Top 6 Worst Hey Arnold! Episodes

Hey Arnold! is certainly a respectable show, standing out amongst its peers, having a near timeless quality and managing to appeal to city life at a time when suburban livings dominated cartoons like it. But at the same time, it's full of problems.

Characters were slowly degraded over the years, like many were surrendering to their archetypes and sacrificing whatever third dimensions they had (save for enemies and most recurring characters it seems), Arnold being a big example where at one time he had this slightly goofy charm and, just to remind you, he's a kid goddamnit. His attitude in the earlier seasons was better fleshed out, funny, and above all, not preachy. Compare that to Arnold in later seasons, basically a moralistic plank who has to help everyone else get on track, why else was this a focal point to one episode?

You may disagree, but later era Hey Arnold! episodes just didn't have the charm of older ones. It's a time when the Games era was better than the other era. Frankly the only major takeaway I got from the later seasons was Helga, she became a bit more mellow or adjustable in these later episodes, or maybe she got more entertaining, or maybe her developing voice helped to make the character more bearable to listen to.

Not to mention, I feel like the writing wasn't that good. Don't get me wrong, when they do it good they do it great, but I feel like nine times out of ten, things just so happen to get resolved very easily, or someone did a soft reboot of an earlier scene and ran it by again. The pieces to a conflict at times comes way too easily. The writers rely too heavily on writers conveniences, returning to the status quo, using strawmans to justify fake 180s (Rhonda especially), archetypes, lack of development, oh yeah, and the show tended to recycle plots. A lot, by the standards of other shows. Not even SpongeBob recycled as much as this show, and that has more episodes. Hell, they basically borrowed the plot from an 80s sitcom episode. A reference works better if it's brief and for a joke, not played straight.

My cynicism with beloved shows stems from the fact that people are often too reluctant to look into legitimate flaws, and the golden term, on the tip of my tongue- hypocrisy. Really the only reason anyone should see more recent Hey Arnold! episodes is that in later seasons they have the more twisted episodes. I would maintain that Ghost Bride is the best of that crop, and Sid and Germs has the most twisted nightmare sequence, hands down. I'm not even gonna compare it to older episodes for the sake of keeping things as neutral as they possibly can.

But oh right, I have a list. If you all bothered to stay after this little tirade, here're the top 6 Hey Arnold! episodes that I personally consider the worst. Why six? Because the extra number refers to the one objective takeaway the Nostalgia Critic has.

#6: Gerald's Tonsils

I'm not gonna consider Hey Arnold to be the most realistic cartoon, hell, I'm more than aware of how things just so happen to work in everyone's favor. However, where they get it right, they're usually at their worst. So what, Gerald gets his tonsils removed and people laugh at his adjusting voice, for a stark bulk of the episode?

This episode is lower on the list because by the end of it, it's just a very unsatisfying experience. It's one thing to just roll with the joke and not let it bother you, it's another when the same joke is thrown at you constantly. Gerald is teased over his voice and that point is driven home harder than it needs to be, then when he finally sacks up and owns up to it, people still get at it.

You could say it's petty to get upset over teasing, I just didn't find it funny. My hangup with teasing in general is that if it didn't work the first time, half the time it won't dissuade people from doing it again until they get a reaction. It's basically a lose lose situation, and for here while there is some kind of pay-off it just wasn't satisfying enough. By this point Gerald's actor was the only constant actor who went through puberty, so I can understand karma in the form of a tonsillectomy would've been too big of a stretch.

Thank god people praise Avatar more, otherwise it'd be a harder sell to criticize an episode this way. You can make a realistic scenario and make it satisfying by the end, this is still fiction after all, nobody wants to be reminded of reality when they watch cartoons, it's escapism. Apparently the people behind Rocket Power loved the idea so much they used it for one of their episodes, just like they did for the hooky episode.

#5: Helga's Makeover

Here's a relatively hot take, a show's first season should be held to the same scrutiny as its later seasons. If they're praised on the same level as later seasons, we have to allow the other extreme. SpongeBob's first season wasn't that great, I have two reasons to back that up. The Simpsons had some stinkers even in their prime, Moaning Lisa has the worst b-plot in the show's entire history. This episode was in the show's first season by the way.

Sometimes it's incredibly easy to find an episode that wears its message on the sleeve. Episodes in that crop are typically girl power episodes, and this is no exception. At times characters' personalities are warped to help sell the message, why else would the boys, including Arnold, seek to prank the girls? I think it was way too obvious to have Helga be the one to encourage girls to not worry about their appearance, way to infringe on how they want to live. Somehow the animation in this episode is more uncanny than the other early episodes, and I can't not remember the ending, I remember it in such fine detail that rewatching it will only make things worse for me.

I'd go into a social-political tangent, but instead, why don't I just tell you how I think this should've gone down? Realistically, Helga would've been booted from the slumber party for not abiding to the standards set for it and team up with the boys to pull a prank. They would see a girl can be just as into the stuff guys are. Gee, it's almost as if guys and girls are equal. But no, apologetics have to disrupt the balance a tad.

The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy did something similar to this, nothing about it felt right, well mostly. Sure Billy can be a jerk at times, okay sexist, but that's because he's an idiot. In that episode he was slightly more knowing, and Mandy was more nervous. She could've scared Ms. Doolin into a well deserved grave if she wasn't nerfed to push a message.

And yes, Codename Kids Next Door handled things better on that front. Hell, they weren't even afraid to represent the more toxic side to feminism, I think they called her Fanny for a reason, because she's a pain in the-

#4: Helga and the Nanny

...nailed it.

Ever encounter a situation where you find yourself unable to root for anyone? This is that kind of situation. Helga is forced into the throws of a strict German nanny, who winds up overstepping her boundaries. I get proper behavior, but stuff like outfits, curfews, and whatever else I might've forgot is well out of the standards of modern society, modern American society at least.

This could've been a chance for Helga to better herself and potentially get Arnold interested as she would seek to become nicer. This could've been a chance for Helga to potentially corrupt her nanny and give her an idea why she is basically not very liked by her peers. There is another thing, but I run the risk of hypocrisy, and I doubt my own explanation can justify it. There're just so many other directions this episode could've gone, but it didn't.

Come to think of it, a lot of Hey Arnold episodes tended to have either disappointing ends or nothing much to their plots, yet many of those are at least bearable enough to watch. This is more disappointing because it followed a more infamous episode. Those who saw it hoped the b-segment would be better, hence higher standards had on it. Needless to say, this didn't live up to those set standards.

#3: Stuck in a Tree

Hey, remember that time Arnold and Eugene got stuck on a roller coaster? Arnold has too much faith in Eugene apparently. I like Eugene for the most part, and I get the idea, he has constant optimism in spite of his bad luck, but this episode is enough to make you wonder.

This episode got under my skin. While it's good to be optimistic, it's not always surefire. Yes, ironically I went on a tangent about toxic positivity sometime ago. But look at it like this, while being cynical isn't ideal, it can help in the longrun. You can imagine the worst possible scenario, and ultimately accept it if it comes true, or realize that what you get isn't as bad as you'd think it would be. 

Eugene was really annoying in this episode, and if I didn't mention it before, it has a pretty dour message. Optimism can solve anything, so cram it down everyone's throats. Optimism is second to denial, if you go on assuming things will always be fine, what if you meet a dire circumstance that you can't change? It doesn't help that Chocolate Boy returned with the fire department. Would've been funny if they came at the request of someone else for a nice little twist.

Or better yet, why not have an episode where Eugene's optimism gets questioned, whether he annoys the wrong person or fails to liven up a situation, and falls into a bout of depression, one that causes a disruption of the natural order if you really wanna be more out there, it'd be a fun diversion, and certainly better than what this episode offered. It was essentially a lesser version of another episode.

For perspective, watch this and then watch Eugene Goes Bad, and tell me you don't see a form of erosion.

#2: Rhonda's Glasses

I'm all for social causes, my issue is that the wrong people represent them. Women are funny, do we really want Sarah Silverman to represent them? African Americans deserve to be seen as equal, do we really want Maxine Waters and Spike Lee to represent them? Animation is for everyone, do we really want 90% of the animation community to establish algorithms, parrot popular opinions, encourage further division and continue to give LSMark a platform?

I have talked so much about this episode I couldn't help but include this, especially so high. Hey Arnold was realistic, but when it came to touching upon major issues they tended to get cold feet. Is it because of management? In this episode, it has to be one of the worst examples of nerfing I've ever seen. They have a very obvious allegory for Rosa Parks, but instead of African Americans, we have geeks.

In this situation, who would be the defacto Rosa Parks? This would've been a good time to give Sheena a major role. She's the Dogpoo Petuski of the series, always around but never getting to do anything. But that would've made too much sense. No, let's have Rhonda be it. Isn't that like having a documentary based on Martin Luther King Jr. be directed by Tom Metzger?

Nobody ever learns anything in Hey Arnold, things return to normal by the end of it, so why have someone who regresses as soon as the last few seconds of an episode headline a message on equal rights? Especially if you introduce a strawman to justify Rhonda in this?

This episode lands higher because it takes a serious issue like racism and relegates it to the most benign degree imaginable. Sorry, but this was a dud, Pan, you're an idiot, I'm glad I never followed you.

