Tickle-U Revisited

 Please note: This is a remake of an old retrospective I made. The old retrospective is currently outdated, has factual errors and more footage of the shows featured had surfaced. This will hopefully remedy the issues the old post had.

Cartoon Network has always had a mixed record when it comes to their programing blocks. There're some great ones for sure, but others, I mean you get the idea, I'm not gonna complain about CN Real, I already get the idea, it was an attempt at getting the audiences Nickelodeon and Disney Channel did, nothing more, nothing less.

But with the advent of streaming services and parents being too lazy to watch their own flesh and blood, dedicated blocks were made. Enter Cartoonito, the second attempt by Cartoon Network to make a preschool block, bringing the world such classics as Caillou and Little Ellen.

Yeah, second. I doubt I'm the first to really talk about this block, but I was there when it happened, so cut me a break. I watched Cartoon Network a lot back in the mid-2000s, and it was in that time Tickle U hit the scene. So because there wasn't anything else in particular that I wanted to watch, and since it happened to air from 9 to 11-

I swear these schedule organizers have a sick sense of humor.

It would've made up my mornings and afternoon. Should go without saying, but Tickle U, while not a catastrophic failure, certainly didn't catch on. Now I get it, Cartoon Network competed with Nickelodeon and naturally they would try and get in on their markets, it should go without saying, but this was Cartoon Network's attempt at their own Nick Jr, and they either failed because of low show real estate, or people would tune out for a lack of interest.

One up for the World Wide Day of Play as they didn't expect kids to even be tuned in.

Now I know you're thinking, oh wow, a grown ass man is gonna rage over baby shows, how original and cringe. I'm not gonna rage, I'm just gonna go over the shows the block had, any memories I had of them, and determine their worth. Right now.

Little Robots

Tickle U's roster consisted of international acquisitions. The block came out around the time American dubs of British cartoons were common place. As a result, dubs were produced for a majority of the programs Tickle U acquired.

Little Robots was a production of Cosgrove Hall Films, a company that was involved with a hell of a lot in the UK, including Count Duckula, Danger Mouse, Postman Pat and if they had their way, one of the first Nicktoons still lost to this day.

British preschool cartoons tend to be slower paced than others. They're not inherently educational, rather just innocent little endeavors, though to be fair it's not just a British thing, as stuff like Oswald and Maggie and the Ferocious Beast exist. I remember watching one episode of it, it being the show's second episode The Sound of Music. For better or worse, the original episode and its American dub are accessible, and as far as I know it's as direct of a translation as it can be.

View this from the perspective of having to watch this with someone younger than you, in a sea of obnoxiously educational and babyish shows, you could use a break every once in a while. Shows like this you can watch and take the edge off so to speak. Stuff like this is innocent enough to leave your kids well enough alone with, and you'd be able to sit and enjoy it.

Think Bob the Builder, but having more British wit, and with British writing you often get the best dialog as they tend to have different standards compared to American shows.

Yoko! Jakamoto! Toto! 

Now, take the element of dialog, and get rid of it, and you're left with Yoko! Jakamoto! Toto!. There's honestly little that can be said about it. It's about three animals going about their days, and can only communicate by saying their names. If there was anything more it flew right over my head.

I'll give it this, it looks visually distinctive, I forgot about what happens in the show but I certainly can't forget what it looked like. Now come on, I get it, when making shows for preschoolers not everything has to have AAA+ writing skillz or some shit, and while this did get awards, I question how much staying power this actually had, and if people had spoken highly of it, I question if they only cared about the animation.

Gordon the Garden Gnome

Either I haven't seen it or I have no memory of this whatsoever. I'm able to remember everything else about the block but not this, so chances are I stopped watching when this either came on or was added to the rotation.

Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs

So here's an interesting one. A show produced in the UK, but recorded in Canada, initially. When I first discussed this show, all I had access to was the show's British dub, and given that a majority of the shows on Tickle U had American dubs produced I figured we had a similar situation. But it turns out the Canadian dub had came first, with the British dub coming out later.

I'm gonna hone in on the Canadian cast because there is a lot I can say about them. When it comes to Canadian voice actors you'd be surprised to know where you heard them previously, and that's if you can figure it out. Recording took place in Toronto clearly. The show starred Andrew Chalmers, a child turned teen actor who had surprisingly steered clear of controversy, that or he's the Canadian Erik Per Sullivan and lacks that big of a papertrail.

There's Jamie Watson, who was in quite a lot but some may know him as Ron the Rent-a-Cop from 6Teen, speaking of which, Nikki's actress Stacey DePass was also in this. We have Susan Roman, who has stuck with Sailor Moon dubs as Sailor Jupiter longer than anyone else, I mean until Viz Media got in on future dubs, but apparently she was also in Rock n' Rule, main character mind you, and Heavy Metal (then again Roger Bumpass was also in that), among many other familiar shows.

