avena was decent.
    4. The animation can be decent at times. In fact, the animation improved a bit in the final 6 episodes.
      • The animation in the title sequence as well as the intros to each segment looks better than usual, but that's not saying much.
    5. Most of the character designs (despite looking ugly) are very similar to the Looney Tunes cartoons.
      • Khannie, Maurice, and Little Buddy all have cute designs.
    6. Some of the characters are tolerable and decent such as Miss Chasity Knott, Genghis, Mooch, Pompeii Pete (sometimes) and Little Buddy.
      • Depending on how you view her, Khannie is also likable at times.
    7. Some quotes are funny at times such as Sagebrush Sid's "What are you looking at?" and Power Pooch's "Can you say, justice?"
    8. Many funny moments every now and then.
    9. A few of the episodes are good and admittedly funny such as "Tex Meets the Execs".
    10. The Genghis and Khannie segments had a small cult following and became a fan favorite by some people, such as a portion of the furry community.
      • The Pompeii Pete segments also seem to be well-liked by some people as well.
    11. The show does have a few nods to Tex Avery's work now and then, the most notable being in "Cat Scratch Fervor" where Power Pooch and Bad Cat keep gnawing on the shoe to grow bigger like how the cat and mouse from Tex Avery's "King Size Canary" kept drinking the growth formula to grow bigger.
    12. The French dub of the show uses fewer sound effects in the early episodes.
    13. The Italian dub of the show uses good and funny dialogue despite the sound effects.
    14. Tex actually rides a horse like in the advertising material, sadly it was just in the final episodes.

    Trivia

    • This was DIC's first cartoon to be fully made using digital ink and paint. However, this wasn't the first time where they did this technique. The first time they did this animation technique was in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! with the episode "Count Koopula".
    • Tex Avery's daughter Nancy Avery desperately needed the money to pay for her kids' college, so she approved this show.
    • Out of all the 65 episodes produced, 48 of them have surfaced. The other 17 have yet to resurface.
      • The first 40 episodes were released on DVD by Mill Creek Entertainment, and the first 10 were uploaded to the WildBrain-owned Jazzper YouTube channel (then called DHX Encore).
      • Episodes 45-52 were once available for free on YouTube, but as of 2021 they have disappeared.
    • On later English prints of the series, only the voice actors from the French dub are credited.
    • On January 23, 1996, one year before The Wacky World of Tex Avery entered production, Cartoon Network started airing The Tex Avery Show, an anthology program entirely dedicated to honoring Tex Avery and his cartoon creations, consisting of all the Looney Tunes and MGM cartoons which Tex Avery had directed throughout the 1930s-1950s (by that time, the 1996 Time Warner-Turner Entertainment merger had allowed Warner Bros. to own all of the Tex Avery-directed cartoons, save for only four cartoons he directed during his brief stint at Walter Lantz Productions).

    Videos

    Theme Song

    Reviews

    Fun Size

    Fun Size (known as Half Pint in some countries) is a 2012 American teen comedy film directed by Josh Schwartz and written by Max Werner, starring Victoria Justice (who played Tori Vega from Victorious and Lola Martinez from Zoey 101), Thomas Mann, Jane Levy and Chelsea Handler. Released in theaters on October 26, 2012 by Paramount Pictures, it was met with negative reviews and was a box office bomb, grossing $11.4 million against its $14 million budget, making it the lowest grossing Nickelodeon movie ever.

    Plot

    Wren DeSantis (Victoria Justice) is a high-school senior who can't wait to get away from her dysfunctional family. On Halloween, Wren's mother decides to go out with her much-younger boyfriend, leaving Wren to look after little brother Albert DeSantis (Jane Levy). When Wren is distracted by an invitation to the party of the year, Albert disappears into a sea of trick-or-treaters. Enlisting the aid of her sassy friend, April (also Jane Levy), and two other classmates, Wren sets out on a frantic search for her sibling.