I mentioned this countless times, but Static Shock handled issues on race better than this episode. So what's the standards with Nickelodeon, they can't talk about racism but... some other thing? Also apparently Cartoon Network's standards are so iffy they actually insisted the Powerpuff Girls beat up a villain even after he had been relieved of his corruption.

Dishonorable Mentions

Arnold Betrays Iggy would've been too obvious of a choice. Anything I could say about it has been said by other reviewers, and it holds true. It basically turned people off from Iggy and the plot happened for the sake of it happening. Any message it was trying to deliver was blurred by incredibly poor execution.

Curly's Girl I haven't seen, because frankly I already hate Rhonda. Did you not see what made the #2 spot? I probably would've hated it regardless, but I already get the idea behind Curly. This seems like a nothing episode backed by embellishment that others would be mocked for.

Student Teacher basically ran on fumes close to the end, and basically made Olga seem unintentionally toxic. When you think about it, there's a slight air of honesty with Bob and Miriam, whereas Olga is in borderline denial, and that's worse because they would shut out genuine criticism. It made me like two characters already infamous.

#1

I've seen only one other worst Hey Arnold episode listicle, and none of the choices on it have made my own. I want to make it clear this is my own opinion and you can take what was said with a grain of salt. It seems a lot of the worst episodes of Hey Arnold tend to be that way unintentionally, or just suffer the worst of aspects related to its often poor writing.

Any episode could've made this list based on those aspects alone, but when I made this list, I had a very clear idea what would make the first spot, one that takes the worst of Hey Arnold's faults and made me overthink a cartoon of all things. No episode I've seen then or since has come close to dethroning it. I'm going to lower myself to a standard that will come back to haunt me, but then again who actually reads this shit... unironically. 

Casa Paradisio

It's not so much what this episode did, but the implications it left behind. The borders are like one big happy family, and I need to bring that up so what I say next will make sense. The episode is basically about Phil trying to break from a dysfunctional family, and everything that happens basically reinforces his motivations.

The borders sack up to fix things, not because it's the right thing to do, not out of a willingness to change and not even to potentially walk a mile in his shoes, but to save their own asses, let's be real. If Phil was swayed into moving on his own volition, everything was fine and dandy, then of course you can act to protect thine arse. If the borders were genuine in trying to clean up their act, then it would lead to a more genuine impact.

They didn't care enough to try there, and it just left a rotten taste in my mouth.

The borders are essentially a dysfunctional family, and they were selfish enough to antagonize Arnold in order to get Mr. Smith's package, argue even when it wasn't allowed, also Suzy should consult her therapist about potential Stockholm Syndrome, I doubt Oskar can beat anyone's ass. Not to mention, this feels like that one episode of The Simpsons, There's No Disgrace Like Home, back when they abided to sitcom stereotypes before they got off the ground later on, and by that I mean much later.

Dysfunctional families are a hot button topic to me, where it's not they who have the problem, it's you apparently. Bite your tongue, nothing needs to be fixed, nobody wants to hear it, and don't forget, you're here forever. By the way, I got that idea in the conclusion of this episode, where things return to normal by the end of it, Phil gets to suffer, everyone saved their own asses, and the vicious cycle can continue.

I think we're well beyond the need to focus on dysfunctional families these days. Malcolm in the Middle's finale basically showed just how useless it was and that it led to an unsatisfactory conclusion; you focus so much on the outline you forget about what can happen in between each milestone. Walking away would've been a better conclusion on that.

We're in an era where dysfunctional families are common and well, helmed by delusional matriarchs and people only out for themselves, and seeking to put all the weight on the weakest link or who can provide for them, and this episode was so bad that it got me on quite a tangent. There was nothing more to it. Game over. It sucks. The end.

LTA: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

 It was laying on the ground, it had cover art that went beyond the confines of horrendous, as you watched it you heard voices, then some creepy shit, and that boy would grow up to be Saberspark.

Okay I'm just bullshitting. That was a half-assed summary of an old creepypasta based on Alice in Wonderland. Ah, but which one? The 2010 one. Ah, you mean the live-action Disney movie? Well keep that in mind.

I remember surfing IMDb when I was in jr. high, frequently checking out the bottom 100 and finding this film. I had no way of checking it out, so a lot was left to the imagination. It wouldn't be until years later that I discovered how bad most movies I caught on the bottom 100 were.

Background

This movie is an enigma. It was the only production by Cinematronics, no relation to the game company behind Dragon's Lair, but I'd give it the benefit of the doubt this was always intended to be a one-time affair. The film was helmed by one Michael Conroy. You'd think he'd be a mystery too, but it turns out he's been active as late as 2020, if IMDb's anything to go by.

He had also directed two low budget horror movies, both of which feature Michael Anthony Coppola, I swear they're multiplying, as well as having involvement in some ice fishing TV series.

This came out in 2010, yes, the same year as Disney's live-action take. Somehow, some way, Conroy acquired an archive of a radio show based on Lewis Carroll's tale, broadcast on NBC. Since Disney's take was gonna be out soon, he figured he could cash in with as little effort as possible. So, presumably on his own, he drew a whole bunch of stills, got enough JPEGs to make High Guardian Spice blush, and made sure to sync it up to the radio show, then saw to it to get this on store shelves around the time Disney hit that scene.

So yeah, this is essentially a low-effort mockbuster to cash in on the Disney adaptation that came out that year, with as little effort as possible. Mystery solved.

The film was distributed by Music Video Distributors, a name so generic it's hard to track down the actual company. But if I had to guess, I'd say they're a budget distributor that reissued old films on BluRay.

The presenter of this, Jeffrey H. Aikman, had involvement in horror and potentially pornographic films, also documentaries. He and Conroy would work together on a Sam Barber documentary. Jacob Farrell served as a background designer, or so it seems, but has also worked with Conroy on his two horror films, and we owe the character design to Lorene Zammuto, once more also only involved in Conroy's two horror flicks.

In spite of this movie being easy pickings, nobody has bothered to talk about this, I mean maybe MrEnter talked about this at some point. It's easy pickings, but otherwise ignored by a community that relies on easy pickings.

Unfortunately, it's gonna be hard to talk about this. I can't be too hard on a radio play that had standards well beneath what we have now. What is this MST3K? So this won't be a traditional review, sorry to say.

Animation a Bit

As they're essentially animating over radio audio, there's gonna be issues. Since radio isn't a visual medium, the dialog is stretched in order to help viewers get immersed in the narrative. Because of this, scenes are animated quite literally to match the dialog, making things seem slow and awkward at best, and unintentionally creepy at worst.

Yeah, the drag is undeniable, as if someone didn't think through the difference between audio and visual entertainment.

But let's get the white rabbit out of the room, the art direction... yikes. No surprise this was someone's first art project, either they tried so hard to capture the whimsy of children's art, or just felt bad for Chris Chan and wanted to make something that looked worse than Sonichu. There's no nuance, it doesn't fit with the nature of the story, it really looks as though they needed to make something and fast to cash in on another movie, oh wait.

So I Yield

There isn't really that much that could be said about this, maybe that's why people have been sitting on this for so long. Was this worth it? Well I had the sense to figure out why this came to be. It seems money is the definitive answer for many equations, that was this. Probably cost around a few hundred bucks, lest all the money was put toward acquiring the audio.

Wanna see for yourself? Let's see how far you can go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we07mAJRxdE&t=610s

LTA: Childhood Game Memories (PC)

 Don't kid yourselves, a lot of you are bound to remember a time you used to toy around on the family computer and practically fuck it beyond recognition. Vargskelethor sure did. I remember playing on an old white desktop, it was either DOOM or something with a similar engine. Time after, we got a new OS, Windows XP. We all had our own accounts, I remember mine having the dog wallpaper, and how little sense I had with proper care for the computer, come on I was like six at the time.

As you'd expect we also had a little collection of PC games, all hand-me-downs, beyond re-releases none of these were new. They made up a good bulk of my free time, and while I do remember a majority of them, there are a few that are either vague or far gone. I remember playing this weird version of Pong, that might've been a minigame, and I pissed off someone who was visiting by not bothering to play.

So here, to celebrate the season, I'm gonna go over every PC game I remember playing. As these are mostly just old educational and basic games, they won't be reviews, rather recollections. How can you go wrong?

This is gonna disqualify games I played in school, one is fairly mainstream, the other is pretty general, and that may be a whole other rabbit hole.

Mr. Potato Head Saves Veggie Valley

Now I'm sure a lot of you have at least heard of Mr. Potato Head, either you had the toy or saw one of two shows based on it. For me, it was through Toy Story 2. Ironically, the first Toy Story debuted the same year as this game. Along with being for Windows and Macintosh, this was also available on the Apple Pippin of all things. Isn't that like having a Beavis and Butthead point-and-click game on the PlayStation? Wish it was on the CD-i.

Okay, on its own it's nothing special. Its educational value is also incredibly minimal, with the most you learn being visual cues, some basic math and shape identification and length comparison. This also has the most literal difficulty options I've ever seen, it only applies to the two mini-games. But hey, it's still fun to click through, there had to be some reason why I kept coming back to this so much as a kid.

It has a very pleasant art direction and a decent roster of characters, I'd tune into five episodes if this was a cartoon show, but perhaps they can spice up the educational factor. For instance, the midway games are a bit too easy. If you have the sense to click on matching fish in the shape game then you probably wouldn't stop to analyze the shapes they have.

