"Smash your TV and have ADVENTURES!!!" - Disney's "Fluppy Dogs"

I'm still plowing through my YouTube queue, and callooh calleigh! I've hit our first Weird Disney Thing!

Now, if you remember this 1986 episode of the Disney Sunday Movie, and you try to tell me that you expected exactly this from a title like "Fluppy Dogs", you are a damn liar:



If you aren't a liar, then you are psychic.  If you aren't psychic, then you are halfway between insane and awesome.  Because literally the only other option here is that you are Michael Eisner, because when you see a strange Disney thing from a time period roughly stretching from the mid-80's to the late-90's, your explanation will almost certainly involve Michael Eisner somehow.

Now I'm being a little unfair here because there's no hard evidence that this is the case with "Fluppy Dogs".  There is basically no information at all about this franchise to be found online (aside from good old Ghost of the Doll and even their section is scant on information).  Based off what I remember, this hour-long animated special was based off a very generic stuffed dog toy put out by Disney through Kenner around the same time as the Wuzzles, and they followed the formula of far better-loved 80's toys: they were colorful, cute, and collectable.

So, naturally, their nominal movie had to involve dimension-hopping.  Really, the only nostalgia at all appears not to be for the toys but for this special itself, which was itself a pilot for a series that never got off the ground.  I'll be honest that if they hadn't gone for the crazy fantasy route here, I'd have zero nostalgia for the Fluppies myself, since I remember exactly nothing about the toys.

So about the special.  The animation is very iffy for a Disney production.  In particular, it seems the studio was used to more stylized cartoon animals and humans gave them problems.  The Fluppies themselves look fine, but the human characters often just look... well, there's off-model and then there's this, which is like never-even-ON-model-to-start-with.  Aside from that, here are the things that hit me after having not seen it in many years:

* - Mr. Wagstaff is such a "Captain Planet" villain.  Hell, he goes to depths I don't think even Captain Planet villains would sink to, keeping demonstrably sapient cryptid animals in a tiny cage in his library.

* - Speaking of, endangered animals kept in tiny cages in a library.  That's... that's new.  I wonder if Wagstaff's home was initially supposed to resemble the Colby Trophy Room, but they were afraid that would be too traumatic for the children, so they made sure all of Wagstaff's rare animals were still alive.  And in tiny cages.  In a library.  Yup, totally less horrible.

* - One aspect of this special I really like is that they address something that always kind of bothered me about fantasy stories where an ordinary kid goes off on crazy adventures with magical creatures.  The writers of such stories seem to be wholly unaware that kids aren't fully independent.  Don't the kids in these stories go to school?  Wouldn't adults wonder what they've been up to?  Wouldn't their parents ever confront them about all the strange things happening around the house?

* - On that note, man these Fluppies are like the worst peer pressurers:
"You gotta help us, Jamie!"
"But I can't skip school!?!" 
"~*~ADVENTURE!!!~*~" 
"Uuuuugh, fine!  This better not end with Main Street getting flooded!"

* - I'd like to think the first episode of the series that never happened would have been just short scenes of Cryptozoologists, Xenobiologists, and everyone at SETI watching footage of the Fluppy invasion and either fainting, crapping themselves, or breaking out the champagne.

More Disney Television from the 80's: "The Wuzzles" and "The Adventures of the Gummi Bears".

And do read the review of "Fluppy Dogs" on Total Media Bridge as well for a different take on the movie.

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Sketch of the Day!  Decided to color the Fantasyland Dragon making friends with Duffy just for the heck of it. 

In Which Trish lists Things to Geek Out about in the new "My Little Pony" series. Because of COURSE she would.

Oh, c'mon. You knew something like this was going to happen. And yes, I am going to recap the first two episodes of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" when everyone and their mom and their dog is gushing over "The Walking Dead" (which is very good, by the way). That's just how I roll.