    Why It Can't Handle Halloween

    1. The biggest problem with this movie that's hard to disregard is that it has a ton of sexual content, laughable dialogue and inappropriate jokes, in a Nickelodeon movie, and a PG-13 one at that. These include, but are not limited to:
      • The scene in the beginning of the movie where Wren was taking a shower, sniffing a disgusting odor and opening the shower curtain and yelling out "ALBERT!!" and taking us to a scene where Albert is naked is very disturbing and unfitting even for a teen movie.
      • In addition, after that scene, Wren says this line in the scene where she puts on torn clothing, "Where are my boobs?" is also very unfitting in a teen movie.
      • The infamous scene where Wren pulls off a mask revealing a black boy dressed as Spider-Man and calls her (Wren) a "bitch" is an example of something completely vulgar or rude in a movie made by Nickelodeon. This is something Eric Cartman from South Park would do.
      • The scene where two rude men (dressed as a chariot knight and Hulk) said "Move the babe magnet, asswad!" and "Yeah, asswad!", and the scene where Peng said "What's up, bitches? Why don't you get out of that honky-ass truck and come at me like a man?" is also way too vulgar for a teen movie. To be fair, some PG-13 movies do use profanity (though mild to moderate) in some places, but if Nickelodeon had to go this way for a PG-13 film anybody wouldn’t be surprised.
      • A man farting on Wren's mother during the party.
      • During the scene where April escapes Roosevelt and Peng's car while Peng was grabbing her legs, she infamously says this disturbing and unfitting line, "Okay, let me go and I'll let you touch my boob for 10 seconds."
      • The infamous and disturbing close-ups of April's boobs that she showed to Peng, and forced Peng to touch her boobs. And she even hits Peng in the face (showing that she is a very bad person).
      • The disgusting scene where Fuzzy takes off his clothes is very gross and sexual.
    2. Because of all of these points, it will make you question why they would allow this to be produced by Nickelodeon Movies, and allow sexual content and coarse language in the movie, especially in a PG-13 movie. It feels like it would belong in an R rated movie instead.
      • Adding onto that, the idea of a PG-13 rated film by a kids company has already been done before by Disney's mh:greatestmovies:Pirates of the Caribbean, which is the first Disney movie to be rated PG-13 (it actually worked there as well). But here, it fails miserably and ends up being the main problem of this film.
      • Furthermore, Victoria Justice's previous film (which was also a Nickelodeon movie), The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (2010) looks better than this and it came out two years prior to this film.
    3. False advertising:
      • In one of the posters for the film, April is seen wearing a purple dress, but she never wears that outfit at any point in the movie itself. Instead, she wears a cat costume, which is very misleading.
      • The title is also misleading, as it has absolutely nothing to do with the film's premise whatsoever.
      • One of the DVD covers of the movie says that it's the perfect family film, which is false since it's not only a terrible film, but it's clearly not intended for kids.
    4. On the topic of the posters for the movie, one of the posters is basically an altered version of the "worn-out heroes" poster from The Hangover.
    5. The movie's tagline, "Some People Can't Handle Halloween", is literally The Hangover's tagline, "Some People Can't Handle Vegas" but with "Vegas" replaced with "Halloween", which is utterly lazy and unoriginal. It's like the creators couldn't even come up with an original tagline for the movie.
    6. Most of the humor in the movie is unfunny, as a lot of it consists of cruel comedy and gross out humor, as mentioned above.
    7. The acting is terrible, effortless, and annoying, especially from Jane Levy as Albert DeSantis and April Martin.
    8. Slow pacing.
    9. The word "ALBERT!" is used too many times, to the point where it will get on your last nerves.
    10. This film gives people a bad impression of looking out for someone who is being mean or rude.
    11. It is a poor man's version of "Have You Seen This Snail" (from SpongeBob SquarePants), and Arthur's Missing Pal, whereas they have half of the same plot, and with a bit of The Hangover thrown in.
    12. It has various blatant and unnecessary product placement, such as:
      • The scene where Wren takes out the candy from Albert's trick-or-treat bag which looks like a Kit-Kat candy bar.
      • The Albert scene where he takes all of the candy from a female neighbor's paper Jack-a-Lantern with an Airheads bar holding in his hand. Also, before the scene where he comes to the female neighbor for more candy, there are Hershey Bars.
      • The phone that Wren was holding on her hand in the scene where she saw a text from Aaron Riley was a Samsung phone.
      • The man at the scene before his line "Honey! Honey! I think we need more candy" looks like a bag of Airheads.
      • In the scene of the "COVENTRY" FOOD MARKET & FINE WINES store, the scene where Albert comes into the store and touches the bell, you can notice the Wrigley's DOUBLEMINT box next to the bell, along with the Hershey's Mr. Goodbar.
        • Not to mention, that the scene where the manager was looking for an item for Albert has a ton of real-life objects such as the Durex extra sensitive, TROJAN STIMULATORS, Baby TEST, Rexall, Vagisil, Warm Touch, Dr. Sheffield's Anti-Itch Cream, Nature Shield, Laxative, diet DOTS, a balloon at the left which looks like SpongeBob's eye, and many more.
      • The scene where Wren touches Aaron's arm and the soda drops reveals a soda can of Crush.
      • The phone ringing in that scene has a label on the top named "Uniden".
    13. Some of the costume designs are terrible.
      • April Martin looks very creepy and ugly, especially her face, as it looks like she used lots of eye makeup.
      • Albert (despite being likable) looks ugly and uncanny, as he has a babyish and tired looking face.
    14. Most of the main characters are unlikable, poorly written and annoying. For example:
      • Wren DeSantis, the main protagonist, is a selfish, immature, and annoying jerk and acts disrespectful to her brother Albert in parts of the scenes where she interacts with him.
      • Peng is a potty mouth who cusses a lot and is an idiotic jerk.
      • April Martin, Wren's best friend, is arguably the worst character, as she is very mean-spirited, stereotypical and very offensive towards nerds/geeks, and does a lot of inappropriate stuff, like forcing people to touch her boobs, as stated in WICHH#1.
    15. Poor character dialogue, especially from Wren.
    16. It is easily forgettable due to its bland, boring, generic and (depending on your view) very demented plot.
    17. Bland, generic and forgettable soundtrack.
    18. There are very destructive scenes such as the gang crashing into the restaurant pole, and the giant pirate chicken landing on their car, which is just unnecessary.
    19. There's one scene where the bystanders are laughing at the destruction which is very rude, disrespectful, and heartless, especially to people who don't have money and are also poor.
    20. Terrible release date:
      • Being a Halloween themed-movie, this film should've been released in early October or mid-late September; instead, it was released only five days before Halloween..
      • This gives the film a limited window for audiences to view it.
      • Once it's November 1st, the film will no longer be relevant and people would immediately stop watching it.
    21. Predictable ending where Wren meets her true boyfriend, Roosevelt and they kiss each other, with Peng and April kissing each other as well.