There's also a math pinball game, which you can easily cheese through by overshooting the ball, and it's a matter of scoring enough points to get through it. The amount of points needed also never change. However, you also have the opportunity to play Mr. Potato Head and print out your designs, so there's that.

It's a simple game, either I had a re-release or it managed to work as far as Windows XP. I'd say let your kids give it a shot.

Curious George Learns Phonics

This one was a bit tricky to remember, due to its setting contrasting with its plot. Sometime in the 90s, the publisher of Curious George contracted Vipah Interactive to produce a line of Curious George games dedicated to basic learning, and this was among them. For the longest time, no footage of the game was available online, well, that's owed to nobody bothering to curate the game in a playthrough.

I like Curious George, well, in a way I would pass it down to future generations. It's a cute little series that plays into the curious minds of developing individuals, and I can see this working for educational games. Each game focuses on one aspect of early learning, one literally focusing on that, an alphabet game and this one, relating to phonic.

The art style and animation is on-point, and they carry out the educational portions very well, but there's one small problem, and that's when you get something wrong.

If you fuck up on any of the games, it takes longer than it should before you can try it again. It's less about getting the answer right to show you know it, and more because you don't want to put up with any more delays.

At the very least the games don't forego the educational goals, at the cost of variety. At most you have identifying images, spelling out words clued in through letter pronunciations, a Pac Man clone and a collection of stories... where you find words pronounced a certain way. One thing I find interesting, with a majority of the playthroughs they all pick the same stories I recalled picking when I played this game, the one about the two bears and their toy cars and the other about a clown with a broken flower pot.

It's a little more fine-tuned with educational goals, and something I didn't point out with the previous game, unlike it where the information is presented, you'd actually have to figure some of the stuff out here. If you can somehow get your hands on this, give it a go, I think it's important that kids be introduced to Curious George at an early age.

I reviewed this years ago, interesting fact, but interesting to who exactly?

I Spy Spooky Mansion

A.k.a. the second game PeanutButterGamer ever covered for his first ever Goodwill Games series. This was another game I frequently played compared to the others. I remember constantly registering under different names just so I can start from scratch every single time, for some strange reason.

The art direction is outstanding, and really sells on the spooky nature this game is going for, along with fitting the nature of the books. There's not much that can be said about it, it's a game of I Spy brought to life, and interestingly, it can run on just about anything, well anything before Vista I bet. How could I not forget this game? Not because it was horrifying, but because its visual edge and presentation was so good, it remained fresh in my mind for years.

And yeah, I love the I Spy books as a kid, I remember really liking this one that related to a treasure hunt, probably owed to my love of small towns, and I'm aware there was a game based on it, but it may be different than what I recall from the book. It's a story that won't be for any time because I don't have access to a virtual machine, let alone a desktop, and my laptop doesn't have a disc drive so there goes that comment.

Casper Spirited Beginning Activity Center

Probably botched the title. Here's another PC game I had done a review of. This is a rarity, a game based on a direct-to-video sequel. Only other game I know of that did this was Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge. Two interesting facts, well one interesting one not so. Not so, I had seen the 1995 Casper movie and had no idea it had a sequel, even if the footage in the game proved otherwise.

I'd say I'm not missing out, but Casper's Haunted Christmas still stands as the worst Casper movie for me, this just seems like a hunk of cheese, and I eat that shit up every day of the week.

A more interesting fact is that this game was developed by WayForward Technologies, of Shantae and SpongeBob GBA games fame.

The title basically gives away what this game is about, a collection of activities. It's a bit dull but you get what you paid for. There's a tile flipping game which on its easiest mode, can be completed in a matter of three clicks, two if you're lucky. I really liked this one where you create food with Fatso, at the very least the end reactions vary and there is some problem solving, solving riddles to know what ingredients to get.

There's a shooting game with Stinky that's functional, but a little basic. At the very least there's a ranking system that can give you some extra initiative to give it your all. For the life of me I could never do Stretch's game, probably because I never listened to the instructions. It's basically a game of Simon. There's also a mix and match game, and if you like what you mix, you're welcome to print out what you made.

The goal of this game is to get enough coins to unlock... one final game, it being a puzzle game that's only a slight notch above the tile game because it takes a bit longer to complete.

I could understand tying into a big movie, but were people clamoring for a made-for-TV movie? It's always when the sequels come around that these games are made, that Charlie's Angels game came out the same year as Full Throttle. Maybe by then they believed they had an audience for it?

Also they use 2D animation for the characters in this, and it's very well done I must say.

But whatever the case, this is less like an embarrassing high school photo, and more like a picture you took that you can look back on and learn how far you've grown since then. 

Detective Barbie: Mystery of the Carnival Caper

I'd take this time to justify me playing this game because I have a sister, but come on, games are for everybody. I played like three of these, well two of those were Game Boy Advance games.

Anyhow, the more girly aspects are surprisingly minimal in this. The only connection this has to Barbie are the characters it seems, like they just inserted her into some detective game. More power to them, it helps up the appeal beyond girls. Speaking of, or implying so, this game has a wide list of names, and they include boy names. The developers made no assumptions on who would play the game, that's actually very commendable.

As a kid I didn't pick up on the issues with the controls, but there are issues with the movement, fortunately only peaking when there's no urgency. The graphics obviously aren't up to snuff, that's a given, lest they were trying to emulate the plastic nature of the dolls they're based on.

Nevertheless, the game's atmosphere captures what's at stake, Ken disappeared and had a lot of money with him, a far cry from what most Barbie stories entail. The music suits the atmosphere, and as you see a shadowy figure run by, it can actually throw you off guard if you don't expect it. One thing that's very cool is that the locations of most clues vary every time you load up a new game, and that also applies for where Ken is being held and who ultimately did the crime, out of three suspects.

For any Barbie trivia nuts, this is one of, if not the only game to feature the discontinued Becky, a wheelchair bound friend of Barbie who got scrapped due to her not being able to fit in Barbie's dreamhouse. She's played by Kath Soucie, and thankfully Grey DeLisle and Tara Strong are nowhere to be found in this. Speaking of actors in this game, did you know the first voice of Knuckles (well game Knuckles), played Ken in this? For whatever flack I gave Michael McGaharn, claiming he sounded uninterested, he managed to pull off Ken very well, I had no idea it was him doing the voice.

Becky's dialog tends to be a bit annoying though. I get this is for younger audiences, but I think some have been on a merry-go-round and to a haunted house before.

I always felt awkward about talking to suspects. A detective game, and I didn't want to talk to suspects? I'm a disgrace to the agency.

So Detective Barbie: Mystery of the Carnival Caper, I dunno, it was approved by Lazy Game Reviews and PushingUpRoses, and they tend to mock most games they cover. It even has an 8.1 on IMDb, and it's not ironic. It's almost as if this is actually a decent game for the time, but then again who trusts IMDb these days, its more like a place to let out steam.

Big Fun in Furbyland

My sister used to collect these, even sent out for a rare variant, and somewhere along the line, this got into our hands. Not sure if this came free with a Furby or mom got it because my sister like this a lot, details are fuzzy. The game was produced by ImageBuilder, behind those pre-series Arthur games (they existed before the show so that's why they don't have the theme song, just wanna set the record straight.), they helped co-produce a Tonka game for the PlayStation with a pre-Wii Data Design Interactive and made the age all classic.... some educational Shrek game.

This game is basically the bare minimum when it comes to what you'd expect in a Furby game. Design your own Furby, play around with it and play some minigames. To be fair they offer some variety when it comes to changing the fur, the hair, the eye color and size, all two of them. You get to play around with your Furby, feeding it, tickling it and messing around with the radio and scenery. But this is all for show, it makes no impact on the game, unless I didn't pick up on it.

Of your games you have a matching game where you load up certain Furbies onto a roller coaster, there's some problem solving I'll give it that. There's a flying game where you try to make it to the other side and get some stuff along the way. All I can say is that the music is very intense. There's also a quick time dance game. There's also a maze game, with spiders. Take of that what you will.

This also makes use of some decent animation that captures the essence of Furbies to a tee, take of that what you will. If you're good enough you can finish this in less than an hour, but who cares abut Furbies anymore? I mean if I had to pick I'd take this over LOL Surprise dolls, and that's in the context of me buying something for kids, have some faith in me.

Tonka Search and Rescue

There are a lot of Tonka games out there, so it was harder than you'd think to track this one down. The game's developer, MediaStation, had involvement in a lot of licenses for the PC and this wasn't their first venture into Tonka, though I never experienced it myself. It was said this game was a prize in cereal boxes, but I don't know the exact brand. Most I got was that it came in a General Mills-owned brand.

In this game you handle situations such as putting out fires, rebuilding destroyed areas, there is a better way to sum it up in a few words, but somehow I'm at a loss. Fortunately they won't hold you up on explanations unless you're willing to hear them. You have a maintenance section, a training program and three situations to help out in, all featuring characters that would probably suggest Tonka deserved a TV series or line of specials.

The maintenance section helps to show what goes into maintaining a helicopter, boat and fire truck, beyond the crazy decorations for the boat, and you also get a chance to dink around the inside before you get a chance to drive around, and by drive around, I mean you move for about a few seconds before you're bumped back to the front of the garage. I get people who'd play this would be at a young age and can't be trusted to drive big machinery, rare to see a game apply realism like that, I mean unless this is done to test the engine and make sure they can move at all.