So I've just seen the first two episodes of "Friendship is Magic" (it is a two-part premier) but I have already noticed some things that make me very happy as an older Pony fan. VERY happy. This is how you revive an 80's cartoon and do it right. (Suck it, Transformers fans.)

So here's my humble "OMG, did you notice..." list. Pictures and screenshots are from the lovely My Little Pony Lexicon message board. Most of it will be references to the original My Little Pony toys and cartoons -- and this is a brilliant move on the producer's part; after all, the first generation of Pony collectors are old enough to watch this cartoon with their children. Awww...

* - Twilight Sparkle (yeesh, how's that for an unfortunate name?) may be named in honor of the brave little unicorn Twilight in the very first animated "My Little Pony" episode. There's also mention of a Moondancer and an antagonist who wishes for -if you will- a night that never ends.

* - We've got ourselves some male Ponies in this new version of Ponyland (now called Equestria). As a nice continuity nod, yes, they still have those hairy hooves.

* - It took decades, but winged unicorns are finally canon. Finally! We've only seen two so far, and it appears they are both Uber-tier characters, filling a role rather similar to that of the Princess Ponies in the G1 series. (And a whole lot of online personas just got a whole lot Mary-Sue-iier.)

* - Fun little visual shout-out to the old Sprinkles' Waterfall playset, when Rainbow Dash summons that little raincloud for Twilight.

* - Doesn't this new version of Rarity the unicorn look an awful lot like Majesty? And Pinkie Pie looks a bit like Cotton Candy (first Pony I ever owned, for the curious)! The opening credits have quick cameos from Sundance, Baby Lickety Split, Shady, Fizzy, Gusty, and Posy, and the later crowd scenes sport Bubbles, Minty, Melody -- or at least new characters who look a great deal like them.

* - And Applejack's back! I love how her personality was established as the cool older sister already; It's fitting given how she's the oldest character we've seen so far.

* - The new characters have personalities that remind me a great deal of the Ponies from the G1 series. Twilight is sort of like Magic Star and Paradise, Pinkie Pie is like Fizzie and Surprise (and apparently, in an early draft, she *was* Surprise), Fluttershy is like Sweet Stuff and Posy (and, likewise, was Posy in that earlier draft), and Rainbow Dash is the second coming of Firefly.
Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, there is a fellow Browncoat who saw that last bit in a Google search and is about to be horribly disappointed.

* - Speaking of Fluttershy.  She is, basically, 😍 in the form of a pegasus. D'awwww...!

* - A very refreshing change that, I am happy to say, I'm not the only fan who is very happy about: the overall color scheme of Ponyland/Equestria is no longer pink but BLUE!!! Oh, thank Heaven! (And this is coming from someone who just filled a whole Sketchbook with pink critters.)

* - I love all the little touches in the layouts. The unicorn city has spiraling horn-shaped roofs, Ponyville is mostly thatched roofs that kid of look like manes, ect.

* - Manticores!  River Dragons! MALE UNICORNS!!! BIRDS!!! Actual realistic bird-looking birds, not generic little yellow or blue tweety things!!! OMG, this series is going to be amazing!

* - I can't have been the only person who, upon the moment where the Ponies had to cross a raging river, immediately thought, "Ohhh sh*t, here come the Sea Ponies!!!"

* - Great visual shout-out to "Powerpuff Girls" /"Sailor Moon" at the climax. And the Rainbow of Light!!! ZOMG!!!

* - Spoilery stuff: As much as it would have been cool to have a reoccurring villain, I am so, so very happy that Nightmare/Luna got a Heel/Face Turn in the end. After all, the Moon is not evil. And since unicorns are associated with the moon...

Listen, I had zero expectations for this show. I happened to catch a preview on YouTube and fell right in love. This show has put the biggest smile on my face and I have to give mad props to Lauren Faust. (I also definitely have to revisit "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" some day soon.)