    Redeeming Qualities

    1. Albert is the only likable character, even if his costume looks ugly. He also provides some funny moments throughout the movie.
    2. The scene where Albert and Fuzzy beat up Jörgen, despite being mean-spirited, is actually amazing.
    3. Also, Wren finally learned her lesson about being responsible and looking out for someone, and she also becomes more likable.
    4. The movie's premise of a teenager dealing with a little brother who wanders out alone or gets lost in the street is very interesting and had potential, but was executed horribly because of all the problems mentioned above.
    5. Some heartwarming moments, such as the scene where Wren takes her little brother (Albert) to see her deceased father (Peter DeSantis).

    Trivia

    • It was shot entirely in the film's setting of Cleveland which is rare in cinema as most films set there or in Ohio in general were shot elsewhere.
    • This is the second film from Nickelodeon Movies to be given a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association, the first being Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.

    Video

    Wayside

    Wayside (also known as Wayside School) is a Canadian animated television series that was produced by Nelvana and aired on Teletoon and Nickelodeon from 2007 to 2008, though it initially started out as a 2005 television movie. The show aired in the United States on Nickelodeon from June 25, 2007, to February 14, 2008. The remaining 6 episodes of Season 2 aired on Nicktoons Network on August 26-29, 2008, and September 18, 2008. It's loosely based on a book series called "Wayside School" by Louis Sachar. It currently airs reruns on YTV.

    Bad Qualities

    1. Virtually no connections and several inaccuracies to the original book series.
      • Some of the characters' personalities are completely different from the ones in the books. For a complete list:
        • Most notably, Maurecia, who went from a sweet girl with a love of ice cream to a roller-skating tomboy who punches Todd around.
        • Myron went from one of the more level-headed students to a power-hungry idiot.
        • Dana went from a generally emotional girl to a psychotic rule-worshipping nerd.
        • Principal Kidswatter went from a minor antagonist to a carbon copy of cartoon Myron who hogs up screen time.
        • Jenny constantly rides a bike everywhere, whereas, in the books, she just happened to wear a motorcycle helmet.
        • John is constantly upside down, compared to his portrayal in the books, where he was the class genius who happened to read things upside down.
        • Stephen wears an elf costume in the cartoon and carries a jack-o-lantern around. In the book chapter "Stephen" (where they got this characterization from), he instead wears a homebrew goblin costume, and he wasn't obsessed with Halloween, he was just the only one to come dressed for a Halloween party.
        • Other characters such as Bebe, Leslie, Joe, The Three Erics, and Rondi are regulated to backgrounders with barely any personality.
        • Some of the kids from the books are cut out completely; they include: Allison, Benjamin, Calvin, D.J., Dameon, Deedee, Jason, Joy, Kathy, Mac, Paul, Ron, and Terrance.
    2. Mean-spiritedness toward the main protagonist, Todd, especially Mrs. Jewls often sending him home on the kindergarten bus for no discernible reason (even though it's accurate to the book) and Maurecia always punching him just because she loves Todd.
    3. Bland and/or annoying characters. Todd is the only one in the show with common sense.
    4. Mediocre character designs, which look somewhat like they're trying to imitate that of Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, and Butch Hartman.
    5. The show suffers from unoriginality (one background song sounds extremely similar to "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor and another sounding very similar to "Axel F" by Harold Faltermeyer.)
    6. Some episodes make no sense. For example, "Pull My Pigtail" (based on the chapter where Paul hesitates to pull Leslie's pigtails) is focused on Todd being forced to pull Maurecia's hair. Maurecia has a ponytail, even though Leslie is still in the show and has pigtails.
    7. It teaches kids bad morals (ex. punching the people that you love, using a different word for something that you hate, bully the person with common sense, being a jerk).
    8. The flash animation for the last 20 episodes is cheap-looking, stilted, and stiff.

    Good Qualities

    1. Todd and Louis are tolerable characters.
    2. Catchy theme song.
    3. The traditional animation for the first 32 episodes is passable.
    4. Decent voice acting.
    5. Occasional heartwarming moments.
    6. Some decent jokes.
    7. Some good episodes like "Kindergarten King" and "Music Lessons".
    8. It does teach a few good morals here and there.

    Trivia

    • Although he praised the animation, Louis Sachar himself didn't like the show.
    • The animation for the pilot movie and the first half of the show was traditional. The rest was done in flash.

    Video

    Fish Hooks

    Fish Hooks is an American animated sitcom created by Noah Z. Jones, who later went on to create the more infamous shows Almost Naked Animals and Pickle and Peanut. It aired on Disney Channel on September 3, 2010, and ended on April 4, 2014, and starred That's So Raven's Kyle Massey, Justin Roiland and Jonas' Chelsea Kane.

    Plot

    A trio of fish - brothers Milo and Oscar, along with dramatic goldfish Bea - attend school in an aquarium in a pet store. They cope with the usual trials of teens, like dating, friendship, sports, and school issues, along with some more unusual things, like giant lobster attacks and field trips to hamster cages.