The training section is fine enough, no debates on how they handle rescue protocol, but your instructor is pretty adamant on you taking a breather after each rescue. I mean I get it, your hand can get tired after moving your mouse around a lot. The training sections are actually not reflective of the big rescue missions, as in they are a bit more realistic than the training.

First up, you put out a fire for a burning warehouse, shovel away the remnants and other aspects. This is more like a visual lesson, where we see what each truck or other vehicle is responsible for and what they can do, that would account for the other two missions. After this you forego building a new warehouse and instead build an amusement park over it. On one hand, this occurred on a concrete dock so I guess the amusement park would be a better choice, on the other, it's funny that we get a picture of the warehouse, and the first time we see it in game it's gone.

Amusement park? Pier? Carnival? One of these ain't right... Also, funny how they bring up they needed an amusement park, around the time the warehouse caught fire. I smell arson.

Next is a zoo that was hit by an earthquake, basically everything that could go wrong did, and obviously you pick up the pieces, fixing the exhibits and returning the animals to their proper habitats, getting the idea to what they're most comfortable with. Also chromakeyed explosion in demolition. They always give you the option to decorate the area when you're done.

Of all the games I've talked about, this game has the most offers for printable images.

Lastly, and this one stuck out to me for whatever reason. Guess I always liked water-based rescues, and this is it, clearing the way of a bridge blocked by a fallen tree, rescuing people stuck in a ravine, and other stuff I forgot about.

It's all a crash course for various trucks and other construction tools. Only problem is at times the mouse controls are kinda finicky. If this was timed it would make for a miserable experience. If at an early age you wanna get into stuff like this, for the sake of having it all laid out... on second thought it's better you get this first hand or free in a cereal box, there isn't that much.

Crayola Vehicle Voyages

Like Tonka, there are a lot of Crayola games, and this one was much harder to find, even more than the Tonka game. While copies are available, who knows if they would work on modern computers or virtual machines? The only footage of this game comes in the form of a let's play done with a relatively poor camera capture.

This is a coloring game revolving around vehicles, hence the title. The idea is simple, but there were quirks I never understood, such as animations that would play at random. Turns out that they play once you fully color an image. You can save your images, which is really all you can ask for in a game like this, to preserve your pictures.

The presentation is top notch, and easily memorable in that regard. It was produced by Engineering Animation, whatever happened to them, and oddly published by IBM. Was this exclusive to Crayola games?

There really isn't much else I can say about this. It's a Crayola game about cars, you get what you paid for. This is like school where you have one period to draw and have fun.

Fisher Price Big Action Garage

Let's end things off with a game I rediscovered recently. I remembered what it was, the characters, most of the games and other aspects, but for the life of me I couldn't remember the name. But since I could remember everything else, I decided to go to Reddit, and stressed that it was not Putt Putt. Long story short this was resolved right away.

The game was developed by Funnybone Interactive, who were behind games in the JumpStart series, which I never grew up with. While their logo isn't shown in the game's opening, you can find it in some more obscure places.

This is based on a track set Fisher Price sold at the time, I think I had it, or something similar. This was years ago.

The game has you take the role of a red car with a cap as he tries to save his friend KC from getting sent to the junkyard. Seeing stuff like this, Firehouse Tales, and Bigfoot Presents really shows how Cars was far from cutting edge on character design. Like putting two and two together, it can be different, but it's been done.

It's a basic point and click adventure, barring any educational aspects, lest they were even meant to be there, though this is unique, as it makes use of 2D scenes and has 3D music videos, notably a car wash where you go there through a scripted event. You get to detail a car, which you can print out, you do a maze and get a little musical number at the end, you get to do a ghost shooting game which harkens back to Stinky's Goo Toss, you get to learn about patterns as you clean a polluted river, you do a race with some of the worst audio consistency I've ever heard and you get to learn how to do engine maintenance.

Disregard any questions on whether or not this would constitute as open heart surgery for anthropomorphic cars.

This game was like my own Subway Perfection ad. I remembered the game with almost complete clarity, aside from maybe some parts of dialog. All that escaped me was the name, and I knew this wasn't lost. Even the most mediocre things can have more value when you lost them for so long and found them again. It was exactly as I remembered it, and I'm glad I can rediscover it to put that mystery to rest.

LTA: Nickmas

 Things hit differently when you were around to see them when they were new. I'll admit, I return to this little series of commercials every year, and sometimes afterwards since COPPA didn't get its hands on the comment section. To take advantage of this one month a year, and my next semester coming two days after the new year, let's look back at a nice piece of orange pie.

Reviewing commercials everyone has covered, I need to rethink my life...

Station IDs

There's two of these. One of them is fairly standard, featuring SpongeBob and a callback to that one particular episode. The other is an odd crossover featuring Goddard and Tommy Pickles hanging lights. I don't know who did the stop motion, but for something made for a quick junction it's more technically sound than those Rankin/Bass specials, keep those in mind.

It would've been a bit too messy to have multiple Station IDs like this, because then there would've been a lot more to be accounted for, and we may never have them all, so smart move to keep it like this.

And yeah, I have no comment on the relation of Jimmy Neutron to Rugrats, but crossing over is a key to this, and given the context this makes better sense than you would think.

Plankton's Holiday Hits

I'd take this over Peter Griffin's take, but only out of principle.

Honestly don't have much to say on this one, it's a straightforward collection of parodies that don't make me as an adult cringe. For its obvious Beatles reference at the start they make up for previously with a Bruce Springsteen reference. Funnily enough the idea of Plankton singing Christmas carols lives on in some circles, though I won't say where unless you like LEGO short films.

One thing for sure, this has some pretty decent animation, that, or the fact a single character against a live-action background can be done both fast and right. This is foreshadowing.

Kinda wanna hear Plankton's take on Thunder Road and Maxwell's Silver Hammer for some reason.

Nick Holiday Party

Here we go, five or six year old me ate this up and licked the plate, seeing all the Nicktoons together. The idea of characters from different cartoons interacting always peeked my interest. It was a reason why I liked Cartoon Network at first, the idea of their originals mingling with other old shorts in their parent company's grasp, sorta like the characters of Ed, Edd n' Eddy having a snowball fight with Hanna Barbera characters... which happened by the way.

Back to this, Rosie O'Donnell, yes that's her, fresh off of Kids Choice Award and laying the grounds for a misgendering joke made by the creator of another show I just referenced before, doing Rudolph... the special Rudolph, Goddard handled the character bit, and indirectly predicted Jimmy Neutron's own Christmas special.

If you enjoy big crossovers this is a real treat, though don't expect something extravagant. We manage to get practically every Nicktoon in this... well, every Nicktoon that's Hey Arnold! and beyond. I'm just surprised CatDog made the cut, not surprised, happy. And rejoice, Zim is there. They got the references to the Rankin/Bass special down solid, well in terms of non-Rudolph antics.

But how do you feel about a grown man flirting with a teenager? (Crimson Chin and Debbie), and Plankton flirting with Helga. I feel like if the network is handling things there are bound to be some gaps and odd placements.

The model work is fantastic, though with As Told by Ginger's models I found it hard to recognize the characters used, and though they aren't seen, Cosmo and Wanda's models are kinda ugly, FOP's style's ugly, no matter what. 

12 Days of Nickmas

And now everyone's here, even ChalkZone. Those of you who've annoyed to hell with the original song, they start at the 12th day, so points for that. Look there're only three Christmas songs I like, cut me a break.

It's nice to see everyone again, your entire childhood with Nicktoons summed up here, but there is one small problem. I feel like the lyrics could've been better distributed to every Nicktoon, some get more than one, and by some, I mean their cash cows at the time, well a cash cow and a cow yet to be.

I feel like Butch Hartman hi-jacked this, why else is his portrait in this? Did he commission these? Well congrats to him, he did something right for once in his life. Also Christmas Who reference at the end.

At the very least the lyrics fit the shows that name them.

A Chucky Finster Winter Chanukah Kwaanza Winter Solstice

Ever wanted to know what the Rugrats would've been like if they switched to flash late in its life?

Jokes aside, according to some insider info, this was gonna be done in a similar art style to Peanuts, but that obviously didn't go through. But that's fine, it's better to try something of your own. But look, I dunno, I'm getting tired of the usual suspects on Christmas, and with real animation-misers like Saberspark dropping his fat ass in by making fun of more quirky animation, we're gonna be stuck with the same Christmas specials every year. Fuck me, I need a change.

Back to the special, it's basically a stripped down version of... Charlie Brown Christmas whatever, but taking a stab at political correctness and our apologetic nature. The name gave that away, attributing all holiday seasons. ChalkZone's take rolled right off the tongue and it's gonna be years before I get it out of my head.

It's actually a pretty nice homage that not only fits what it's referencing, but keeps with the nature of the show that's doing the referencing. Heck, we even got some pretty obscure trivia with a little gag at the end. Did you know York Peppermint Patty sponsored the Charlie Brown special, and dare I say had a hand in the naming of one character? Well there you go, with a little cameo from Mr. Krabs too.

How the You Know Who Stole You Know What

I take it Grinch is aggressively copyrighted? Angelica is basically the best candidate for the Grinch when you take into account the candidates for it. It's a straightfoward and stripped down take on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, replacing gifts with chocolate, and having a subversive ending where Angelica doesn't mend her ways.

I got nothing, it's the same quality animation as the previous segment, I appreciate a break from the usual monotony, I feel like checking out the Grinch, the superior Jim Carrey version or Illumination's take.