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Art of the Day! This is kind of old (from April), but relevant:



By the way, "Tintin"! Even though they aren't shoing what Tintin's face will look like! Which, to me, raises a gigantic red flag!
By the way, did I just see a Coke commercial of all things make a reference to "Primer"?

RE: Wuzzle Wings

Another old LaGremlin land post. Originally posted on 1/20/06. I wrote this several years after "Deep Questions About 80's Cartoons" inspired by one issue on the list I couldn't shake...

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Hey, remember the "Wuzzles"?
 
T’was a fun little cartoon and toy line that followed the great tradition of 80’s cartoons and toys, in that it was colorful, had kind of a sci-fi/fantasy theme, and made little sense you wonder what kinds of medication the people who came up with it were taking at the time.
This is not a “Wuzzle” information article. (There are plenty of excellent fan websites out there, the best of which is The Unofficial Wuzzle Fansite, which is still around. Head over there in case you need to familiarize yourself with these characters again before we go on.)
Instead, consider this an expansion on the article I have about weird questions raised by 80’s cartoons. This article intends to address an issue of great societal fallout, a question I have had about the Wuzzles since the characters debuted. Amazingly, my number one question about the Wuzzles is one that -as far as my research found- no fansite has yet chosen to even acknowledge.
 
For the moment, we are going to ignore the fact that kangaroo and elephant DNA just won't splice. For whatever reason, this (seemingly the obvious question raised by the Wuzzles) did not bother me too much as a kid. What I could never figure out - what I STILL can’t figure out - was this:

WHY does each and every Wuzzle, regardless of species, posses those stupid-looking pastel-colored vestigial wings on their backs?

And they are vestigial. (That’s the technical term for a body part on an animal that is basically pointless; examples include anything inside you right now that you might need to have removed at some point.) Unless you are a Wuzzle who is part insect, these wings are fairly useless. You can only flutter your wings when you are excited or scared, suggesting that they are merely there for decoration. There are, of course, real-world equivalents to this. For example, there are several flightless species of aquatic birds such as Gruiformes and Pelecaniformes, most of whom are able to fly (quite gracefully in the case of pelicans).
However, unlike the Takahe and the Galapagos Cormorant, the Wuzzles appear to be well aware of the crappy hand dealt to them by natural selection here. In one cartoon episode Elaroo even laments the fact that he is flightless. “If only my wings were strong enough to get me off the ground.”
 
So the question is, why give the Wuzzles wings at all? As you can plainly see in the pictures above, the stuffed Wuzzles all had a different style of wing, instead of the little fruit-fly deelies each cartoon Wuzzle had. This is very, very important. It tells us that, as far as the character designers knew, the wings were NOT arbitrary. So we know that something’s up here...

Thank goodness for thrift stores. I have found some particularly damning evidence in this here book. Here we’ve got a story about dear little Moosel having trouble finding a present for another Wuzzle’s birthday (this was the plot of his freebie storybook too). The story itself is a bit boring and gets to a particularly predictable ending, but things get rather intriguing at the top of page six:

Well, hello there? Our little Alcid/Pinniped is clearly attempting to fly here. And according to the text, he has every reason to think this will work. But why…?

No.

Way.

Wuzzles. Flying. Blatantly. In the air. Even the least aerodynamically likely ones.
 
First, here’s the most likely reason why we’re seeing all the Wuzzles flying, and it’s the kind of thing that drives me crazy. There was probably little to no communication at all between the different groups of people working on all the different Wuzzle products. Perhaps there wasn’t much quality control either, and certainly no attention paid to blatant contradictions like this one.
 
This is very likely because, as we’ve already seen, there are many differences between the characters’ designs, depending on whether you are looking at the cartoons, or the toys, or the books. Here’s the worst thing: They probably assumed that the kids wouldn't notice. That kind of assumption REALLY drive me crazy.
 