    Bad Qualities

    1. Unappealing character designs for the fish characters, as they look more like colorful ghosts with big lips and hair rather than fish.
    2. Almost all the characters are stereotypes:
      • Milo is a party animal stereotype.
      • Oscar is a shy/introvert nerd stereotype.
      • Bea is a perfect/smart girl stereotype.
      • Jocktopus is a quarterback jock/bully stereotype.
      • Albert Glass is a precocious child/nerd stereotype.
      • Bleak Molly, Razor, Scabbo, and Goth Squid are goth/emo/punk stereotypes.
      • Shellsea is a fashion-diva stereotype.
      • Steve Jackson is a cool dude stereotype.
    3. Moreover, Milo himself isn’t a good character and sometimes an unfunny comic relief and annoying at times.
      • There are other unlikable, annoying, or mean-spirited characters besides Milo himself like Clamantha, Jocktopus, Piranhica, Mr. Nibbles, and Shellsea.
    4. Annoying voice acting for the most part. The characters tend to speak in obnoxious and high-pitched tones, with Clamantha being the biggest offender (who is voiced by Alex Hirsch).
    5. It's nothing but a generic school sitcom, except with fish. You could replace the main characters with humans and it would make no difference.
    6. The non-fish characters are stock images, such as Bud, Snake, and Mouse (while likable), Wilford the Cat, Pamela Hamster, etc.
    7. The show makes frequent use of various school clichés.
    8. Lazy plot, which is heavily derivative of other teen shows and sometimes copies and steal ideas from another sea-related cartoon, SpongeBob SquarePants.
    9. Overuse of gross-out and toilet humor in the majority of episodes.

    Good Qualities

    1. The animation itself is usually good (even Mercury Filmworks did a decent job).
    2. While the designs look out of place for fish, the art style is decent, and better than Almost Naked Animals and Pickle and Peanut.
    3. The voice acting is passable, especially from Justin Roiland (who would later co-create Rick and Morty) as Oscar.
    4. The theme song is awesome.
    5. The show improved in Seasons 2 and 3, as the gross-out and toilet humor was toned down a bit, the plots are less cliched, and Milo becomes more tolerable, but that isn't saying much.
    6. The stock photo backgrounds do blend in well with the environment/scene at times since fish tanks in real-life use stock photos of environments for backgrounds.
    7. There's are some jokes that can be funny at times.
    8. Plenty of great/decent characters such as Oscar, Snake, Mouse, Bea, Dr. Frog, Steve Jackson, Jumbo Shrimp, Albert Glass, Ninja Fish, etc.
      • As mentioned in GQ#5, Milo gets a bit better in seasons 2 and 3.

    Trivia

    • Jerry Stiller (who portrayed Principal Stickler) died on May 11, 2020.
    • Kyle Massey and Chelsea Kane departed fellow Disney series That's So Raven/Cory in the House, and Jonas, respectively.
    • This show was aired on Disney Channel on September 3, 2010, right after Disney Channel's original movie such as the Camp Rock sequel, Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam.

    Video

    Sonic Underground

    Sonic Underground is a 1999 French-American TV series produced by DiC Entertainment and their French subsidiary Les Studios Tex. It is based on the Sonic the Hedgehog games, however it bears little relation to them. It follows the story of Sonic and his siblings, Sonia and Manic as they go on adventures to try to find their mother.