They say insanity is doing the same thing more than once and expecting a different result.

The Nutcracker Suite

It's Cosmo and Wanda crunching to the Nutcracker Suite, nut and cracker to boot, somehow better flash animation than what we got with the last season, let's just move on.

Patrick the Snowman

An odd crossover between Jimmy Neutron, SpongeBob SquarePants and Wild Thornberries, but this time the hat's not stolen, just invented. Points abound in that regard. In this situation they get sick of Patrick the eponymous snowman and decide to send him to the future, it backfires.

Interestingly there's an alternate version where they freak out and attack Patrick, so if you weren't satisfied with the above ending, there you go.

Not sure if DNA Productions did this, it looks rough, even when you compare the early shorts, but it's not too bad.

Final Ranking

So I didn't have much to say on a lot of these. Guess I was vexed for ideas. With no particular reason, here's how I rank the specials

1. Nick Holiday Party
2. Patrick the Snowman
3. Solstice whatever
4. 12 Days
5. The You Know Who
6. Nutcracker

And that's about it, I'm sure to get some disparaging comments based on what I said, but whatever.

Episode Review: When Santas Collide (ChalkZone)

 ChalkZone is one of the most underrated Nicktoons of all time. If people praise it constantly and lose their mind if someone dare say something negative about it, and constantly vouch for its revival, it's not underrated, Rise, Infinity Train, Glitch Techs, Adventure Time. If something doesn't receive as much attention as it deserves, that is underrated. ChalkZone.

ChalkZone is pretty interesting when it comes to its progression. It had an incredibly short first season which is made up of shorts from its time on Oh Yeah! Cartoons, it had a fuller second season, and by the third season, things started to feel a bit off. Some episodes paled, some episodes stuck, it depends on what you saw. I feel like the fourth season marked a return to normalcy, even if the season was wrought through contractual obligation and they had to commission a different studio to produce the animation, and it's very noticeable.

I was gonna cover this back in July, you know, Christmas in July, but it got away from me. Welp, no time like the present.

Episode

When Santas Collide is the epitome of "well that escalated quickly", either that or they spend so much time on meaningless scenes that they forgot about the more important ones. Things either start quickly or end just as soon.

Rudy gets mad that he won't get some artist pencils for Christmas because of certain delays, well on his father's part because he didn't get the Santa suit, or bothered to find the box which was obscured from view and decides to run off to ChalkZone for a little escape, at least that's what it feels like. Any trouble relating to what happened in the real world is hardly brought up (in my case hardly is not the same as nothing, benefit of the doubt as it was a while since I saw this.)

Almost instantly we get a song, a staple for the show. Now, I'm not knocking ChalkZone for their songs, they have some straight bangers that're cool even for grown ass men. This isn't an exception, it's a progressive wet dream that appeals to celebrators of Christmas, Hanukah, Ramadan and Kwanzaa. Tết is a no-show, but can I get away with a joke like that?

How could I not forget the lyrics, Merry Chrishanukahmas, and a Happy Ramakwanzadah. Either these overshadow the rest of the song, or that's all there was. Personally, I prefer something simple, like Snowflake Day.

The conflict in ChalkZone comes through an accident that wipes out various Santas, yes in ChalkZone there are multiple Santas that are drawn and erased, and Rudy has to take the forefront to deliver the toys and save Christmas, Penny comes out to stall for time.

We get Santas, but little collision, unless this refers to them getting injured. Is this false advertising on SpongeBob and iCarly levels? Either things are going too fast or they invested time into areas where it wasn't very necessary. So, bad to worse? The Santa costume Rudy's dad ordered turns out to be a Bunny costume and they scramble to go look for another, they being him, Rudy's mother, the young niece and her mother who's very obviously voiced by Grey DeLisle. I swear I can't get away from her. Did people forget Kath Soucie existed?

So toy delivery, Rudy shows up as Santa, gets the knowledge he'd get those pencils and then just gives them to the niece, even though all of this started over him overthinking the Santa situation early on. This seems like a forced resolution, dare I guess, it is. Was it implied the niece wanted to learn to draw? Did Rudy stifle her? Was any of this implied in the special? Not at all. This happened for the sake of fulfilling some kind of cliche, if not for the sake of happening.

Final Thoughts

In the back of my mind, I feel like this was an episode nobody wanted to make, so they sought to get it off the chopping block as soon as they can, network demands may also apply. A ChalkZone Christmas special could work, even subverting the cliches associated with them. We deserve more than Charle Brown and Frosty the Fieving Snowman.

Perhaps have Rudy bring a ChalkZone Santa out to the real world to fill in, and make his dad jealous when he can't pull it off, leading to them trying to one-up each other, or in that case, replace Rudy's dad with a street Santa and there you go. There are Santas, and there is collision, and the plot is simple enough to fit the show.

This felt very disappointing, I like the show, but this left very much to be desired. This is one dour Christmas special.

And with that I say..... bye.

WMAC Masters review

 What's the worst dubbing company in the world? Is it a company tied to radical editing of anime to make it suitable for the perceived sensibilities of kids? Or is it a company that makes legitimate issues incredibly condescending, platforms for virtue signaling, some of the most toxic actors on the planet, terrible corporate culture, basic by default dubbing quality and owns CrunchyRoll? Or Odex?

I think we're all well past the 4Kids hate bandwagon. Though I consider their take on the national anthem cringe, it's funny to see people get pissed off by some of the most unintentional trolling I've ever seen.

And yes, 4Kids was involved in this.

Background

WMAC Masters was one of the first shows ever produced by 4Kids Entertainment, long before they took part in anime dubbing, when they found a profitable market in that regard. Previously just a licensor, though to be fair they kept up with that since, this was the first time the company took part in producing a show themselves.

The show aired in syndication, with distribution handled by their own label. Remember watching Pokemon as a kid and you see the only other logo beside 4Kids? That was their own distribution label, The Summit Media Group. Summit handled distribution for shows like Van-Pires, Mega Man, others, and Darkstalkers. Hey, they distributed it, they certainly didn't have a hand in making it. They also distributed Mr. Men and Little Miss, not the Mr. Men Show, which people likely only enjoy because it was by the same studio that made Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi.

Interestingly, aside from them, the show was also produced by Renaissance-Atlantic Entertainment. They're one of four credited production companies on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the other being the copyright holders, the producer of the stock footage and the one bankrolling this. Unlike MMPR where Saban's credit is shown the most prominently, Renaissance-Atlantic actually has an on-screen logo here.

I take it they were the ones that helped produce the wrap-around footage for MMPR and provided choreographing. Maybe they were so proud of this they wanted to be seen by logo. At least 4Kids wasn't against someone picking their nose, and juice is better than foamy water, and holding someone's eyes open isn't horrific, and someone's knees, tears, thoughts of apple trees-

It's almost poetic that I talk about a company that did business with 4Kids and Saban.

The Show

WMAC stands for World Martial Arts Council, it has nothing to do with an AM radio station in Georgia. Credit where it's due, that's a clever acronym. The show makes use of actual martial artists and fighters, as in not teenagers that may date the show considerably. That is commendable, but probably not as big of a push as one would think. The quality of an actor's work is nothing too big to think about if the combat is good enough to justify it.

Let's get the elephant out of the room, this is a scripted fighting show, so don't expect assuredly genuine combat. It's sorta like wrestling in principle, but fuck it, it's still cool to watch, that's one way to get your blood pumping on... whatever day this is shown. The show is broken down to fighting matches, some in-betweens with our characters and for the sake of justifying its placement on a kids juncture, has educational bits relating to real life issues... for the first season anyhow.

One thing that makes this stand out from other fighting shows like it is that it plays like a live-action video game, running stats for present fighters and having health gages. I'll admit, I never saw something like that before in a legitimate series, and it could help to flesh characters out by stat and whatever else applies.

The set work is better than Turbocharged Thunderbirds, and if you don't know what I mean by that... they had a character pass off a View Master as a futuristic gizmo. Aside from some pieces looking plasticky, The Machine being the prime offender here... am I really gonna go apeshit over a show made with syndie dollars?

The show's battles are hosted by Shannon Lee, sister of Brandon Lee and daughter of Bruce Lee, and amazingly she is still alive. Okay that's low, I know.

At least the fight scenes don't include cartoony sound effects. Devil's advocate, but perhaps some kids aren't prepped for graphic violence and some are too obsessed with maintaining integrity in the initial anime? With Saban and 4Kids in mind, it's very easy to see how much one cared about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to another. Saban gave us Next Mutation, 4Kids gave us TMNT 2k3. Your move.

The health bar thing has some decent detail, though I would assume sometimes they would miss the right commands. From what I saw they timed the hits right with the drops of the bar.

The in-betweens lack those corny lines you'd find in most 90s shows, but that could be owed to the lack of teenagers and trying to be hip and cool. 4Kids may've dropped the ball when it came to being child friendly, but at least it didn't resort to dating its material, okay One Piece bites, but then again they didn't seek out One Piece themselves, it happened to be part of a package deal and they essentially panicked.

The lesson in the first episode revolves around the meaning behind the nicknames of the main focused fighters, and how one of them is more private about the meaning of their own. The Machine, the one of focus, got it when he broke his leg during a match and took it as a sign of refining his skills and not let your pride get the better of you. Practical advice, especially when it comes to fighting content.

