But when Nickelodeon fucks up, nobody forgets it. They lack hindsight and foresight when it comes to many of their decisions (that or people embellish something flawed in the hopes of getting famous for it.) The only smart thing they ever did in their more recent years was turn down Adventure Time (and there goes that promise.) But even for Nickelodeon's worst decisions, we remember them years later, I mean even if it wasn't a desired impact, they still left some kind of impact.
But what if a show sucks so hard it gets forgotten about, and only acknowledged fleetingly for ragging?
The Brothers Fallopian Tube
The Brothers Flub turned up on Nickelodeon in 1999 and got burned off nearly a year later in 2000 (it started and ended the same month, but nine days before crossing the one year mark). The show had two creators, one who did nothing before or after this, and another who used to work at Klasky Csupo as a background and character designer. He also worked on an animated short that got mentioned by RebelTaxi, the short being Bojack Horseman several years in the past.
Speaking of RebelTaxi, a key reason people know about this show is because he talked about it in one of his videos. That, and MrEnter included the theme song in a countdown for some of the worst theme songs ever. In watching an episode to make sure I get the gist of it, I had to sit through the song and to sum up... it's noise, just pure, unadulterated noise.
Just to prove this show aired on Nickelodeon, here's a promo.
Anyway, the show's backstory is fairly interesting, well to me it's interesting. It's an American/German co-production, and Germany is known for high-budget/high-quality productions. They gave us Uwe Boll (then again his non major efforts are technically better), helped fund Warner Bros.' crappy syndicated programs and gave us MP4ORCE, a show so bad you'd have a hard time ironically liking it just to poke fun at me sperging over it. Germany's participation in this stems from funding through Ravensburger, a board game and toy manufacturer. In spite of their roots, they didn't gear out merchandise, and I bring that up because it actually happened.
The show was produced by Sunbow Productions, a company with an implacably sad tale backing it. Sunbow started out producing cartoons in the 80s, being best recognized for producing the Transformers and My Little Pony cartoons, as well as their respective movies, Bucky O' Hare, Jem and the Holograms, G.I. Joe. and The Tick, going by notable ones.
They were a respectable firm back in the day, but by the late-90s, without guidance from Hasbro it became clear that Sunbow were thirsty for original ideas. From 1997, they produced two forgettable educational programs, one ranks lowly while the other was likely forgotten, in 1998 they produced Fat Dog Mendoza, which never aired outside of Europe (though admittedly I found myself watching more episodes of that than I thought I would), then this. Afterwards, we got Generation O!, which... well it has an interesting style and I did make it through every episode I've watched from it, though I doubt I could recommend it to anyone, and it all ended with The Cramp Twins, which they couldn't even keep up with. I used to like that show but now I hate it, if you accuse me of hating it for that reason, the shows I defend had class.
While this came after Fat Dog Mendoza, that show wasn't as known so it couldn't have left that big of an impact, this was the first Sunbow show to lay the seeds for the end. Only thing more ambiguous about this show is its merchandising. While this show was in production, merchandise was immediately prepped for it. You know, TV shows usually come after a toyline or whatever gets popular, or vice versa.
It wasn't toys (well separately) this show dished out, going by brand promotions, there was a KFC kids meal, branding for trays at Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, yo-yos with children's vitamins from GNC, appearances in back-to-school promos at Macy's, a Skechers deal, and I'm starting to doubt these actually happened, because if it did, someone would've filed for bankruptcy. There were also two four episode tapes released through Sony Wonder, Nickelodeon's former video distributor and then owner of Sunbow, and I know that happened because a VHS cover for that appears on its Wikipedia page.
Apparently, Sunbow's reputation was still stable at the time, because a marketing push for something ambiguous at the time didn't get questioned.