    Bad Qualities

    1. Poor grasp of the source material.
      • Tails is not seen nor mentioned in the series without any given reason at all. He doesn’t even make a cameo appearance. This is made worse as Knuckles is seen in the show, so why not Tails?
      • This changed Sonic's backstory in which he had a brother and sister. Even his mother, who is a Freedom Fighter from the SatAM series, is changed into some queen.
      • The Chaos Emeralds are poorly represented until modern takes of Sonic.
    2. Cheap, and stilted animation. It doesn't help that, though they outsourced the animation to Hong Ying (owned by Wang Film Productions), the show was made by the infamous Les Studios Tex (the same studio behind the infamous The Wacky World of Tex Avery).
    3. Tons of animation errors. There are plenty of weird faces, perspective and anatomy issues, and cut-off/unfinished body parts that populate the series. Knuckles suffered especially from these.
    4. Despite it being a separate universe apart from Sonic SatAM, it feels like this show wants to be newer to fans who don't play the Sonic games but fails to do so.
    5. The humor and jokes are both laughable and insufferable, with some exceptions.
    6. Most of the episode ideas are recycled from Sonic SatAM and Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. For instance, the episode "Sonic Tonic" rehashes the episode from the latter series, "Full Tilt Tails".
    7. Outdated, unfitting, and/or rehashed character designs, many of these characters look like they don't even fit in the Sonic universe whatsoever; examples of these include Sleet and Dingo looking like Looney Tunes rejects and many supporting characters like Bartleby looking like they're rejected from the Disney Afternoon. Sonia and Manic are especially laughable since they look more like fan-made characters that were made using DeviantArt.
    8. Very poor voice acting, especially from Jaleel White as Sonia.
      • Vince's voice is almost identical to Smart Grounder from AoStH's tone of voice (ironically, both characters are voiced by Garry Chalk); his similar cadence to Grounder himself is better shown when you hear the vocal squeaking while he is yelling for mercy in the episode "Artifact".
      • Speaking of Garry Chalk, he does a very mediocre job at voicing Robotnik. This makes this version of Robotnik have a bland, manly voice that's not anywhere near as terrifying as Jim Cummings's voice from Sonic SatAM (despite how his character design is faithful to the SatAM one) and isn't as brilliantly entertaining as Long John Baldry's voice from AoStH.
    9. Sonic has an incredibly annoying personality, as he tries way too hard to be cool, but only comes off as a major dork. Also, his singing voice (which is provided by Samuel Vincent) is just horrible.
      • Bartleby is by far the worst side character in the show, who also heavily rips off Antoine Depardieu from Sonic SatAM and Callie Briggs from SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron with none of the charm and likability they had.
      • This version of Dr. Robotnik is meant to be a mixture of the threatening, tyrannical & badass personality that SatAM Robotnik has and blending that with some of the goofiness, hamminess, and comedic aspects of AoStH Robotnik, but when it comes to how he was executed; it's not done interestingly since he's portrayed as a typically incompetent tyrant who has thoughts on murdering Sonic and his siblings despite being a lenient dictator on Robotropolis, making this version of Robotnik very uninspired, inconsistent and unoriginal. The sad part is, that he's the best part of the show.
    10. Unbelievably stupid and unexciting battle scenes. Sonic's guitar is capable of shooting lasers from the headstock with the trigger of this laser sometimes being the strum of the strings.
    11. Most of the songs (except "Someday", "I Found My Home”, "Teach the Children, "Light the Way" and "Justice Calling") are so horrible, forgettable, stupid, disgraceful, and ridiculous, especially "Fun in the Sun" and "Being a Kid Is Cool". And that is extra awful because one of the main themes of the show is music.
      • Speaking of which, the music videos by how they're edited are both awkward and weird.
      • On top of that, many of the songs sound like arena rock and hair metal; both sub-genres died out long before the show was made. However for hair metal makes sense,because since 1997 to the 2000s,many new bands like Steel Panther emulate the genre,but still.
      • Sonic and his siblings also play the "genre roulette" too often, as they have a mixture of different genres. Such genres include:
        • Rock, especially AOR and hair metal.
        • Pop.
        • Salsa and Mexican cumbia in "The Last Resort".
        • New wave.
    12. Speaking of the editing, the way that its imagery and transitions are edited is sometimes done in a very embarrassing and distorted way, even more than the music videos are. When it's not just typical cinematic zoom-ins of a location or action sequence that are passable, there are strange moments where the screen would stretch out horizontally, vertically, and then make an extreme close-up of a character's face in a similar way that one would see images and videos on YouTube videos in the 2020s that'd change in proportions that are done for comedic effect by professional video editors, but it just doesn't work for a publicly broadcasted animated show (especially in serious-driven scenes) and the result would be having awkward-looking transitions that are very nonsensical, cringe-worthy and jarring to watch.
    13. This series is all just an ad and a marketing tool for Sega's upcoming console at the time, Sega Dreamcast.
    14. Knuckles is simply forgotten in this show (despite some episodes featuring him).
    15. The idea of Dr. Robotnik, a human, wanting to marry Queen Aleena, a hedgehog, is very disturbing. Similarly, Dingo's crush on Sonia is also awkward and disturbing, considering that Sonia herself is only a teenager.
    16. The extremely cheesy nature of the show feels like it would fit more in the '80s or early '90s rather than in 1999.
    17. The show has way too many attempts at being "totally radical" and appealing to the young hip crowd.
    18. There are some disturbing and scary moments happening in a kids' show like this. For example, in the episode "Three Hedgehogs and a Baby", there is a moment where Manic loses Hip and makes him fall apart.
    19. Like its predecessor, Sonic SatAM, the series ended on a disappointing note. The triplets were supposed to reunite with their mother, which can fulfill the prophecy, defeat Robotnik and restore everything. Aside from defeating Robotnik and supposedly putting an end to his schemes, the outcome was never resolved when the series was canceled, thus making the entire show pointless and moot. A comic conclusion was planned but was later canceled as well, especially after Archie Comics lost their ownership of the rights to produce comics based on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

    Good Qualities

    1. That catchy theme song is badass (both opening and closing).
    2. Some heartwarming moments.
    3. Manic is the only likable character, and his singing voice is passable. Despite Dr. Robotnik being watered down, he alongside Sleet and Dingo can be considered the best part of the show as well.
    4. Sonic's character design is at least identical to his AOSTH and SATAM design (despite being outdated/rehashed).
    5. While Tails doesn't appear in this series, Knuckles (making his first appearance in a television series) does make appearances in the series.
    6. Jaleel White (English) and Olivier Korol (French) reprise their role as Sonic, as was usual with DiC.
    7. As mentioned in WIS #3, some of the jokes (either intentional or unintentional) are comical.
      • With that said, there are some very stupid, ridiculous, silly, and corny scenes and aspects of the episodes (like hearing Sonia's voice for the first time) that come off as unintentionally funny. Which can venture into "so bad it's good" territory.
    8. As mentioned in BQ #11, "Someday", "I Found My Home", "Teach the Children, Light the Way", and "Justice Calling" are pretty decent songs.
    9. Most of the songs teach good morals.
    10. The Latin American Spanish dub, unlike the first 2 shows, was well received.