This applies to the first season, so there isn't much more to say, but I can't help but get lost in the episode I'm watching, this is pretty damn good. Also, props to flying the Taiwanese flag instead of China's flag, for the people, not the politics, gotta make that clear because I'm setting myself up for cancellation.

The way the message is carried out here is also handled naturally, as it came from inquiring about a nickname and the payoff for it. Now you may be thinking it's obvious the Machine would get her, but oh, how does he get hurt and where? Disregard the leg portion, this takes place in a kickboxing event, gloves off. Also, not every idea has to be super original and never done before as long as it's handled well, and here, it do. It fuckin' do. I mean it gotta do to justify being on the air.

Final Thoughts

Now, there may be an underlying sense of cheesiness I didn't pick up on because let's face it, I was exposed to a lot of it in other shows, but this was a treat. Sure the fighting's scripted, but it's saved by some cool fight choreography and whatever ideas that were not used in other programs at the time. It's free from that cursed lingo and 90s fashion sense, those low budget CG effects, and few to no heavy-handed messages.

I brought up 4Kids a lot because, let's face it, in spite of some inexcusable fuck ups, where they shined, they shined brightly. They had some awesome original productions, Pokemon remains as one of their best dubs with Yu Gi Oh as a close second (and screw you, GX was hilarious), and this was an ample start for the company.

4Kids more or less surrendered ultra violence and death, rather than good action, their staff was treated well (well good enough to not lead to actors speaking out). You can't convince me Funimation is better, all they did was make characters speak English, and give scumbags a platform and ruin the prospect of bringing justice (do you really wanna rub elbows with absolute douchebags?)

Cartoons Where the Sun Don't Shine

 Adult cartoons these days aren't that special, in fact these days they kinda suck, kinda, who am I? LSMark? Passive aggressive and unintentionally annoying? They're a dime a dozen these days, especially with the advent of streaming services where rules need not apply, isn't that right Netflix.

Interesting bit of trivia, Hoops and that alien show on Netflix resemble Rick and Morty because they outsourced animation to Bardel. What was once an uncommon occurrence has become increasingly so these days.

Back in Animation B.R.M. (before Rick and Morty), adult animation was interesting, in that adult cartoons can pop up literally anywhere. What, you expected me to wax nostalgic praise here? There was a lot of good shows but come on, the obvious? I don't fly that way. I'm not talking about the time the big three tried to compete with The Simpsons; CBS shit their pants early on, ABC started weak with Capitol Critters, got worse with The Critic and stopped giving a shit in 2000 when Clerks came on. NBC was actually the best of the three.

But again, not talking about the big three, or Fox for that matter. Did you know IFC aired not one, but two animated series? You probably did. Did you know FX- no you'd probably bring up stuff like Archer and Unsupervised, and I did talk about something before. VH1, now there's a network you'd never expect to see an original animated series on, but it happened.

For this little special, I'm gonna go over adult animated shows that aired on networks where you would never expect to see them. Spike and MTV will be exempt from this because for the latter it was expected even before Beavis and Butthead, and the latter people will expect me to talk about a slow mess, I mean, TUH ABOMINATION TOH MUH CHILDHOOD.

And of course this means I have to retread old ground.

Neighbors from Hell: TBS

Let's get the relatively obvious out of the way first. You may not be surprised this show aired on the network since around that time they picked up reruns for Family Guy and American Dad in syndication, but that's just it. TBS for the most part operated similarly to MyNetworkTV, it was a hub for syndicated programs, okay they created their own shows too, predominantly live-action.

This was one of the earliest, dare I say the first, original animated shows to appear on TBS. Not to mention, and I completely missed this, this was the first series to be animated by Bento Box Entertainment, who aren't part of Disney's bloated ballsack, but the ballsack of a spin-off company made to handle unwanted assets by Fox.

On the surface this looks to be a typical edgy show and one PeTA sees in their nightmares, and while factors support this, I feel like I'm one of the few to pick up on the subtext. This is actually a powerful message relating to the environment. Unlike crappier shows that spoon-feed information, this show goes for a show don't tell approach, do you want life to be this way? Well sack up and do something to prevent it. Why else are the demons from hell green?

Admittedly some jokes don't stick and there are pop culture references that will become dated in time, but honestly it's nice to have a clear fingerprint to the past. I'd rather hear someone talk about Dane Cook than someone about Donald Trump for the millionth time. For something with only 10 episodes to its name, ten's more than enough if you're curious. From then TBS breifly took on animated programs, Tarantula, Final Space until that was sold off, and thankfully rejecting something butt ugly.

FX: Dick and Paula Celebrity Special

Here's another show I covered before, and one who's placement seems pointless. If you've seen FX you'd know they dabbled in animated content in the early-2010s, Chozen, Unsupervised, and some obscure forgettable show, I think it's called Archer. Funnily enough, this and those don't make use of traditional animation, rather very specific techniques.

Dick and Paula predated those shows by at least a decade, hell, this was before FX tried their hand at original scripted programing in 2000. This was one of the last shows to be produced by Tom Snyder Productions, before rebranding to Soup2Nuts soon after.

And back then, all the way to now, this isn't very special. This is from the same studio that gave us Dr. Katz Professional Therapist and Home Movies, shows that perfected many of the company's trademarks, limited animation and improvisation. It's a talk show where the guests are historical figures. This seems like a killer idea for an education series, and they got their toes in that before with Science Court, but this was aimed at adults, and consequently lost whatever charm this would've had.

You can get these figures to say just about anything in an adult cartoon, so the mystery and mystique is scaled back considerably. Okay, this didn't have to be educational, maybe something like God, The Devil & Bob where historical figures are personified and conflicts are boiled down to talk show drama, where they work out their differences or parallels are drawn to their plights compared to the present. It seems obvious, but sometimes that's the best way to go.

With what we had, it's no wonder FX got cold feet for nearly ten years, I can't imagine this having any staying power.

WE TV: Committed

Women's Entertainment Television. Admittedly it's a little more plausible for a cartoon to land on this network, and obvious it did. However, this was an American broadcast of a Canadian cartoon series. And yes, I covered this way back when. Nothing had changed.

This was produced for CTV by Nelvana, also outsourced to the Philippines, and starred Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy, who ironically were Canadian natives. The show unfortunately captures the more toxic side to feminism, our leading lady is rather condescending, men fit the worst stereotypes they can be tied to, and above all, it's a generic sitcom. In other words it's a perfect fit for WE TV.

I'm not saying women shouldn't be heard, we just have the wrong people representing that. Do we really want someone like Sarah Silverman headlining progressive rights? She's even less funny than Louis C.K.'s accusers.

Also this was based off a comic strip by the same guy who made Over the Hedge. If you ask me, Baby Blues is more worth your time.

G4: Spaceballs

Okay, G4 may also be a bit obvious too. They had two full fledged cartoon shows and a showcase for Dr. Tran and Slashing Happy Critters. This will be a bit like one slot coming up, where one show fits the network, the other does not.... fuck it, Spaceballs.

Spaceballs: The Animated Series is an enigma, known for the most part but otherwise not talked about, probably because all that can be said had been. I'm cheating here, but if you wanna know more about this series, check out Hats Off Entertainment's video on the show. I'll indirectly borrow points from it because honestly I don't intend to cover this show on its own anytime soon.

Spaceballs The Animated Series is basically a case for how damaging Family Guy is on adult animation. It's a theory, but it makes sense when you think about it. This came out around the time Family Guy released their take on Star Wars. It checks out, the time, the shoehorned pop culture references, the fact that Dark Helmet is short and bald, sorta like the fact that Stewie was Darth Vader in those episodes.

I understand pop culture references isn't just synonymous with Family Guy, but the short bald guys is hard to ignore. Dark Helmet was hardly that short.

It's almost as if I have nothing to say about the show beyond that. It's just part of history now, brought it up that's all one needed to do. Only interesting thing about this is that, aside from getting a glimpse into Mel Brooks' minimal standards (and yes he was a part of this), this was funded by the same company that backed the worst cartoon of all time, MP4ORCE Beyond Real.

Those Germans, let me tell you...

IFC: Out There

Like G4, IFC had backed two original cartoons. Also interesting fact, some time after I posted my IFC retrospective the Wikipedia article Out There was edited to acknowledge that it wasn't IFC's first animated series. I would talk about Hopeless Pictures, but it fit the nature of IFC too well and looking back at it, all it was was interesting.

Like Spaceballs, Out There was the kind of show that didn't suit what its network was catered to, at least used to. Okay maybe at the time G4 strayed from video games and IFC from its initial focus.

Out There was created by Ryan Quincy, who used to work on South Park and would go on to create FutureWorm for Disney XD. He predicted it a year in advance through a one word reference in an episode of this show.

This is a very interesting show, with a bleak atmosphere and surprisingly endearing characters. The more you watch it the more it makes you think. This just focuses on the life of a 15 year old bear... thing, as he goes on about his life. I found myself relating to him and the art style, where sad expressions the characters wear don't always reflect the emotions we feel inside.

I really liked the voice work in this, there are familiar actors that I didn't recognize for their voices alone, John DiMaggio, Justin Roiland, Linda Cardellini, Pamela Aldon, this feels like a test to go beyond their known ranges, and it paid off.

There's a little piece in this show that is bound to apply to someone, so it's worth checking out to find out what.