There's also Ellen Ray Hennessy, who I recognize as Grandma from Pelswick, but she also played Clarissa in the 90s adaptation of Goosebumps' Be Careful What You Wish For. Finally we have Bryn McAuley, who I'd like to dub the Canadian Kath Soucie, because she is practically everywhere, even in projects where you wouldn't expect to see her. Either she's eager for a paycheck or she is that damn popular. If you wanna know what I mean on that, she was in Angela Anaconda, and she was the only recognizable actress in the 2000s adaptation of For Better or For Worse, which housed actors that were otherwise non-union or non traditional.

Pointless trivia aside, let's actually get into the show.

When it comes to Canadian shows, they're not usually overtly educational. They're a bit like the UK's preschool show, without the snark that's usually associated with them. If you want a show to compare it to you can use Maggie and the Ferocious Beast as an example, but compared to it, stuff does happen with some stakes, and the schtick behind this show is morality tales.

Episodes tend to follow the same format, Harry bemoans something happening in the real world, he has the ability to travel to Dino World, he finds a way around his real world problems and he sees first hand the consequences behind them, lesson learned. There is some variation every now and then, but they do well with what they have. It's not in your face, characters aren't necessarily naggy and the only one who comes close to that role, Patsy, is typically brushed off.

Patsy's the worrywart, Sid is the genius, Steggy's the timid one, Trike is the dummy, Pterence is the short and in the way, and Taury is the defacto leader and boisterous, and the fact that I haven't seen this show in a while and can remember their quirks off the top of my head is a plus, I guess.

This show does have some unique elements, or at least those not tried as often. For one, the dinos are sedentary throughout, they're toys Harry owns. For another, it's not this big secret Harry can jump into his bucket and into Dino World. You may say his mother, his grandmother and sister are letting him thrive with his imagination, but that's not the case. Harry's friend Charlie, or Charley, or the female, has traveled into Dino World previously. Hell, his grandmother knows and has even gone in there once. For all the magical world shows that have people keep them under ropes, it's kinda refreshing to know it's something of an open secret.

That aside, the show is pretty straightforward, it doesn't beat you over the head with lessons, obnoxious songs are either rare to hardly present, it's certainly easy to get through this if you have to babysit, I'd say it's a win.

Last thing I wanna bring up is that the animation was produced by Collingwood O'Hare, who also produced Gordon the Garden Gnome, but they've done other stuff too like Captain Star and The Secret Show, where unfortunately the most popular video on it was done by Jordan "Fears change and possibly the gym" Fringe.

Gerald McBoing Boing

Welcome to the first show on the list to not be an import from the UK. This is a modern reboot of the UPA cartoon series, and if that prospect frightens you, get the fuck off of my blog you weirdo. But to be serious, this is a fairly faithful recreation, with some additions, those being that Gerald now has two friends, Jacob and Janine, and a dog named Burp. All the same, Gerald communicates using sound effects, though it seems they really honed in on the Boing aspect, as that's his usual speaking voice here.

This series is also not particularly educational, so it errs more to, once more, Maggie and the Ferocious Beast in terms of it just being a chill little series. Then again you could argue that the series is teaching kids about sounds and what they're associated with.

The show takes to a simple format. In between segments you get a sound check, where animals or things make noises, sometimes making the wrong ones and by the end you get a recap, you get what are dubbed real world segments where Gerald goes about his life, either messing around or helping out and finally, there're storybook segments where Gerald and company are thrown into different roles relating to famous tales, told in rhyme as though it were expected.

Gerald McBoing Boing is a very simple series, for better or worse, non offensive, but has very little to talk about. Otherwise it's a fairly faithful redo, right down to the art direction. UPA were known for their simplistic art style, flat backgrounds and artifacts and some other stuff. The animation was produced by Mercury Filmworks and they do some pretty good work... so good I can't really peg them to much aside from doing work on Rockett's First Dance, no you don't know what that is.

Well... it's not that great. While the animation is good and certainly tries to capture the feel of UPA, and they get some aspects down like the art direction and simple backgrounds, there're some things that feel off when you run it and one of the UPA toons side by side. I'm not referring to technical aspects here, rather how close it resembles what it's based off of. I guess since this is technically 2D computer animation the environments had to be made to better support the character models, I get that, and once more it's not bad.

But if you want my honest opinion, 2002's Yakkity Yak got the UPA style down a bit better, and it seems that show was produced with similar sensibilities to what Gerald McBoing Boing had.