    Trivia

    • Sonic Underground was created and released to help promote Sega's then-upcoming console, the Sega Dreamcast.
    • This was the last acting role for Gail Webster, the voice of Queen Aleena, (who only had seven roles other than the one she had in this show) as she has had no others since.
    • This was also the last Sonic series to be produced by DiC Entertainment, as well as Jaleel White's last official voice role as Sonic.
    • Sean Connery is often miscredited as having voiced Great-Grandfather Athair, when in fact it was Maurice LaMarche imitating Connery.
    • The show's main theme song would later spawn memes of it.
    • This is the first Sonic show to feature Knuckles the Echidna.
    • There was a Catalan (Valencian dialect) dub of the show.

    Videos

    Almost Naked Animals

    Almost Naked Animals is a Canadian animated series created by Noah Z. Jones, creator of both Fish Hooks and Pickle and Peanut. It first premiered on January 7, 2011, and ended on May 22, 2013. It aired on Cartoon Network in the US and Disney XD internationally, as well on Nickelodeon in the Netherlands and Citv in the UK.

    Plot

    The show's main setting is the Banana Cabana, a seemingly ordinary, run-of-the-mill beachfront hotel. What's not ordinary about the hotel is who (or what) runs it -- animals who are all shaved and wearing underwear. The Banana Cabana's top dog is Howie, who would barely be able to keep things under control without his crew helping him out. That crew includes jittery desk clerk Octo, sugary-sweet activities director Bunny, and duck-of-all-trades Duck.

    Why It Needs to Put Some Clothes On

    1. The title alone is unappealing and inappropriate as it makes it seem more like an adult cartoon. As it states, all of the characters are animals who are shaved and only wear scantily-clad underwear. As Mr. Enter pointed out, just say "I watched 'Almost Naked Animals' today" and considering how obscure this show is, you'll probably get weird looks.
      • Plus, even the animals who don’t have any fur, feathers, wool, etc. are shaved (Octo and Narwhal for example). So wouldn’t their skin be peeled from the shaving instead?
      • Almost all of the characters have nipples (male characters only) and navels, which are gross to look at considering most of the animals they are based on don’t have nipples or navels, to begin with.
      • Almost all of the female characters that wear bras and panties have visible lady parts sticking out of their bras, which makes for very uncomfortable scenes, especially for a kids' show.
    2. Excessively disgusting and unfunny toilet and gross-out humor, with constant fluids, farts, soiled underwear, etc. There's also inappropriate risque humor (for a kids' show btw) as well, such as a scene in one episode where Howie lands on a bar...on his crotch.
    3. Ugly and uncanny character designs that are hard to look at and can even give the character designs from The Brothers Grunt a run for their money. All of the characters' shaved appearances are incredibly disturbing and repulsive to look at.
    4. An annoying theme song with nonsensical lyrics, especially with some consisting of repeated “ay-ay-ays”. It's so annoying that it makes the Fanboy & Chum Chum theme song sound decent.
    5. Bland, annoying, and poorly done voice acting, especially for Howie.
    6. Some characters are either annoying or unlikable:
      • Howie, the main character, is an incredibly annoying and too dumb to the live-type protagonist who is oblivious to anything that happens around him, with an uncanny smile. He even started this hotel in the first place.
      • Piggy is portrayed as a Russian stereotype who mostly gets angry and talks with a nearly offensive Russian accent.
      • Sloth is a one-dimensional character with little to no personality who has a crush on Howie.
      • Poodle is a mean-spirited and very bland antagonist who wants to take over or destroy the Banana Cabana for no reason. She also qualifies as a Mean Popular Girl and has little to no redeeming qualities.
      • Batty, though not unlikable, is a very generic "evil minion" who is also a Butt-Monkey character.
    7. Just like the theme song, the background music is bland and/or annoying.
    8. Mediocre and lazy-looking flash animation that's stiff and often has errors.
    9. Multiple continuity errors. For example, it's often brought the reason why the animals are even half-naked is that Howie decided so at the hotel. However, it's shown that some animals are half-naked even if they don't go to the hotel, such as the chicken in "Cool Paw Howie".
    10. The color scheme is very ugly, consisting of disgusting and grotesque colors.
    11. The designs of the title cards are very creepy and uncanny to look at.
    12. All of the characters (except Howie, Dirk Danger, and Captain Fizzy) are named after the animals that they resemble, which is utterly lazy.
    13. The almost naked-ness of the animals is almost never brought up, and barely has an impact. The show could be fully clothed animals or even have fur, or even have the characters depicted as humans with or without clothes on instead, and nothing would change.
      • Not only that, as mentioned in WIS #9, the main reason why animals are even half-naked is that Howie decided so at the beachside hotel, which is a pretty flimsy excuse, to begin with, since in real life people rarely if ever, walk around the hotel half-naked unless they're coming from the beach/swimming pool in their swimwear or vice-versa, and for starters, nobody walks around the hotel in only their underwear due to obvious indecency reasons in real life.

    Redeeming Qualities

    1. Octo, Bunny, Duck, Narwhal, and Mayor Trout are decent and likable characters on the show. Duck, especially, because everything that comes out of his mouth is hilarious.
    2. The background designs are passable.
    3. The show improved a little in the third season, although this isn't saying much.
    4. Some funny moments here and there.
    5. The premise of animals running a hotel on an island is pretty interesting, but executed very poorly. It could have been done more well had the animals not been half-naked and had better humor.

    Trivia

    • The show was based upon an art website that Noah Z. Jones created back in 2005.
      • In said art site, Octo's name was initially "Octopus".
    • It is one of the few shows to premiere on Cartoon Network to not have any promotional videos of any sort.

    Videos

    Scaredy Squirrel

    Scaredy Squirrel is a Canadian animated comedy television series loosely based on the Scaredy Squirrel book series by French-Canadian author Mélanie Watt.

    The series premiered in Canada on April 1, 2011, on YTV, then on Nickelodeon on October 1, 2013. In the United States, it premiered on Cartoon Network on August 9, 2011, for the first 40 episodes. Season 1 later reran on Qubo from 2017 to 2019, then season 2 (including the 12 episodes that never aired in the USA) began airing on Starz in 2019. It also aired on Disney XD internationally outside of the United States and Latin America.

    Premise

    Based on a series of children's books written by Mélanie Watt, this animated series features Scaredy, a creative, offbeat squirrel who is learning to be comfortable in his fur. Scaredy tackles every challenge that is thrown at him with his trademark dorkiness, but he has self-confidence that makes him cool. Scaredy's best friend is fearless skunk Dave, who likes to take risks and often surprises (and confuses) his friends with his skewed logic. Other characters on the show include fish-out-of-water Sally, a confident, land-walking trout who is in love with Scaredy and goes after her dreams with gusto.