But that line of thinking isn’t much FUN now, is it? So let’s approach this from a different angle. How come the Wuzzles are able to fly here? I have two theories:
 
THEORY A: This books takes place in the long, long-ago “Golden Age” of the Land of Wuz. Everyone was able to fly back then. Over time, for some unknown reason, many Wuzzles gradually lost the ability. Perhaps they forgot how to fly as they came to rely more and more on artificial means of transportation, such as cars and boats. Kind of poignant, really.
 
THEORY B: This book is actually an “Else-worlds” or “What If…?” Wuzzle story. Also, it takes place in the Matrix. (Shrugs.)

Maybe later I'll post my theory that the Fraggles are descendants of Troodontid theropods.

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Well, I obviously did present my Fraggle theory later. Much later. 

Deep, Unanswered Questions about 80's and 90's Cartoons

The next three posts will be three related features rescued from LaGremlin Land.
Now, I first came up with this way back in my senior year of high school. I was living in a pre-Internet world, remember, and specifically in a pre-Cartoon Overanalizations, pre-TV Tropes' It Just Bugs Me world. Some of these have been addressed at both websites, which happily implies that I'm not weird for wondering about these.
Originally posted way back on 4/11/01.

* - In the "He-Man" and "She-Ra" series, what did Orko look like under that cloak? And was Skowl's flying appendages his wings or were they his actual ears?

* - What ARE the Wuzzles? No, I know what they are but I mean where did they come from? Some kind of bizarre Island of Dr. Moreu type top secret genetic engineering experiment or something?

* - Speaking of "the Wuzzles", why the hell did every one of them, regardless of whether they were part insect or not, have those fly wings on their backs? Were they ever functional? Is there origin then more akin to the David Cronenburg version of "the Fly"? (NOTE: I would expand on this later. Stay tuned.)

* - Let's get another big one out of the way. Why were there only three female Smurfs? Bear in mind that none of these female Smurfs were born in a normal way (both Smurfette and Sassette were created artificially, and I'm not sure of where Granny Smurf came from). Furthermore, if a Smurf village isn't normally supposed to have females in it, then do Smurfs reproduce asexually? And if so, why is Papa Smurf older than the others?

* - Why do the other Smurfs keep taking surprise boxes from Jokey? Don't they know by now that they'll blow up? And why hasn't Jokey been arrested or something?

* - On "Thundercats", each member of the team was an anthropomorphic version of a different species of wildcat. Okay, fine. But on Thundera, their home planet, were there many members of each different species? Did they tend to stick to their own kind romantically or could they interbreed? And would resulting children be sterile hybrids (as in the real-life Liger)?

* - Speaking of logistical problems in a world of Furries, take the case of "the Get-Along Gang". Montgomery is an anthropomorphic moose. As if that isn't disconcerting enough, he has antlers. Are they considered weapons in his world? Are they even functional? And considering that male moose in real life don't grow their antlers until they're adults, then how old is Montgomery (considering the age-range of rest of the Gang is about ten-ish in human terms)?

* - Doesn't it strike anyone else as weirdly racist that the official Gang members were all mammals, while their bullies were reptiles? Yes, I know the Gang hung out with that turtle kid, but he was never really treated as an official member, more like the Furry take on the Token Kid That Is Not White. And how come we never saw any anthropomorphic birds or fish?

* - Finally (and in my opinion, the biggest damn Furry Logistics Problem of all) there was one very memorable episode of "the Get-Along Gang" where the Gang ends up in a snowy town whose residents are on the look out for a missing baby elephant.
A normal, non-anthropomorphic elephant.
FROM THE ZOO!
Now don't you think that if you're going to populate your world with humanoid animals, maybe you should bite the bullet and populate the zoos and pet stores with humans?

* - How old is Rainbow Brite? She looks to be ten, but consider that she's been in charge of providing color and light to the entire Universe forever. Doesn't that make her (and the Sprites, and Starlight, and the Color "Kids") as old as the Universe or older? If so, then what is she, a goddess?

* - On the other hand, maybe time is different on the planet that Rainbowland is on. Maybe while ten years have gone by on Rainbowland, thousands of years have passed on Earth. But if time goes slower on Rainbowland then on Earth, how come Rainbow Brite's Earthling friend, Brian, is still about ten years old every time they run into each other? Why isn't he suddenly eighty-four or something? Does this mean that Rainbow Brite can time-travel? (It's already well established that she can travel through outer space.)

* - Are Chief Quimby and Dr. Claw one and the same? On "Inspector Gadget", Chief Quimby knew exactly what Dr. Claw was up to. It seems very suspicious to me.

* - How come Penny and Brain never b**ched about getting no credit for saving the day? Did they ever snap and go insane? Is that why the spin-off series didn't go into the character's futures but chronicled their past instead?

* - And, finally, what IS Inspector Gadget anyway? A robot? A cyborg? If he's a robot, why does he have a niece? Or is Penny just posing as his niece so he can feel more human? Does anyone else suddenly hear the sad score from "A.I."? (This should go without saying, but we are ignoring the abysmal live-action Disney film.)

* - Any time the adventuring team on the surprisingly good "Dungeons and Dragons" cartoon found some way or other to get home, the porthole was only open for a very short time and a LOT of that time they lost was spent debating whether to take Uni with them. Ever get the sense that Uni was trying to keep the kids from getting home? Was this her own plan or was she Venger's pawn? Or was the whole thing Dungeon Master's idea?

* - Speaking of Venger and Dungeon Master, there's a famous episode where D. M. calls Venger his son. Now, I know he might have meant it figuratively but what if he didn't? And if Venger is D. M.'s kid, then can you imagine what his mom must have looked like? (We are ignoring the never-finished final episode, where much of this is explained.)

* - Would anyone else feed Uni to Tiamat during that very first encounter in the opening sequence or is it just me?

* - How does "Muppet Babies" fit into "Muppet Show" continuity? Is it about the Muppets as kids, or is it about the second generation of Muppets? If it's about the Muppets as kids, how come both Robin and Bean Bunny show up if they're supposed to be the youngest Muppets?

* - And we NEVER saw Nannie's face. We never even saw her above the shoulders. What the heck did she look like? Consider that it's left unclear as to whether she's just the babies' caretaker or if she's their mother. And if she isn't their mother than where and who are their parents?

* - The cast of the surprisingly not-terrible "My Little Pony" cartoon changed several times as old ponies in the collectible toy line were retired and new ones introduced. Okay, but Megan and Spike remained in the cast each season. Didn't they notice that some of their friends had vanished?

* - Furthermore, all the ponies in Ponyland were female (the males were conveniently "on a race around the world" and only appeared in one episode). Where the heck did the baby ponies come from?

* - Aside from the fact that it rhymed, why did they call it the "Care Bear Stare"? They weren't staring so much as zapping people with pictures on their tummies. What did getting "Stared" feel like? Being bombarded with giant Lucky Charms?

* - And aside from alliterative appeal, why were they called the Care Bear Cousins? Were they the Bear's actual blood relatives? How can a bear possibly be related to a penguin?

* - Why did the opening of the second "Care Bears Movie" completely contradicted the Cousins' origin story from the first one? Did they think the kids wouldn't notice?

* - The second "Care Bears Movie" was subtitled "A New Generation", so maybe it's about the second group of Care Bears. But if that's true, what happened to their parents from the first movie? Why do the "new generation" Bears act and look EXACTLY like the first batch? Were they cloned from the first Bears after they died in a horrible accident (maybe the giant heart from the first movie's end title sequence fell and flattened them during the final group portrait)?

* - The "Silverhawks" were a superhero team of cyborgs who ran around exploring space, fighting bad guys, the usual. So why the heck did they have a country singer up there with them? Yeah, I know he was a cyborg too, but still, what kind of help is he going to provide? Scaring space monsters away with a rousing rendition of "Achy-Breaky Heart"?

* - Was "Silverhawks" actually supposed to be some kind of cybernetic "Real World"? Like a bunch of totally random people (and their mascot hawk, of course, and whatever the hell Copper Kid was) get turned into cyborgs and sent into space and we get to watch what happens?

* - How big were "the Snorks"? Some episodes show them as being about two or three feet tall but others place them at only inches high, or even about the size of a cocktail shrimp. And, once and for all, if they were tiny, then were they related to the Smurfs or not?

* - What's the deal with the Snork's "snork" anyway? I guess it's a breathing organ, but how does it work? Does it work like a gill or like a snorkel? If it works like a snorkel, then how come you never see the Snorks surface for air? There was also that one Snork who had two snorks, and a couple of characters with snorks on their face where a human would have his nose. Are they some kind of advanced "Super Snorks" or are these primitive features (akin to a horse being born with dewclaws)?

* - Say, how does the Scooby Gang keep functioning? They have no jobs; they tool around in a van all day and solve mysteries just for fun. What do they do for money? For example, how do they afford to go to the fancy ski resort in the mystery of the Abominable Snowman?

* - Were the guest voices in "Scooby Movies" picked completely at random or what? They had the cast of "Batman" in one episode, the Mamas and the Papas in the next one, and the Harlem Globetrotters in the next. Tell me they didn't pick the names from a list of people who liked "Scooby Doo" and wanted to be a guest voice out of a hat or something.

* - With regards to "The Chipmunk Reunion", which, as you'll see, ended up raising a LOT more questions than it purported to answer: Why did some of the forest animals wear clothes while others didn't? If Dave lived in a really nice little cabin out in the woods, why did he move out of it and into the suburbs? Or was he staing there temporarily for "mental health"? Wouldn't it have been less traumatic for Ma Chipmunk to ask Dave if she could move in with him for the winter along with her children? What did the Boar have against the Chipmunks? And finally, ARE the Chipmunks actual chipmunks? I ask this because in the finale, they're dancing around with some other rodents who look a LOT more like real life Chipmunks than the Chipmunks do.

* - What does the bathroom in CatDog's house look like and how do they use it?

* - Actually, forget CatDog. On "DragonTales", what does the bathroom in Zack and Weezy's lair look like and how do *they* use it? More to the point, what happens when one or both of them wants to start dating?

* - And what was the go with the Dinosaur Family in "Pee-Wee's Playhouse"? They were dinosaurs and they lived in a MOUSE HOLE. The father was a Triceratops, the mother was a Styracosaur. The twins were... I don't know what the hell they were (my first inclination is to call them Parasauralophi, but... no), and they didn't look anything like their parents. And they have a monitor lizard for a "dog". And the holiday special implies that they are Jewish. Yeah, I know this is "Pee-Wee's Playhouse", but...

* - Wouldn't it be a little awkward to live in Pee-Wee's Playhouse, seeing as everything (including the food) is alive in there? Think about it.

* - And finally, how come those of us who grew up with these shows don't have a laundry list of mental disorders from trying to figure all of these out?

My Little Pwny - A Girl and her Quest for a Fleet of Fuzzy Fliers

I am still recovering from this past weekend. But I have also just listed my very first group of items up for auction on Ebay. Do have a look, won't you? And you know, it's high time I write about this My Little Pony thing. There will certainly be more about this later.

Some weeks ago, I was working on some Photoshoppery when I started getting very hungry. I checked the mailbox on the way to the kitchen and --
Bouncy and her baby! This was a deal on Ebay that I just could not pass on. They seriously needed a bath, but afterward, they looked lovely. They were ready to stand among my growing army of So-Soft Pegasuses.

Aren't they lovely? I have more on the way from the "worldwide garage sale". Click for a bigger picture and the surprisingly sweet story behind Northstar and her kid.