Showtime: Free for All

Showtime sucks ass. They gave a platform to the horribly outdated Queer Duck, and told Stephen Colbert he can direct animation. Anything other is welcome in my book. I alluded to this show years back, but when else am I gonna talk about it again?

Like Committed, this was based off of a comic strip. Its writer had to stretch the truth to get this greenlit, and of all places, it landed on Showtime. Long story short, this show isn't for the faint of heart, it knew it had no limitations and didn't want you to forget about it.

It's incredibly edgy and only Adult Party Cartoon can desensitize you further, but strangely there's an alluring quality to it. Not to mention it has some pretty ambitious animation, along with traditional animation, it features some 3D set pieces and scenery that meshes well together. Also it's only six episodes long, that's all you need.

I'd take this over Our Cartoon President any day of the week.

BET: Hey Monie

Referring back to Tom Snyder/Soup2Nuts, this was their first original series under the latter name; Home Movies had continued at that point.

I don't really have much to say about this, and if you consider me racist for that, this is a BET original series, one of the more destructive black networks out there. This show can be considered a realistic look into the lifestyles of African American business women, that's the best I can say. I like the style of the animation, maybe one of these days I can have the time to try and sit through a whole episode.

VH1: Hey Joel

Let's end off with an actually surprising show. While MTV did air cartoons, you wouldn't expect VH1 to do the same, would you? This is an anomaly that begs for further discussion.

This was the work of, better yet a loose interpretation of an idea had by Joel Stein, a journalist of sorts. He pitched an idea to MTV that sounded like a more plot heavy take on Dr. Katz, but that's just my best guess. He had better luck with VH1, but that would gradually sour as the show strayed far from what it was promised to be, because money (in terms of booking actors and not big celebrities and setting it at VH1 instead of a magazine to justify its airing on the network.) Stein was not allowed to be involved and in his place as actor for his self insert, was Jon Cryer, already known for appearing on Two and a Half Men which debuted the same year.

If you wanna know more about how much Stein detests this show, he went into great detail on an article he wrote: https://web.archive.org/web/20040128111510/http://www.time.com/time/columnist/stein/article/0,9565,582717,00.html

Also apparently time after this show VH1 would rebrand, interesting fact. Another interesting fact is that this show was funded and animated in Canada. Well, a Canadian studio was contracted by Curious Pictures in New York. If you watched Cartoon Network in the mid-2000s how could you not recognize Curious Pictures? I bring up the Canadian funding because, for a show to be produced in Canada they have to go by guidelines that basically mean the Canadian side of things would be reflected in the program. This can apply to, say, the show taking place in Canada. Although an exception could be made if a Canadian company backed it, at least to my best guess, and that was in the form of Blueprint Entertainment, who isn't remotely interesting in the slightest.

Another thing to note is that for a Canadian produced show, it's pretty limited with Canadian actors. Beyond maybe some guests, there's only one regular Canadian actor in this. And this is set in New York.

Joel in this seems like a reasonably likable yet annoying individual, which hits differently when you are the person it's based off of. He contends with the commentator for CBS News Sunday Morning, yes that's what she has done since she dropped off from acting, a Panama actress who surprisingly masks her accent very well, a dimwitted... assistant? PA?

Plots are non-offensive, at the very least bearable, and we get some neat musical numbers by Fountains of Wayne, who you may know as "The guys who did Stacy's Mom."

About all that can be said about it, if none of the characters are based on you, you may potentially enjoy this. It could be worse, but hey, bet you didn't expect to hear about a cartoon that aired on VH1.

And that's about it see ya.

That Modern Family Guy Christmas Special

 I don't even remember the name, Road to the North Pole? The show's been on for over 20 years, mix-ups happen. So, as someone who's willing to give most new adult cartoons a chance, well I mean The Harper House looks visually pleasing at least, someone who actually kinda liked Brickleberry, and one of the few people who picked up on the social commentary Neighbors from Hell had... I hate Family Guy. They killed Spaceballs in 2008.

I caught a lot of it when it was new, and I remember hating nearly every episode that came of it. It's harsh, but some episode I hated right away, others came overtime. Though it's disputed, I feel as though no one wants the show to end more that the staff. Either that or it's easy money and reinforcement that Disney likes to reach people's hearts through their pockets.

It's nothing new, but compared to other shows, it never got better. Hell, I have no reason to watch television these days so... pfffft. Only reason I'm going back to this now is because it's Christmas, and I bled myself dry with other Christmas specials, and unless I can sack up and defend Santa Claus Conquers the Martians it's either this or I skip the holiday cold turkey.

No background, no nothing, here's why I remember of it.

Is it still okay?

You know how Family Guy used to do cutaways to Conway Twitty? This was a stab at the network who would allow them to do just about anything. This kind of freedom had led to the edgy humor we all know today, but you already know that. I won't compare this to the first Family Guy Christmas episode because, pssh, who do you think I am? Just Stop with my incredibly obvious allegories, weaponizing what was meant to be a joke representing old school punishment and enjoyment of overtly obnoxious and annoying characters because hey she has a personality?

Never bet on a guy who complains about Butch Hartman, should've learned after LSMark.

The opening song goes to show how much cheaper the animation had become, I mean it's kinda like the post season one animation, but shiny. How could one look different yet similar at the same time? Was Family Guy that good, or just very cheap to produce? Not knocking the music itself, that's a high point no matter what.

I'd go more into the plot, but that can easily be broken down, so I'm just gonna go into what I recall of it.

Stewie wants to meet Santa, around this time he adopts traits similar to that of conventional babies. Honestly, I kinda prefer this to his evil nature because that was pretty one-note. If they kept his overt evil nature he'd do what he did when he became president or whatever, maybe.

I get the gist behind Brian and why people hate him, but I draw the line at pseudo-compensation. Why Quagmire of all people? People go into why Brian is bad but why do they draw a blank when it comes to Quagmire? This has been in the back of my mind for quite some time. Was this meant as a trolling method to get people to sympathize with... well you know already.

Brian gave someone herpes? Well Quagmire dated a minor and would've likely, definitely, had sex with her, and you'd turn a blind eye because it's Meg.

Now look, someone has to be Brian's foil, but given the measures they had to do to make Quagmire so, it feels like even they were clueless. All of the sudden he has these connections we didn't know about until now, and I'm wondering if he's making them up to justify it all. There's a difference between douchebaggery and honest mistakes, the latter doesn't happen often but you gotta know. I hate the both of them, but come on, do I side with the douchey mouthpiece who does dumb shit (and douche accounts for 95% of Brian these days), or do I side with the overtly obnoxious, self-righteous, borderline transphobic, pretty much sociopathic...

If it were up to me I'd have them bang and it turns out this animosity was due to Quagmire's repressed homosexual feelings (and bestiality). If this were like American Dad, all they need to do is fuck. 

This wasn't for nothing as this kind of scene occurred. If one took it out it wouldn't change a thing, we'd lose two jokes. Quagmire shaved a girl bald to pretend he gives a shit about cancer victims, then years later all this catches up to him and he suffers a stress induced stroke over Brian not being dead yet, and given he goes by dog years that's worth being mad about, granted.

Heh, wouldn't it be funny if instead of a cheery atmosphere at the North Pole it became all dark and shit?

Yes? You probably laugh at Jay Sherman.

The point behind this is that Santa is overworked due to everyone's constant demand for gifts. That is an interesting idea for a plot, but this is mixed with Family Guy type humor, stretching things out and seeing just how twisted one scene could be made.

It's not outrage worthy, just taking an interesting premise, looking at it, then forget about it as you're halfway through the script. I'm not mad, just disappointed. Even when they basically murder and/or traumatize a family after getting into the wrong house.

So due to Santa being vexed because of all the constant work and demand, Brian and Stewie take to delivering the presents themselves. They get into the wrong house, waste time, kill a man, bound and gag a girl and of all that, it's just realization that it's not easy being Santa. It didn't need to be shown, but it was anyway. Not scarred for life, but I feel those minutes would've been better spent on The Cleveland Show.

I hone in on scenes like these because honestly, that's all I remember from them. Shock value is only good in leaving lasting impressions. We may suck but hey, we'll be remembered somehow. If the cancellation theory held true, maybe they were hoping for enough outrage to have the plug pulled. Was Fox more evil than Disney in this regard? Is that why they divested the network to FoxCorp? Because I still consider both evil.

So for all this, the payoff is Brian convincing everyone to ask for only one present this year. A moral in not being so vain when it comes to material possessions is there, I'll admit, but the journey only barely justifies it.

All I missed from this is the hilarious jokes in-between. You're welcome.

Final Thoughts

Well, at least I got one Christmas review on the chopping block so far. That was an awkward trip down memory lane, at best encouraged by YouTube constantly recommending Family Guy clips. I could swear this is harder to sit through that other Christmas specials people like to whine about.

Explaining The Christmas Tree

 Remember the days when Doug Walker was a respectable reviewer? As much as MisAnthroPony wants to make people deny it, he had some serious influence back in the day, and it was through him the world was introduced, or reintroduced, to The Christmas Tree. It's the worst Christmas special of all time he says, I take it he never watched Bah, Humduck, but then again that's the worst Christmas Carol adaptation of all time.

Doug Walker was best known for bringing the particularly worst of animation to light, and that is something I can't really deny of him, but he focuses so much on the what, he does diddly with the why. Even basic research could yield a lot of results, and I feel he does very little with that. We all need context for a lot of these things.