One last thing to go over is that this show had a pretty light voice cast. Glenn Barna played Gerald, and by that he just played the sound effects wherever they needed. He's not credited on IMDb, even outside of the cast sections. That, aside from Stacey DePass appearing in a few episodes, we have Patrick McKenna as the dad, who had appeared in Forever Knight, The Red Green Show, Stargate SG-1, live action aside, I know he played Nester in Scardey Squirrel, a cartoon that people hate for no reason apparently.

"Oh it's Canadian and therefore it sucks for some reason."

There's Jo Vannicola, who mostly had live action roles in stuff like Night Heat, My Secret Identity and Degrassi, but they also appeared in The Stalking of Laurie Show, a movie I saw when I watched Lifetime Movie Network for some reason. One other interesting thing about that is that it featured an appearance by Rel Hunt, who lent his voice to a character in Static Shock then fucked back to Australia. Jo had come out as non-binary recently as well.

We also have Linda Ballenytne, another frequent name, playing Percy in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Magnolia in George and the Jungle: The Bastardized Edition, more spefically the second season of a series that is also hated for no reason, only because they moved voice acting from Vancouver to Toronto.

Then there's Samantha Weinstein, who got her start on The Red Green Show, all else I know her from was Swarmed, a Sci-Fi Channel original movie, I basically summed it up. And unfortunately, she passed away over three months ago as of this writing, rest in peace.

Firehouse Tales

Another first, this was a series produced in the United States, but sent to Canada for voice work, more on that later.

This series seems to have a similar aesthetic to Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs... ' non overtly educational elements but getting by with morality tales, but this time, there's narration. To keep it simple, we have three simple leads, Red, the generic opportunistic one, Petrol, the Irish coward and Crabby, do I seriously need to explain what he's all about?

It's once more nothing too special, but as long as it's... I dunno, functional? Bearable? Cute? Nothing that will cause the firery pits of hell to erupt, and nothing to renew dwindling faith in humanity... there's honestly little I can say about the episode structures, so here's everything else.

The show's animation is quite interesting. It's 2D in terms of environments, set pieces and characters, but with 3D vehicles. Admittedly, the 3D and 2D elements mesh quite well. Compared to other shows discussed this seemed to be the most experimental of the bunch.

Onto voice acting, and this is gonna be a big one. Recording took place in Vancouver, land of childhoods. Red was played by Jesse Moss, the brother of Teegan Moss. He had prevalent roles in live action from stuff like The Dead Zone, The Outer Limits, apparently he had a role in Nickelodeon's Spectacular, a film covered by MrNostalgia, who indirectly gave me a shout and who I helped make a review of School Gyrls possible... Okay he was also in Are You Afraid of the Dark and had his start with some Jetlag cartoons.

Michael Adamthwaite played Namor in Fantastic Four World's Greatest Heroes and appeared in Final Destination 5, then had the audacity to appear in War for the Planet of the Apes, and there's one way I can sum that up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE09vstk2Ok&t=12s

Richard Ian Cox played the titular character in Being Ian, among many other familiar roles, but some may know him as Lofty in that Bob the Builder reboot people don't particularly enjoy.

Dave "Squatch" Ward played Aldo in Sitting Ducks, which may've also been on Cartoon Network at some point, and we even got Cathy Weseluck, Spike the Dragon from Friendship is Magic. All else I can mention is Ellen Kennedy who appeared in the Jetlag version of Cinderella, because Jesse Moss was also in that.

Now, I had said that I saw a lot of this series when it was new. Well apparently the series is either lost or inaccessible, at least in English. Only two episodes are available to watch, at least for free. Either nobody knew this show existed or nobody bothered to record much of it.

But who knows? Maybe we'll see them again one day, it took a long time but we got those twilight-era Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids episodes... until they inevitably dropped off.

And now for some weird tangents.

One thing you may notice is that the anthropomorphic vehicles are designed similarly those in Pixar's cars. Obviously this series came first, and the aesthetic has existed for anthro cars for years. Hell, I have an old Tonka toy from 2000 that has Cars aesthetics.

And I have a feeling that's why Pixar never cracked down on any similar contemporaries. BigFoot Presents... Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks, plug for an old ass review I did years ago, is another show with a similar style, and I've never seen any legal action held against them, because if they did it'd send a dangerous precedent.

Why the hell did I go on this tangent lest I wanted to silence that one smart ass who'd call this a rip-off...

Okay, on this, I actually remember watching this a hell of a lot back when it was on, and I don't remember this being part of the Tickle U block. Apparently Cartoon Network used to run preschool type shows in early morning slots after Tickle U bit the dust. Krypto the Superdog went through a similar situation, it was around this time frame we got to see the reboot of Mr. Men and Little Miss, or The Mr. Men Show, and apparently they aired the Land Before Time TV series around the same time, and I never watched it, either it came on too early or even the network didn't care enough to see it survive.

If you haven't guessed, I'm stalling.

Peppa Pig

Hrereforders shudder in fear... Caddicarus is from Hereford, for Tickle U was where Peppa Pig was unleashed upon an unsuspecting American populace... well... sorta.

As mentioned before, most of Tickle U's shows were given American dubs and Peppa Pig was no exception. The series' English dub has become a popular subject when it came to lost media, and years of searching yielded only one episode, but hey, better than nothing. Apparently the dub was performed in Florida, just wanted to share that.

And yes I have seen Peppa Pig on Tickle U, and it more or less faded from my consciousness until one day I saw my baby cousin watch it on Nick Jr... speaking of.

Peppa Pig is one of many rare examples of shows that've been aired on competing networks, Doug doesn't count as its Nickelodeon and Disney counterparts are considerably different enough to be their own things. Now, it's not entirely odd, given that this is a British cartoon and thus it all depends on what American network would bid for it. Then there's the matter of Cartoon Network airing a dubbed version and Nick Jr. airing the original versions.

Do I really need to talk about this show? Everyone knows what Peppa Pig is for better or worse. If this isn't enough for you and you still don't know, watch Caddicarus.

A Bonus

This will denote one show that came out on Cartoon Network long after Tickle U got canned, because I don't know where else I can talk about this. I would talk about stuff like Baby Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry Kids, but those were not necessarily original shows, just airing in reruns at that point.

Okay enough of the delays.

Ellen's Acres

What the hell is this? I ask not in a negative light, but because of how much of an oddity it was. I have no memory of ever seeing this, lest I stopped watching Cartoon Network in the morning. But what makes this interesting is that it was created by the guy behind Kappa Mikey.

Now, Larry Schwartz's business model centered on making programs on an otherwise light budget, to wit, using Flash and Maya. Not to say it was terrible, Kappa Mikey was a blast and Speed Racer: The Next Generation was decent; Just Stop talked shit about it, and yet he was dumb enough to be friends with DaftPina. His opinion on anything is meaningless.

Okay to make this quick, the theme of this series is imagination. I mean, it could be good, it could be bad, but I didn't really get that far. This series is unique, in that Ellen here reads out the credits. Does it add anything? Not really. I'll say this, Ellen in this is immediately superior to Little Ellen, which was ironically also on a Cartoon Network owned block, or just on a Cartoon Network anything.

The reason I'm talking about it is just to show you it exists. It's especially odd as Schwartz was primarily associated with Nicktoons Network and 4Kids Entertainment. This was one of two things Schwartz made for Cartoon Network, the other being Wulin Warriors, a story I had told ages ago but just know it was a disaster that died after two episodes, either that or Pilli is a national treasure on par with Godzilla.

As far as voice actors go, this was the only thing Emily Cuarro did, she played the title character, but even she has more notability than Amy Casanova, no you don't know who that is but it's connected to Schwartz. We do have one notable actor in this. Marc Thompson turned up in some 4Kids dubs, even played Casey Jones in the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, but also lent his voice to characters in Daria.

Carrie Keranen played Mitsuki on Kappa Mikey and some characters on TMNT 2k3 along with work for 4Kids and NYAV Post, whom Schwartz used for his shows, and also turned up on Miraculous Lady Bug... condolences.

Then there's Vibe Jones, one of many aliases for Shannon Conley. She had a role in Kappa Mikey, but also As Told by Ginger and she even appeared in Ratatoing, but to be fair so did everyone else in her union. Right now she's too busy covering Led Zepplin songs to preoccupy herself much with voice acting.

Final Thoughts

I can see what Cartoon Network were going for here, but honestly it felt like this block was doomed from the start. Cartoon Network has always had a mixed track record when it comes to programing blocks, exceptions apply. I think the problem is that most of the shows made for the block were pretty unremarkable. The network just sought to get whatever they could to fill a two hour slot, not to say that's a bad thing, Nick Jr. has done the same thing to decent success, but I think the network would've benefited from some original productions, or bringing over something popular, they lacked a killer app, so to speak.

I mean, this wasn't even the first time they tried their hand at preschool shows, years ago they made Big Bag, why not try and bring that back? Somehow?

It's clear Cartoon Network were just trying to get their own Nick Jr., there wasn't a lack of effort, and yet this felt cynical by comparison. The shows were fine, but there was little room for the block to occur.

Years later, Cartoon Network would launch Cartoonito, and in the era of streaming, a dedicated block of programs seems like less of a sink because they don't necessarily have to worry about schedules, well, sorta I don't give enough of a shit to check the network itself.

All I have left to say is... Tickle U occurred between 9 to 11.