    Why It Needs to Get Scared Away

    1. Extremely poor grasp on the source material: Similar to the Richie Rich Netflix series and Daybreak, the show has absolutely nothing in common with the book series it's based on. Instead of following any of the elements of the original Scaredy Squirrel books, this animated adaptation of Scaredy Squirrel however is heavily altered into nothing more than an unoriginal rip-off of SpongeBob SquarePants but with none of the charm and cleverness that show had, and it's not hard to see why:
      • Scaredy is the same as SpongeBob, seeing as he's an employee and something of a neat freak.
      • Dave is the same as Patrick, in that they are the dimwitted best friend of the main character.
      • Nestor is also the same as Mr. Krabs, in that he's the boss of the main character. He is also similar to Squidward as well, mainly due to his grouchy nature and lack of tolerance of the main character's antics.
    2. Annoying voice acting, especially from Terry McGurrin as Scaredy.
      • The theme song is insufferable and annoying, with Scaredy loudly-singing off-key gibberish.
    3. The show's writing is horrible, and it has a number of mediocre-to-bad episodes, such as:
      • "Pranks for Nothing" (which started the show on a sour note)
      • "Fistful of Quarters"
      • "Children of the Acorn"
      • "The Golden Paddleball"
      • "Luck Be a Penny"
      • "Lumberjack Day"
      • "Suggestion Box Blues"
      • "Mrs. Nestor's Mother's Momma"
      • "Sticky Situation"
      • "Cowlicked"
      • "Water Damage"
      • "Life Saver"
      • "Who's Your Paddy"
      • "Snerd Envy"
      • "Aisle of the Dead"
      • "Where the Stink At?"
      • "Stackinator"
      • "Nothing but the Tooth"
      • "Acting Silly"
      • "Less Nestorman"
      • "Neat Wits"
      • "The Great Mistack" (the most infamous)
      • "Goat Police"
      • "Store Wars" (which ended season 1 on a sour note)
      • "Grand Olde Grocery"
      • "Grounded Hog"
      • "The Talented Mr. Peacock"
      • "Hiccup Hicdown in Balsatown"
      • "Empty Nestor Syndrome"
      • "Breaking the Mold"
      • "Hip to be Squirrel"
      • The episodes usually end in disasters.
      • For example, in the series finale, "Sinker, Sailor, Squirrel, Spy", Dave pulls a water plug that causes Balsa City to flood, potentially drowning most of the town.
      • Another episode ends with everyone except Scaredy and Sally getting turned into zombies.
    4. Awkward moments, such as the fact that Scaredy and Dave were talking to a plant in one episode, and though plants are indeed alive, they aren't even sentient.
    5. The humor of the show is bizarre and crude. One example includes a beaver talking in a racist Brad Garrett-like monotone in "The Great Mistack".
    6. The animation is very lazy and cheap, and it looks even worse in the earlier episodes of the first season.
    7. Some unlikable characters:
      • Scaredy himself, though sometimes likable, is just nothing but an idiotically annoying perfectionist who obsesses over safety and cleanliness and is also sometimes an optimistic extrovert, which brings out his most idiotic traits. His voice and screaming are ear grating and painful to listen to.
        • Despite being the smartest character on the show, he is just as much of an idiot like everyone else in Balsa City because of the following:
          • In the episode "Sticky Situation", Scaredy wears another uniform with a different name tag that makes everyone believe he's someone else. You'd think being a neat freak, Scaredy should've been smart enough to just replace Bob's name tag for his own while using Bob's uniform.
          • In the episode "Water Damage", when Scaredy gets new jobs at the library and daycare, Scaredy caused noise in a library and stacked some babies on top of each other. Being a perfectionist, you'd think Scaredy would've been smart enough to know you can't stack babies or talk in a library. (He did have hearing problems in that episode, but still.)
          • In the episode "Aisle of the Dead", when a slushie machine turns everyone except Scaredy and Sally into zombies, Scaredy discovers that it's because the slushie machine was set to zombie. Couldn't they just turn off the zombie mode? And who would make a slushie machine that turns people into zombies?
          • In the episode "Halloweekend", Scaredy tries to set up a haunted house to scare people, but the haunted house is full of "scary" things like a dirty doorknob, a dirty ice tray and a bathtub full of expired yogurt. Who on earth would be afraid of stuff like that?
          • In the episode "Talented Mr. Peacock", when a peacock named Philmore starts copying Scaredy for a paddleball ornament, Scaredy copies Philmore back to snap him out of it. When they get to the paddleball tournament, they're imminently disqualified for Scaredy looking like Philmore, even though Scaredy should've been smart enough to switch out of his Philmore costume.
          • In the episode "Lean Green Fighting Machine", when a rabbit named Mario plans on eating the world's most powerful houseplant, Scaredy calls him a monster despite the fact that Scaredy should've been smart enough to know that rabbits eat plants. Dave even points that out!
          • In the episode "Stash n Hoarder", it's revealed that Scaredy has a fear of butterflies. Why would anyone be afraid of butterflies!?
          • In the episode "Ice Cream Headache", when Scaredy and Dave cover the city in ice cream and everyone cheers for them, the maker of said ice cream says that there is no need to buy ice cream anymore and they ruined his business, yet Scaredy is still happy for what he did.
      • David "Dave" is Scaredy's gluttonous and gross friend who always acts like an idiot and rides in a Bertha riding game. Not to mention that he's a crybaby in "A New Dave".
      • Nestor is an annoying and mean boss to Scaredy who does nothing but scream and whine and always gets tortured by his mother. Not to mention that his screaming is also ear-grating like Scaredy.
      • Sally is nothing more than just a savage and terrible trout.
      • Nestor's Momma is the biggest offender, since she treats her employees at Stash 'N' Hoard horribly and fires them for some reason. She also tortures her son Nestor; one notable example is that when he cheers for her in "The Dave 'n Dave", she puts him onto Bertha (a toy truck) and turns it on full speed, causing it to launch Nestor into a window.
    8. The character designs are terrible and lazily-designed, and many parts of their bodies look poorly-drawn.
    9. Many of the episodes have bad morals and life lessons.
      • A good example is the episode "I Think Therefore I Clean", where it teaches kids that being dirty is okay when someone else does the cleaning for you.
      • Another episode, "Fistful of Quarters" teaches kids that arguing with your boss can help you earn money.
      • "There is No "I" in Groceries" teaches kids that teamwork will get you in trouble.
    10. The concept of Scaredy working at a grocery store is rather generic.
    11. Overuse of gross-out and toilet humor.
    12. Noticeable (albeit minor) animation errors in many of the episodes.
    13. Balsa City, the town Scaredy lives in, is structured poorly and uncivilized:
      • In the episode "Lumberjack Day", the townsfolk treat holidays with commercialism without knowing what they're really about.
      • In the episodes "When Thugs Attack" and "Nutters Almanac", the townsfolk believe in rumors and quickly jump to conclusions.
      • In the episode "Grounded Hog", the townsfolk don't seem to be bothered that a giant monstrous groundhog is eating up the city.
      • In the episode "I Think Therefore I Clean", when the vacuums start cleaning up Balsa City, the townsfolk start to become slobs and pour garbage all over town and into the river.
      • In the episode "Hip to Be Squirrel", when Scaredy says that the best way to be cool is not to care about what others say, the townsfolk stop caring and act stupid.
      • In the episode "Mascot in the Act", the townsfolk immediately start liking the game of cricket even though Scaredy mentioned that nobody has heard of it until now and start beating up Scaredy and Dave when they revealed the Pool Cats were cheating since they didn't care if they were cheating and that they would've won the championships.
      • In the episode "Ice Cream Headache", the townsfolk go crazy when the only ice cream truck in town breaks down with the Mayor even saying that it's the worst thing to happen in Balsa City history.
      • In the episode "Double Decker Danger", the police show a video to prove Scaredy and Dave stole a museum artifact, but the video shows two other guys stealing it while Scaredy and Dave just stand there coughing.
      • The episode "Safety Corner Conundrum" is the biggest offender. When the television studio puts Paddy in charge of the show, he says negative messages that everybody believes and when Scaredy and Dave make a new show to stop people from watching Paddy's, the city bans televisions from the town.

    Redeeming Qualities

    1. The warning at the end of the intro is at least a reference to the source material, which this series fails to reference at all other than the main character's name and the logo.
    2. The animation improved after the first few episodes.
    3. The art style is decent, and is better than character designs, since it seems to be inspired by other cartoons from the late-90s/2000s.
    4. While being both a safety freak and an idiot, Scaredy is the only character that tries to set a good example for kids and at least tries to be likable, though most of the morals he tries to teach feel forced in.
    5. There are a few funny moments here and there, mainly because the humor stabilized after the first few episodes.
    6. The show improved a little in season 2 and 3.

    Trivia

    • It's a rare Canadian children's television show to be based on a book that is Canadian in origin and by a Canadian author as other shows of such are based on American books.
    • Melanie Watt did help out a bit with work on the series.

    Videos

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