The show featured a roster of well known voice actors, many of which had worked on Klasky Csupo shows in the past. Aside from them, we also had Scott Menville, Sally Struthers, Richard Horvitz, Nick Bakay, Tom Kenny, Vanessa Marshall (or Irwin as I know her), and Harvey Korman apparently. I'm calling bull on this cast, but I'm pointing it out because it caught me by surprise. If the cast list is anything to go by, Kath Soucie surprisingly didn't appear in this, and I only bring her up because she tends to appear in a lot of things and was also a regular in Klasky Csupo's programs. Respect. But wanna know who did appear in this? Candi Milo, someone I hate for no particular reason aside from how often she pops up.
Charlie Adler worked as a voice director on this. Just thought I'd let you know.
Premise
The show is non-serialized. It centers on the misadventures of two alien delivery boys and trouble they face at their home base or in worlds they deliver to. Each world is themed around one particular thing, which sounds interesting on paper, but anyone could make up worlds where one thing is the central focus.
Some may call this a rip-off of Futurama because of the delivery aspect, but this came first by a few months. Then again, it's not like Futurama has aliens- well aside from Kif, but aliens aren't the focal point in the delivery crew- well Zoidberg and maybe Amy Wong, well it's not like Futurama goes to separate worl- well planets but it's mostly the same and the worlds are better fleshed out because its Futurama, and don't worry, I still love Futurama, even though people think Pixels ripped it off (it didn't, it was just a crappy movie.)
The characters don't go beyond stereotypes you'd find in other shows. To sum up, fat idiot, annoying skinny guy, levelheaded girl, fat boss, drawing a blank with all else. To put this into perspective, I can remember and identify characters from Sunbow's other later shows, well for the most part. Okay, for the sake of helping people follow along, the fat idiot and annoying skinny guy are Guapo and Fraz respectively.
Their bickering makes up a bulk of the conflicts in nearly every episode, because that's the easiest way for anyone to make up a plot. They don't do much to help make the episode stand out, well aside from padding with annoying dialog to fulfill a runtime quota.
An episode I saw centered on the last slice of pizza. For those of you thinking I'm gonna continue a running gag where I bring up The Loud House, especially because of one of their pilot shorts and assume I'm gonna make a rip-off allegation with that, the episode is radically different, and it came first. No, this episode has sentient pizza toppings on an old pizza shrink Fraz and Guapo down and we see they've created a full society. This basically ripped off an episode of The Simpsons which ripped off an episode of The Twilight Zone. It took seven minutes to get to this point, with the only thing holding it together being hunger and annoying dialog.
Not to mention, I predicted what the ending would've been like and, I was wrong. I expected the toppings to grow back with them once they got to the shrink ray, then a monster they carried with their cargo would eat the sentient pizza toppings, but instead, the pizza with everyone on it gets eaten, and then spit back up, with the shrink ray wearing off and nobody getting eaten. The episode would've sucked either way.
This was one of two segments on the episode I saw. I had no interest in seeing the other, so you could say this episode didn't fill me with confidence.
Animation
Some have accused this show of trying to rip off Klasky Csupo's style. A key reason why I bring up background trivia is because these things can likely get answered. It looks like a Klasky Csupo show because one of the creators worked as a designer for the company before making this. And since Klasky Csupo is so associated with Nickelodeon... on second thought it sounds like it'd lead to redundancy.
The animation is nothing special, it doesn't stand out from other Nicktoons, or on its own either. The fact that it tries to emulate Klasky Csupo's style makes it feel like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Not to mention, the animation itself is stiff and very limited, and I even caught a lip-synching error. The art direction is so shallow that I couldn't help but look for errors.
Overall
If the rest of the show was anything like the episode I've seen, I can safely say this show deserves to be forgotten. It seems Nickelodeon shared that sentiment whole-heartedly, they didn't co-produce it and they did nothing with the characters later on down the line. It got to the point that Nickelodeon's license on the show expired, something that wound up happening to Pelswick as well, though that was a Canadian import which somehow got as much promotion as Nick's original productions at the time.
Oh yeah, this show sucks too.
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