I will say this, this movie really is an enigma. I had covered this a long time ago, but I feel now it needs an update.

So Why?

Before I get into this I'd like to give a shout-out to ManiacalDude who helped clue me in to another detail on this movie's history. He's looking to try and contact the one behind this, and I hope he does so.

Anyhow, The Christmas Tree is an animated Christmas special that was released in 1991 on television, yes, television. This had aired on USA Network, and unlike Rapsittie Street Kids which aired throughout the 2002 holiday season, this aired only once. This was apparently wedged between two better known Christmas specials on a dedicated holiday block.

Why would USA air such a film? First up, at the time they weren't quality conscious and were willing to air just about anything. This was within the USA Cartoon Express era, and just years before they blessed us with some of the worst video game cartoons of all time. The mentality of networks on Christmas; if it's a cartoon about Christmas, it makes the cut.

The special was spearheaded by Flamarion Ferreira. Some may be quick to call him a one-time hack, but his background goes as far back as 1979. Ferreira had worked for Hanna-Barbera and Filmation, and you may be thinking, well hey, limited animation is all he knows, but you wanna know his main area? Background design. Yep. A stark bulk of his credits lie in storyboarding and background design. This was his first time handling animation.

It goes out of the way to explain why the background look nice but the animation... isn't so much. I don't know what led him to do this, this wasn't backed by the network, and with his billing at the start, it seems he was pulling the strings.

It seems like this was an experiment of sorts for Ferreira, as mentioned before he only had experience with background and storyboarding. If he could pull off the other aspects of animation he could do anything, but wanted to start reasonably small and produced a little Christmas flick. That's the best I can come up with.

Aside from his own vanity card, this was produced by a company called Alice Entertainment. I had claimed they produced a show for TLC in 1997, but that wasn't true. Honestly with a name as common as that it's harder to find information on the company than one would think. Best case, Alice Entertainment was the special's distributor, given that the label is credited on the special's VHS release.

Yeah, one thing that saved this special from sheer obscurity was that it actually received a VHS release. This was done through Family Home Entertainment, who'd release just about anything, but due to its one-time airing it really wouldn't be until years later when it landed in everyone's crosshairs. Family Home Entertainment also released that Turtles Christmas special (and it's park musical counterpart) on VHS, but that was owed to them having full control over home media distribution on TMNT product (and TMNT was more shameless than anyone would lead you to believe. Fuck Rise)

The animation is incredibly limited. Up to this point, Ferreira only had experience from Hanna-Barbera and Filmation, more limited studios, and it's likely he picked up those norms from them and assumed what he was doing was better than them. While he had a staff on board, it's unlikely anyone had experience beyond basic nuances, either that or this was rushed.

Why are the actors so bad here? Easy, Ferreira had likely recruited whoever was available, regardless if they could act, hence some family members being involved. We do have a little info on most actors, namely where they were born, lest some actors actually opted to shed some light. It seems this was recorded in California. Some actors went on to get married and do nothing else it seems, save for one who appeared on some Investigative Discovery show. The actors simply didn't have the experience, and were likely rushed to get something out, lest this is some localization of a Brazilian script and a language barrier led to some dialog gaffs.

Final Thoughts

There is still a lot to be considered here, and a lot of this is just spitballing. Does all of this justify the low quality of the special? Well it's bad, but certainly not worst of material, there is worse... somewhere I guess, but this isn't about reviewing the special, it's about understanding it better, and honestly, we need all the understanding we could get from this.

Fleabag Monkeyface review

 When it comes to rip-offs... the prospect has been ruined. People see a Georgian cartoon featuring yellow people and rather than focus on the irony of them attacking Russian culture but rarely going after their own culture, lol dur, Simpsons rip-off.

Coconut Fred Fruit Salad Island, I don't know came up with the idea that it ripped off SpongeBob but one, it's technically more of a rip-off of Camp Lazlo, especially since we have a grumpy counselor and an impish assistant, a dementedly optimistic lead, twins who happen to be dumb as dirt... 2. Whoever made that claim probably believed that Sanjay and Craig was somehow a rip-off of a show about two mentally disabled groundskeepers.

Wild Grinders, it looks uglier than The Nutshack but whether or not it's a Rocket Power rip-off... it was created by a professional skateboarder. Still seems like a shitty show. Pixel Pinkie, hardly a rip-off of Fairly Odd Parents, but then again it's like comparing two turds. I can't even sit through an entire episode of the show. Johnny Test, it's likely it predated Dexter's Laboratory in terms of the pilot but hold up, it's getting a reevaluation of sorts for its earlier seasons?

Point is, people are so focused on what these shoes resemble that they hardly focus on the finer details. So of all these, why am I focusing on Fleabag Monkeyface? I saw it on IMDb, decided to check out an episode and knowing what it entails... I kinda liked it.

Background

Fleabag Monkeyface is based on a series of children's books of the relatively same name. The show came out around 2011 and lasted until 2012. It was a British and Signaporean co-production, though mainly attributed to its financier and animation studio. The show is credited to animation studio Sparky Animation and the kids division of documentary studio Impossible Pictures.

There are two other companies credited to this, Editude Pictures and the production arm of Walker Books, who had published the books this show was based on. Editude's based in Signapore and may account for financing there. Along with that the show was funded by Ingenious, aka that logo you see on many b-flicks or the occasional good movie. Just years before they funded the second series ever created by Jeff Muncy, who brought us Pet Alien. Just a little trivia.

While this was one starred to hell on IMDb, uploads of the episode surprisingly manage to hold more likes than dislikes. The same can't be said for Pixel Pinkie, which is why I bring it up.

At large

It's simple, just the day to day adventures of two boys and their gross concoction named (title of this show). Also this chicken themed villain who tries to get his TV show back after the two boys and the gross concoction replace him. Think Janet Hubert but more determined to become Aunt Viv again.

I had gone into this expecting Fleabag to be this incredibly annoying... thing of annoyance, but you're talking to the guy who has put up with Lazlo, got annoyed right away with Coconut Fred, Fleabag is a breath of fresh air, which is in the form of a toxic belch. He's not painfully naive to the world around him, at least from what I've seen.

The show is self-aware, not to the point of addressing the fact they are in an episode, but rather aware of its gross nature. Like they know it's nothing special, this is going by the book I have never read in my life. But apparently this is just part of their show. It'd make more sense if it was a video series given the infrequent nature of it and how it's rarely acknowledged. I mean if it's by camcorder and just sending recordings of it for air on TV, I'm going for practicality here, less this is like some Jackass scenario.

I do like how they set up a pool full of muck, and Fleabag didn't joke about making it a jacuzzi, just that it needs more muck.

Also, the voice acting suggests that they recorded in America, but actually the cast is made up of American actors living in the United Kingdom, one of them being Teresa Gallagher, who you may better recognize as Dennis' mother from the British version of Dennis the Menace. Also the mother of some incredibly obscure Cartoon Network show, something about chewing gum or something.

 The first time I watched the show, I had a can of beer. The second time without it, it's the same thing. I don't hate this at all. The worst this show may throw at me is repetition, but there was never a reason for me to give up on the show. I've met my limits before, and I was never close with this.

Regarding an episode where the chicken man creates a swamp monster that turns out to provide good publicity for the boys, I like how they don't take credit for it while their superior does. It helps to make the dynamic more believable, at least in my opinion. One thing I like is that I expect it to be gross, and get surprised when they subvert my expectations on gross out cliches.

Not to mention, scenes that seem awkward or padded out actually have some significance; chicken man imprinted on the swamp monster and views it as its mother. It makes more sense than you think, especially since it helps to expose chicken man as the one behind all this mess. I can't even be mad at Fleabag's blatant gross out gags because that's part of his character.

Maybe I just have a stronger stomach for gross out?

Animation

The animation for this show is fairly standard early-2010s television CG animation. There are some occasional jumps between motions, but it plays out fairly well.

But some of you more seasoned viewers are not in for that. Why did I go into that tirade about rip-off shows? Because people claim this is a rip-off of Fanboy and Chum Chum. Okay, I do see some similarities with art styles. I want to say that it's all a coincidence and that staff worked on both shows, but Sparky Animation never worked on Fanboy and Chum Chum to my knowledge, the art directors never worked on Fanboy and Chum Chum, at best this is just a play on the art style in the books.

However, this is based on visual similarities, other than that our characters aren't cosplaying as superheroes, there is no monkey concoction at least one similar to Fleabag, there is no evil janitor, no giant bully to the protagonists, no comic book collector, no arctic-based superhero, no obsession with slushes, no obsessed fangirl to my knowledge, no wizard of sorts, it's almost as if people are so quick to claim something is a rip-off based on visual standards that they don't bother to consider the finer details.

I will say this, the lead white boy looks like Jimmy Neutron and George (whoever the white kid from Captain Underpants was) took part in a splicing experiment and created their own son. He and the other boy are visually distinct from the other characters and they look like they would never belong in Fanboy and Chum Chum.

Final Thoughts

So, is this a rip-off? No. Is it easy to see why people would think it is? Yes. At its core this is the kind of show that's only good if you're in the mood for it. It's not as annoying as you'd think it is, the grossout is a big presence but not to an insufferable extent, I've seen worse, way worse, this doesn't even come close.

So, case closed, people are full of shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHWOtRouFGU