Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Bailey's Comets"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this show, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

I recently recieved a copy of Mark Arnold's book Think Pink! The DePatie-Freleng Story for Christmas, and it reminded me that I haven't talked much about DePatie-Freleng Enterprises on this blog. These guys seem to get a bad rap nowadays, mostly because of their work with the Looney Tunes characters (they did most of those shorts where Daffy Duck faces off against Speedy Gonzales), but I've always had a fondness for them. Most of that, of course, stems from the fact that I love the Pink Panther, but they also gave us (among other things) the Inspector, the Ant and the Aardvark, Misterjaw, the Blue Racer, and all those Dr. Seuss specials from the 1970s. You gotta at least give 'em credit for THAT.

DePatie-Freling Enterprises made a lot of cartoons - not quite as many as Hanna-Barbera, but still a lot - and most of those are rather obscure today. Which means I have a bumper crop of material for my blog. I previously attempted to write reviews of their Dr. Dolittle cartoon and The Oddball Couple (which was The Odd Couple except animated and they were a cat and a dog), but neither one gave me enough joke material. While reading the book, however, I found one particular cartoon that seemed like a good choice to review on this blog: Bailey's Comets.

Created by David DePatie, Friz Freleng, Joe Ruby, and Ken Spears, this show premiered in September 1973 and is apparently considered one of the crappiest things DePatie-Freleng ever created. It was such a failure that DePatie-Freleng wasn't able to create another new series until 1975 and resulted in the cancelation of a cartoon about Evel Knievel cartoon they were working on that was supposed to premiere in 1974. Only sixteen episodes, each one consisting of two segments, were produced.

Why does the show exist? Roller derby was popular in the 1970s and Hanna-Barbera's Wacky Races was successful. I guess the mindset was that if you did a clone of Wacky Races where fifteen roller derby teams compete to find treasure, you'd have a hit on your hands. They did not. One of the animators, Martin Strudler, dubbed the show a disaster. "It was six teams on roller derbies and each team had to be six members. There were witches and one with hillbillies, etc. and you had to do them roller-skating," he said. "You had to animate six characters roller-skating right and then six characters roller-skating left and then six characters roller-skating towards the camera and then six characters skating away from the camera on six different teams. So, we were animating forever with that because there had to be stock footage while they were racing around the world. Then we had to do the backgrounds because the race went to Paris and we had to do Paris backgrounds... Today they would do it with a computer and it would be five times as fast, but this was all hand animated; six characters and eight drawings for each foot. It was 16 drawings before you could start a repeat and six different teams. It was a huge amount of work. I don't think they realized that when they got started. They signed on for it and then they had to do it. Dave DePatie had a fit. He was on the business side. The art directors did it in order to sell it and I don't think he knew what he was getting into when he signed on for it. Boy, it was a toughie."

The titular Bailey's Comets, one of fifteen roller derby teams featured in the show.

You can currently find a few episodes of Bailey's Comets on YouTube (there's apparently never been a home media release for the show, with the possible exception of a bootleg DVD or two), not in the greatest quality but beggars can't be choosers. We're going to watch the seventh episode of the show, which consists of the segments "Transylvania Mad Transit" and "Philippine Flip-Flop", to see if it's as bad as people claim. Who knows? Maybe there's SOMETHING of substance here...

"Transylvania Mad Transit" begins with the teams racing across the Transylvania countryside to Frankenstein's castle, where the next clue to the million dollar prize will be. The show's commentators, Gabby (voiced by Frank Welker) and Dooter Roo (voiced by Daws Butler), tell us that Bailey's Comets is in first place. The team consists of handsome leader Barnaby Bailey (voiced by Carl Esser), his blonde maybe-sorta-girlfriend Candy (Karen Smith), red-haired Brooklyn-accented Sarge (Kathy Gori), bespectacled team mechanic Wheelie (Jim Begg), ditzy Bunny (Sarah Kennedy), and chubby Pudge (Frank Welker). Since they're the main characters, they're the only team that doesn't have a gimmick.

No, wearing white and red is not a gimmick. Sorry, guys.

In second place are the Jekyll-Hydes, a bunch of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde clones.

"I was JEKYLL-JEKYLL-HYDE-JEKYLL-HYDE-HYDE-JEKYLL,
JEKYLL-JEKYLL-HYDE-JEKYLL-HYDE!"

And in third place are the Broomer Girls, a group of witches who aren't actually roller-skating but rather riding their brooms... but the brooms have roller skates on them, so I guess that's allowed?

Please forgive the mediocre quality of the screencaps.

The witches are also allowed to use their powers to sabotage the other teams, apparently. Specifically, they conjure up a rainstorm above the heads of Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes. Is this in the rules, or are the Broomer Girls just like Dick Dastardly in that they don't give a crap about the rules?

"We'd better find some shelter before we're washed out of the race!" Barnaby points out. Fortunately, there's a castle up ahead. Unfortunately, the castle belongs to a vampire. And not just ANY vampire - the one and only Dr. Dracula! Yes, Dracula has a medical degree. I'm learning so much today!

Also here is his dimwitted assistant, Igor. Everybody say "Hi" to Igor.

I thought Igor was Dr. Frankenstein's assistant. I guess he's a freelancer?

Dracula has just completed a "Transylvania People-Transformer" and needs some humans to test it on. And what luck, Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes skate right through the front door. With them apparently out of the race, the Broomer Girls are in the lead, followed by the Mystery Mob - a team of skaters always stuck in a big cloud of dust, so no one knows what they look like (saving the animators the trouble of having to design another team) - and the Ramblin' Rivets - which consist of a diminuitive professor (also Daws Butler) and some robots he built - fighting for second place.

Isn't it kind of funny how both Wacky Races AND this show feature a racer who's also a
mechanically-minded genius? But I'm sure it's just a coincidence. He said sarcastically.

One of the robots has a vaccuum cleaner built into it, which it uses to suck up the Mystery Mob and spit them out behind them. Again, I'm just gonna have to assume that this is okayed by the rules. If not, the Ramblin' Rivets should be disqualified.

Meanwhile, the Jekyll-Hydes and Bailey's Comets are still inside the castle. Funny thing is, Gabby straight up refers to it as the "house of Dracula", so if he knows that Dracula lives there, why on Earth didn't he warn Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes not to go in? Would that be interferring with the race too much or something? Does he WANT to see them get their blood sucked out of them?

Actually, even though Bailey's Comets and the Jekyll-Hydes were previously seen skating into the castle, now they're just standing at the front door - and NOT in the rain, which means there's no reason for them to go inside anymore. I mean, aside from "because the plot demands it". When Bunny attempts to ring the doorbell, she just winds up honking Dracula's schnozz.

"Honk honk!"

Dracula opens the door, welcomes the teams, and then sends them down a trapdoor. Well, at least he was polite enough to welcome them first. Meanwhile, Barnaby and Candy peek through the castle's basement window and are horrified to see their team and the Jekyll-Hydes hooked up to some strange machine.

Dracula explains that with his Transylvania People-Transformer, he will "make the Comets act like the Jekyll-Hydes and the Jekyll-Hydes act like the Comets". So, it's not a "transformer", it's just a brain-swapping device. And apparently it doesn't even work the way it's intended, because when Igor pulls the switch, Bunny winds up in Pudge's body, Pudge is in Sarge's body (by the way, who the heck names their kid "Sarge"?), and Wheelie is in Bunny's body.

By the way, Wheelie calls Pudge "Banana Brain" a lot. I don't know what his problem is.

"You goofed, Igor! THIS is the right switch!" Dracula claims, and when he pulls it, it turns out the machine DOESN'T just swap brains after all: the Comets are turned into Mr. Hyde-esque monsters, and the Jekyll-Hydes, who are in their Mr. Hyde forms, become cheery humans. Then Dracula just lets them leave the castle and head back into the race... wait, he's not gonna keep him as slaves or anything? Then what was the point of even doing this? Oh, right, right. For SCIENCE!

Meanwhile, the other teams are still doing just fine in the race. In the lead are the Gargantuan Giants, a football team so big that you can only see their roller skates, which their normal-sized coach rides on.

"I knew making them take steroids once a day for three days was a good idea!"

Right behind them are the Slag Brothers... uh, I mean the Stone Rollers, three cavemen and a dinosaur who I guess stumbled upon a time machine and came to the 1970s.

I suppose there's a Flintstones joke I could make here, but I can't think of anything funny.

And in third place are the Cosmic Rays, who are aliens riding around in a skating UFO. Okay, who let that one pigeon from Bolt onto the show's crew?

"Huh. According to this map, we were supposed to take a LEFT turn at the London Eye..."

"Blast it, Renaldo! I TOLD YOU this wasn't Roswell!"

And then there are the Hairy Mountain Red Eyes, a group of hillbillies. Gee, I wonder which Wacky Races character THESE guys are inspired by... maybe the Ant Hill Mob?

Their arch-enemy? Clear Eyes. Get it?

And the Rockin' Rollers, a band consisting of hippies. If this show had become a big hit, there would probably be a lot of jokes online about them being stoners. That's just how the internet works.

Why do so few of the roller-skaters in this show wear helmets? Maybe the blonde one
thinks that his puffy afro will protect his head or something, I don't know...

And, of course, the Roller Bears (I guess this is supposed to be a pun on "polar bears", even though none of the bears are white), five bears who learned how to roller-skate and constantly laugh like idiots. See, Wacky Races only had ONE bear as part of the cast. THIS show has FIVE. So it's TOTALLY different from Wacky Races!

"Hey, what's that weird pipe-shaped thing above our heads?"

"I don't know, but it makes me laugh for some reason!"

As for the Comets... well, they look pretty much the same, aside from their skin having a bit of a green-ish tint to it... but now they're acting like Dick Dastardly and have decided to lure Barnaby and Candy into a trap. For some reason.

Is it weird that I'm wondering where they got the giant cage?

Not content with just trapping them in a cage, the other Comets put the cage on a teeter-totter sitting under a large boulder danging from a rope tied to a log hanging off a cliff. When the candle burns through the rope, down the boulder will fall, hitting the teeter-totter and catapulting Barnaby and Candy out of the race. I guess turning EEEEEEEEEEE-VIL made Sarge, Wheelie, Pudge, and Bunny forget that Barnaby and Candy are on their team. And, honestly, I think even Wile E. Coyote would find this needlessly complicated.

Fortunately, as they're skating away cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West, a puff of smoke appears and Sarge, Wheelie, Pudge, and Bunny change back to normal... except they're British now a la Dr. Jekyll. They quickly save Barnaby and Candy from the trap... but for some reason don't bother to free them from the cage.

I honestly want to see what the now-nice Mr. Hydes are up to. Are they still in Dracula's castle?

Alas, they're only Jekyll-esque for a few seconds before turning back into EEEEEEE-VIL Mr. Hyde wannabes. So they drag them back to the trap... but then turn into Dr. Jekylls again and carry them away from the trap. Then they turn into Mr. Hydes and carry them back to the trap. And this time, after putting them back on the teeter-totter, they stand on top of the cage and revel in how nasty they are. I would love it if the boulder suddenly fell onto the tap while they were doing this, sending THEM flying to kingdom come with Barnaby and Candy. That would honestly be pretty funny.

That candle is sure taking its sweet time burning through the rope, isn't it?

I actually wasn't expecting that to happen, but guess what? It does! As soon as Sarge, Wheelie, Pudge, and Bunny turn back into Dr. Jekylls, the boulder falls down and launches them into the air.

After landing painfully, Barnaby points out that the only way they're gonna get back in the race is by getting the Jekyll-Hydes, going back to Dracula's place, and changing everyone back to normal. They find the Jekyll-Hydes off-camera and go back to the castle, but the Comets go all Mr. Hyde again, and during the ensuing chase they wind up smashing into the machine... which somehow changes them and the Jekyll-Hydes back to normal. Oh-kaaaaaaaaay then...

"My skin is so soft! That new lotion I bought is doing wonders!"

Thus, everyone is back to normal - except for Dracula and Igor, who are now in each other's bodies. For some reason. The other teams, meanwhile, have reached Frankenstein's castle and found the million dollar clue. When the Comets reach the castle, they meet Frankenstein's Monster himself, who tells them to take Highway 102. And the Broomer Girls get no comeuppance for starting this whole mess in the first place. Next segment!

Now the racers are in the Philippines, and the Comets are having trouble regaining their lead. Fortunately, Wheelie has "Hippety-Hop Grasshopper Skates" to help them. Maybe I'm just weird, but to me, leaping through the air and roller skates sound like a dangerous combination.

"I yanked the legs off an actual grasshopper. Come at me, PETA!"

I expected the "Grasshopper Skates" to backfire spectacularly in a comedic way because that's usually how inventions in 1970s cartoons work, but nope, they work just fine. Soon the Comets are hopping around like a kangaroo right by the hillbillies and the professor and his robots, but the Yo-Ho-Hos - pirates who ride a raft with roller skates on it - aren't going to stand for this.

I like how they don't have an actual mast, just a guy holding a tiny sail. They're pirates on a
budget.

What do the pirates do? They push the Comets, the Red Eyes, and Ramblin' Rivets off a cliff. How is THIS allowed in the rule book? On the bright side, the pirates wind up getting knocked off the cliff as well. I believe this is what is known as "karma".

Fortunately, the Comets have airbags in their roller skates - always be prepared - and they all land in a mysterious valley. The race continues, with the Cosmic Rays in the lead. In second place are the Roller Coasters, consisting of a ringmaster, a fat lady in a tutu, a strongman, a clown, a lion, and a skinny guy with an extremely long neck (the kind that could get one mistaken for a giraffe). I've heard of a flying circus, but a roller-skating circus? That's just absurd!

Seriously, that guy's neck is so long, when it rains, he's probably the first to know.

And in third place? The Texas Black Hats, a group of outlaws riding on roller-skating horses.

Jeez, the quality of the screencaps is getting worse...

Eventually, the Comets find a village of natives - and a giant lizard! Like, at what point do we start calling it a dinosaur? Barnaby, Candy, Wheelie, Bunny, and Sarge manage to get away, but Pudge isn't so lucky. Still, he manages to defeat the lizard through WACKY SHENANIGANS!

I'm going to assume this is a monitor lizard, which can indeed grow pretty big. Although they
generally do not eat humans...

Because he saved them all from the giant lizard, the natives dub Pudge their new leader. The others tell him that he can't be their leader because of, you know, the race, but the natives aren't going to take "no" for an answer. If he won't be their leader, he tells them, he can't leave at all... unless he defeats their champion.

Okay, what the heck is a gorilla doing in the Philippines? There aren't any gorillas in the Philippines. I don't think there are even any big apes there. What, did this gorilla come to the Philippines on vacation and get captured by the natives there? If so, no wonder he's so angry...

So it's either be king or fight the gorilla. But Barnaby has another idea - Wheelie apparently designed skates with little shovels in them, so they can just tunnel out of the village. This, however, might be difficult because the Ramblin' Rivets, the Red Eyes, and the Yo-Ho-Hos are determined to keep the Comets from ever leaving the valley. I guess this is because they think it'll increase their chances of winning. Or maybe Barnaby said that they looked like dorks or something.

Yes, the professor has a German accent. He's a professor in a cartoon, of course he has
a German accent.

It's time for Pudge to wrestle the gorilla, and he can't even use his "Grasshopper Skates" because the leader of the Yo-Ho-Hos swapped them out for normal ones. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

"Do you know how long it took me to find a bag of giant golf clubs? They cost, like,
two hundred bucks on eBay, but it was totally worth it."

Eventually, the Comets decide to just make a run for it. Bunny calms the gorilla down by singing (music soothes the savage beast, as they say), and Barnaby uses "Port-a-Bridge Blastoff Skates" to make it across a ravine and create a bridge for the other Comets to cross. Kind of anti-climactic, isn't it?

After rejoining the race, the Comets make it to the volcano where the clue is. Of course, because it's a volcano in a cartoon, the volcano erupts, but there's a message in the smoke it emits. I'm not sure how whoever set up the race did this, I'm going to assume that they used magic. The clue is "TAKE THE BING BING BANG BARGE TO THE NEXT CLUE!" And again, no reprecussions for the Ramblin' Rivets, the Red Eyes, or the Yo-Ho-Hos. Shouldn't they at least get points off or something?

What's the Verdict?

"You got your Josie and the Pussycats in my Wacky Races!"

"Well, YOU got YOUR Wacky Races into MY Josie and the Pussycats!"

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. This isn't the absolute worst cartoon ever, but much like The Oddball Couple, there's not much of substance here. It's incredibly mediocre. You know how a lot of people badmouth Hanna-Barbera's 1970s output? This is what people think shows like Speed Buggy and The Funky Phantom are like. Just take a popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon and copy it. In fact, as stated above, this cartoon attempts to be both Wacky Races AND Josie and the Pussycats at the same time - except instead of an automobile race or a rock band, the six teens winding up in these weird situations and dealing with bizarre  villains and monsters are in a roller derby. Speaking of which, there are too many characters - there's a reason why most of the characters in Wacky Races weren't teams. At most, you'd have two racers in one car, but the only actual "team" was the Ant Hill Mob. As a result, most of the characters seem underdeveloped, even the ones who actually had focus in these episodes.

Did the show deserve to be such a spectacular failure? Probably not, but it's still pretty weak. My advice: either stick with Wacky Races or watch that Pink Panther cartoon where he gets roller skates. You'll have more fun. Trust me.

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "3-2-1 Penguins!"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

I've talked about VeggieTales before, you'll recall, but in that post I didn't talk much about MY personal history with the franchise. I mentioned that I saw Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie in theaters, but that's about it.

My parents introduced my older sister and me to VeggieTales when we were very little. We had the CDs - I distinctively remember having one of those personalized CDs where the characters say your name, that was pretty exciting. We still have two ornaments featuring Bob and Larry on our Christmas tree. And of course, we had at least some of the episodes on... I want to say VHS. So, yeah, we were fans of the show... at least for a few years. I didn't exactly stop being a VeggieTales fan, for some reason we just stopped buying the episodes when they came out. It wasn't until the 2010s that I found out about the post-Jonah VeggieTales stuff like Sumo of the Opera, Lord of the Beans, and Gideon: Tuba Warrior. And it wasn't until the 2020s that I actually found these episodes online and watched them! Well, sort of - in 2017 I was on a bit of a VeggieTales kick and found the "countertop" segments of these episodes on YouTube.

Here's one of the two Christmas ornaments featuring Bob and Larry
that we hang on our Christmas tree every year.

I don't know how many of the episodes we had on VHS. I think we had Where's God When I'm S-Scared?, Madame Blueberry, and one of the Larry-Boy ones. The only one I know for sure that we had was the 2001 Ultimate Silly Song Countdown. Yeah, I remember having a CD but I don't remember which of the episodes we owned. Maybe if the characters in the episodes had said my name, too...

Considering what big VeggieTales fans we were, it's odd that we didn't also get into Big Idea Productions' OTHER series, 3-2-1 Penguins!.

It wasn't for a lack of trying - we had ONE 3-2-1 Penguins! DVD, but that's it. Apparently, everyone else in the world felt the same way - 3-2-1 Penguins! never became a huge phenomenon like VeggieTales. Its biggest claim to fame is being the only thing Big Idea made that wasn't a VeggieTales production.

Much like VeggieTales, this show - created by Jeff Parker, Nathan Carlson, and Phil Lollar - was originally a direct-to-video series, with the first episode released on November 14th, 2000. Eventually, it started airing on TV as part of NBC's Qubo block (which you'll recall also aired VeggieTales during the 2000s as well). In total, twenty-seven episodes were produced, six direct-to-video and twenty-one made for TV.

Each episode had one of two kids going on a fantastic adventure with the four wacky penguins: vain and arrogant Captain Zidgel, Australian-accented First Officer Midgel, incredibly smart Doctor Fidgel, and the kindhearted if dimwitted Kevin. These adventures involved them going to some far-off planet and solving a problem for its inhabitants - a problem that always, ALWAYS had to do with whatever lesson the kid who the episode focuses on has to learn: don't complain about what you don't have, don't be a lying liar from Liarsburg, don't be impatient, that sort of thing.

3-2-1 Penguins! was never able to step out of VeggieTales' shadow. Perhaps the show was merely in the right place at the wrong time. It wasn't until halfway through the 2000s that people became obsessed with penguins. March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, Surf's Up, Club Penguin... people just couldn't get enough of penguins. I remember even Nickelodeon Magazine made a joke about it: "Doesn't anyone care about seals anymore? How about polar bears? It's time for penguins to chill out for a while." I dunno, I don't know how good the ratings on Qubo were, and the direct-to-video episodes apparently sold pretty well, but that really just makes the show's obscurity more of a headscratcher. Nowadays, it seems to be a cult classic of sorts, if nothing else...

So, today, we're going to watch one of the direct-to-video 3-2-1 Penguins! episodes - the very first one to be released, in fact. This is 3-2-1 Penguins!: Trouble on the Planet Wait-Your-Turn.

The episode starts off with the kids, twin siblings Jason (voiced by Mark Marten) and Michelle (Melissa Peterson), being driven to their grandmother's cottage. They're going to be staying with their grandma (Kymberly Mellen) while their faceless parents (Pamela Thomas and Ron Wells) are... I don't think it's specified where they're going, but wherever it is, it's going to be for twenty-seven episodes.

Hey, Jason, Doug Funnie called. He wants his outfit back.

Michelle is very happy to be at Grandma's house. Jason, not so much. He's rather be at Space Camp. So, to lift their son's spirits, the parents give him a video game console and the best game in the world, Bonsai Master 3: Pruner of Destiny (an entire video game about pruning hedges? Sounds exciting. Sort of), before they head off to the airport. Hooking it up to Grandma's TV, which is one of those old-timey pre-rabbit ears sets, takes some difficulty, but Jason manages to pull it off. Wow, how old are these kids? Seven? When I was seven, I had no idea how to hook up a video game console to a TV. Then again, I didn't play much in the way of video games anyway...

Problem number two rears its ugly head after that: Jason and Michelle both want to play the game first. Fortunately, Grandma steps in before they can start "fighting like frogs and dogs" as she puts it. "I'm glad you got a new widget there, but you need to learn to wait your turn!" she claims. "To let someone else go first every now and then! It's called PATIENCE, and it's a virtue!"

Don't worry, Grandma, they're not really fighting. They're just practicing their interpretive dance
moves.

To remind everyone that this is a Big Idea production, Grandma quotes the Good Book: "A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly." The kids don't get the point. Weird thing is, there are two controllers, so clearly Bonsai Master 3 isn't a one-player game... so what's the problem? Why are they arguing over who gets to go first at all?

Y'know what else is weird? Why does the grandmother has a British accent but Jason, Michelle, and their parents are American?

I mean, Jason argues that only one of the controllers is plugged in, but can't they
just plug in the other one too?

Alas, Grandma's primitive television set just can't handle the new-fangled video game technology or whatever, and it blows a fuse. So no Bonsai Master 3 for either of them, and Grandma's making them kidney pie for dinner doesn't do anything to lift their spirits.

After being excused (they claim that they're not really hungry because they stopped at Burger Bell on the way there - a reference to the VeggieTales song "His Cheeseburger"), the kids run up the stairs, and Michelle notices four little penguin figurines on a shelf. In their bedroom, Michelle plays with the penguins and Jason lays on the bed being bored... that is, until he takes notice of the door that leads to the attic. In the attic, Jason finds a bunch of space stuff, and Michelle finds a bunch of framed pictures of their grandfather, who it seems was a scientist of some sort. They even spot his telescope, and once again, they both want to use it first. Long story short, Michelle claims that since she's the oldest by five minutes, she gets to decide who goes first. And she decides that Jason should... nah, I'm just kidding, she decides that SHE should go first. This makes Jason MAD! Or at least rather irked.

While Michelle is peering into the telescope, Jason spots the little penguin figurines sitting next to a toy rocketship, and he gets an idea...

"You got your penguins in my science fiction!"

"Well, YOU got your science fiction in my penguins!"

"Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay..."

Okay, we're thirteen minutes in. Where are the penguins? The REAL penguins, not the little non-sentient figurines?

While playing with the penguins in the spaceship, Jason stumbles backwards thanks to a toolbox lying on the floor, and the ship goes flying into a box. Seeing as we don't hear a loud smashing sound, I'm going to assume that the ship and penguins DIDN'T shatter into a million pieces. Instead, the ship bounces out of the box and starts flying around on its own. What sort of sorcery IS this?!

Then the... window in front of the ship (what do you call that?) opens up, and Jason is shocked to discover that the penguin figurines are now sentient... and they have snazzy orange spacesuits on now, too! From what I've heard, it's never made clear if the adventures that the kids go on with the penguins are real or if they're just the kids imagining, but I'm going to assume it's the first one because, let's be honest, it's a lot cooler.

"Jason T. Conrad, we need your help!" one of the penguins tells Jason, who's understandably quite shocked by the fact that the penguin figurines are now ALIVE. Obviously Jason isn't going to fit in the tiny spaceship, but Fidgel (Page G. Hearn) has a way to fix that: a shrinking ray! Or at least I'm HOPING that it's a shrinking ray. It probably is... somehow I doubt they're gonna have the penguin blast the kid with a laser gun.

I was going to have the caption here be "Say hello to my little friend!", but I decided that it's
too overused a pop culture reference.

Actually, it's not a shrinking ray. When he pulls the trigger, out pops a mechanical hand attached to a long rope that grabs Jason, shrinks him down, and pulls him into the spaceship. And Michelle doesn't hear any of this going on, for some reason.

Once Jason is inside the spaceship, it flies out the window - Michelle, amusingly, STILL not noticing a thing - and Jason is formally introduced to the penguins. Zidgel (also Ron Wells) is the one with the pompadour. Think of him as a penguin version of Captain Kirk.

Or a penguin version of Zapp Brannigan, who was ALSO based on William Shatner...

Fidgel is the rockhopper penguin with the goggles. He's the brains of the outfit - to make a comparison to another group of animated penguins, the Kowalski of the bunch.

Is it just me, or does he kind of look like one of the Save-Ums?

Midgel (Greg Mills) is the pilot and engineer. The most interesting thing about Midgel is that he has an accent that sounds like it's both a Liverpoolian accent and a Brooklyn accent at the same time.

In his spare time, Midgel does some freelance work for Linux.

And Kevin (Ron Smith) is... well, he's pretty much comic relief.

He's like a fusion of Rico and Private.

"We've recieved a report on our fax machine that Planet Wait-Your-Turn is in crisis," Fidgel explains. What's the crisis? They don't know, they were low on toner. And just what IS Planet Wait-Your-Turn? Well, it's a planet that appears to be made out of purple Swiss cheese... populated by sentient vaccuum cleaners.

I'm going to repeat that. A planet that appears to be made out of purple Swiss cheese, populated by sentient vaccuum cleaners.

Yeah, I have no idea what I just typed either.

Somehow, this STILL isn't as bizarre as Ned's Newt.

The vaccuum cleaners are all standing in line, for some reason, and they keep cutting in front of others. "Kind of odd behavior for a planet called 'Wait-Your-Turn'," Midgel points out. I do love it when a character in what I'm reviewing makes the funny observations for me. "They're all cutting in line! They're, they're BARBARIANS!" Zidgel declares. When Fidgel asks why everyone is cutting in line, a vaccuum cleaner explains that it all started when President No-I'm-the-President pushed his way into office (and yet, he STILL sounds like a better president than Donald Trump).

Another vaccuum cleaner, who sounds almost exactly like Larry the Cucumber, tells the penguins that they didn't call them about the cutting in line problem. They called about the heat. Why is it so hot, hot, hot? According to the penguins' satellite viewing system, the planet itself is impatient too! It's broken out of its normal orbit and is trying to cut in front of the other planets in its solar system! Fidgel adds that there's some sort of "cutting in line bug" that's infected the entire planet - the same bug that was introduced to their environment by President No-I'm-the-President.

"This whole situation really SUCKS!"




Get it? 'Cause it's a planet of sentient vaccuum cleaners?

But wait, there's more! In taking itself out of its normal orbit, the planet is now heading directly towards its sun. "Yeah, but at least we're ahead of all the other planets," a vaccuum cleaner points out. And if Jason and the penguins don't get out of there, the cutting in line bug will infect THEM too! They'll become obsessed with being first for everything... which Jason more or less already was, so...

"People, don't you understand what happens when you get too close to the sun?!" Jason asks. "You'll BURN UP!" In fact, several of the planet's trees have already burst into flame. Everybody makes a run for the ship, but they're all too busy trying to get onto the ship first to actually, y'know, GET ONTO THE SHIP. Jason gives a big speech about how waiting your turn is good. And it is. Especially if it's waiting your turn to do something that isn't fun, like get a shot or clean the sink.

Why does a vaccuum cleaner need teeth? Do sentient vaccuum cleaners eat?
Do they have digestive tracts?

"Having to go first all the time only leads to trouble! Like getting burned up by the sun!" Jason says. "Now, the consequences are not always so extreme, but good things come to those who wait." And when he offers to let someone else go first, it destroys the cutting in line bug and causes the planet to return to its normal orbit. I was expecting everything to be resolved by EVERYONE on the planet offering to let whoever it was behind htem go first, but that would probably take a very long time and the planet would likely have made contact with the sun by the time they were finished.

Incidentally, President No-I'm-the-President was at the front of the line when the planet abruptly stopped. He is now slowly hurtling through space and nobody cares. The new president? President After You... who I'm guessing is supposed to be a caricature of somebody. Bill Clinton was the president when this episode came out, so maybe it's him?

Was Bill Clinton ever a brunette?

Everyone thanks Jason and the penguins for saving them all. And what was it that the vaccuum cleaners were waiting in line to see? Why, a telescope, of course! A telescope that allows them to peer at Michelle, who's spying on them through HER telescope! Oh, the irony!

Jason and the penguin take off in their rocket ship, and as they're flying through space we suddenly cut back to Jason playing with the toy rocket back in the attic. Was it real? Was it all in Jason's head? We may never know.

I've gotta ask, though... if it WAS all in Jason's head, why would he imagine a planet full of sentient vaccuum cleaners? Like, earlier we saw the grandma using a vaccuum cleaner, but Jason and Michelle were already upstairs when she was using it so he didn't see her using it. What exactly is going on in Jason's mind?

"Hey, Jason, you're not gonna believe this... there's an entire planet full of sentient vaccuum
cleaners, and they're all lining up to look through a telescope back at me!"

"Oh, I believe it..."

The episode ends with Jason and Michelle saying their prayers before going to bed - with Jason suggesting that maybe next time Michelle learns something too. Don't worry, Jason, the next episode is indeed focused on her.

We cut to outside the cottage, and as the camera pans up at the moon, the spaceship flies by, further making it ambigious as to whether or not the adventure really occured. If they did, I'd love to see the reaction of the first astronauts to encounter a planet full of sentient vaccuum cleaners.

What's the Verdict?

3-2-1 Penguins! is, in my opinion, pretty good. Not as good as the best VeggieTales episodes, of course, but it's a charming show in its own right. Much like having talking produce re-enact stories from the bible, the idea of what's basically Star Trek with penguins sounds like a really silly premise for a cartoon, but Big Idea pulled it off with their usual brand of good-natured snark and quirkiness. My main complaint about this episode is that it takes forever for the adventure with the penguins to get started - I mean, I know WHY, it's the first episode so they have to set up the plot, but surely you could have at least skipped the kidney pie sequence so we can get to the penguins sooner.

The animation... well, it's typical early 2000s CGI. It certainly doesn't look like PIXAR, but it's still much more appealing on the eyes than something like Arthur's Missing Pal. The characters are fun, and most of the jokes are funny. So yeah, as a whole I'd recommend seeking 3-2-1 Penguins! out. Or at least showing it to your kids, even if they already know that waiting your turn is good.

Speaking of waiting, you'll have to wait another whole week for my next review. And remember, if you're impatient, there's a good chance you'll get burned up by the sun. See you next time!

Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "Madagascar"

Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, this series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.

I can't believe Madagascar is twenty years old. I remember how I first found out about it - my family went to see Shark Tale in theaters (I don't know what we were thinking either), and at one point during the previews, I had to go to the bathroom. I walked back into the theater just in time to see the end of the teaser for the film. I sought out the teaser online after that.

The first film is a huge guilty pleasure for me. I feel like I should hate it - it's a film made by 2000s DreamWorks, which means that it's filled with celebrities who don't have much if any business doing voice-acting and unfunny pop culture references that have nothing to do with what's going on. And don't get me wrong, it's a very flawed film, but there's still a lot to like about it. The characters, even the ones that aren't given much to do, are great - the Penguins steal the show, of course, but Alex and Marty's friendship is definitely the heart of the film. And when the film is funny, it's genuinely really funny, and the dramatic and heartwarming moments work well too. The two sequels, while also flawed, are in my opinion even better.

The three Madagascar movies (I know there's technically four, I'm focusing on the three main films in this post) have a lot of fun facts about them that I would like to share. You probably already know that there are references to Planet of the Apes and The Twilight Zone (hot take: that "It's a cookbook! IT'S A COOKBOOK!" joke wasn't funny). You might also remember the "Madagascar Mania" tie-in with Denny's (I remember seeing that ad while watching Cartoon Network... or maybe it was Boomerang, I'm not sure). But did you know any of THESE things?

Concept art by Jordi and Carlos Grangel.

1) How did Madagascar come to be? In a recent interview with Animation World Network, co-director Eric Darnell revealed that Jerry Seinfeld had a hand in creating the idea: "I think part of it came from the relationship Jeffrey Katzenberg had with Jerry Seinfeld and this idea of doing something that would involve Manhattan and New York City. Jerry began developing the idea, and then he went on to work on what became Bee Movie. But we really fell in love with the idea: what if you take four New Yorkers, born and bred, rip them out of their New York home, where they've been their entire lives, and drop them into a savage jungle? How would they survive? And what if these New Yorkers were not people, but zoo animals?"

The other co-director, Tom McGrath, added, "It's a classic fish-out-of-water story. New Yorkers going camping. And New Yorkers going camping already feels funny. Originally, the story was about civility versus savagery, which is still a component of it, but it could be a very dark, unrelatable theme. We eventually found a theme that was more like, 'Don't eat your best friend.' Then, as we developed the movie, it became more about not letting the location define who you are. Home is where the heart is. It turned into a friendship story: as long as they were together, it didn't matter where in the world they were. That's why all the movies became kind of a travelogue built around that lesson."

2) Melman was originally going to be an okapi. They decided to make him a giraffe instead because more people know what a giraffe is than an okapi is (apparently, people were more aware of what one is by 2013, because the Valentine's Day special Madly Madagascar features an okapi as a minor character). Also, he was originally named Henry.

Concept art for Melman (then called Henry) by Buck Lewis.

3) The actual Central Park Zoo does not have lions, zebras, giraffes, hippos, or chimpanzees. It does have penguins, though. If you want to see lions, zebras, and giraffes in New York, you'll have to visit the Bronx Zoo (there are no hippos or chimpanzees there either, sorry).

4) The inital plan for the film had the animals being liberated from their cages by an animal rights group.

5) When the film was announced in 2001, Madonna and Jason Alexander were mentioned as being part of the cast (presumably, they were going to voice Gloria and Melman respectively). Ricky Martin, Adam Del Rio, and Mel Gibson were also attached to provide voices at one point. For whatever reason, all five of them wound up leaving the project at some point. Jennifer Lopez was also considered to voice Gloria, then Gwen Stefani was cast... then she left the project in 2002.

6) Melman wearing tissue boxes on his feet at one point in the film is a reference to Howard Hughes, who did it for the same reason as Melman - to keep germs away.

Concept art by Yoriko Ito.

7) King Julien's role was initially very, very small - originally, Maurice was going to be the leader of the lemurs, and it would've been his idea to have Alex help them against the foosa. Julien was just a minor character with only two or three lines who was questioning why they should have a lion help them. Then Sacha Baron Cohen got the part (and in case you're wondering why they brought a celebrity in to voice a character with only two or three lines, need I remind you that Zootopia 2 had Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson voicing a character who just screams and nothing more?) and did a lot of improvising, and the filmmakers liked it so much that they made Julien a more prominent character.

8) Editor Clare Knight was the one responsible for the film's use of "I Like to Move It". According to Eric Darnell, "We had the lemurs a little more cool, kind of loungy, almost like jazzy lounge lizards. Clare brought in this really fun number, and at first your instinct was, 'No, that's not who the lemurs are.' But as we listened to the song and brought it to Sacha, he totally embraced it and wanted to sing it. It completely redefined the character for the better."

9) Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell initially wanted Robert Stack to voice Skipper, but he passed away. Thus, Tom decided to voice Skipper himself because everyone really liked his scratch track for the character. Tom's voice for Skipper is sort of a combination of Robert Stack, Charlton Heston, and "maybe some Peter Graves every once in a while."

Concept art for Marty and Melman (who was still called Henry at this point).

10) Speaking of the penguins, they were very nearly cut from the film because they were only in one scene. Specifically, Jeffrey Katzenberg told them to take the penguins out, so they did, and then they had a test screening where a studio executive asked where the penguins were, resulting in Katzenberg saying that the penguins were "working out pretty good" and telling the filmmakers to put  them back in. According to Tom McGrath, "A way to give them job security was to embed them in the story, so we thought, 'OK, they can inspire the zebra to escape the zoo and then they're forever in the story and they can't be cut!'"

On top of that, the original plan was to have Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria's crates fly off the ship during a storm at sea. But a storm at sea is kind of cliched, isn't it? Tom McGrath thought so too, and he said, "I was in a restaurant, thinking about what to do with the storm. I thought it would be great if there was an animal revolt. When we first put them in the film, people were saying, ‘What’s with the penguins?'"

11) Okay, enough about the penguins for now. On the side of the pay phone that Alex uses when Marty escapes the zoo, there's a note reading "Room for rent, EAST Village, $10,000/mo, call Tom & Eric". This, of course, is a reference to Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell.

12) Madagascar is often brought up as one of the first CGI-animated films to have its characters move in a more "cartoony", squash-and-stretch style way. According to Eric Darnell, "We'd talk about animation style in the film, so we set out from the very beginning this very broad style with squash-and-stretch. But its difficult to do in computer graphics because you basically have a virtual puppet that you have to construct before you begin animation. All the controls and capabilities have to be built into this puppet before you start. With hand-drawn animation, if you want to draw a guy thats normally six feet tall and stretch him out to be 12 feet tall, or flatten him on the ground, you just draw it that way. And you're done. To design a puppet with those kinds of capabilities was a big challenge for us, because we wanted to be able to do that, too."

Animator Jason Schleifter said, "I think as a whole our department really started to push smear frames and stretching characters like crazy where it was warranted. We worked really hard to keep the characters on-model when striking a pose, but inbetween poses oh, man, we were going nuts! You'd have fingers stretch five times their normal lengths, eyes bulging all over the place. I even did a shot where a fossa hits the ground and when he does his eyes actually smack into each other, then stretch out so they're 2-1/2 times their normal distance from each other, and then rattle back. It happens so fast it's subtle, but boy does it add a nice punch to the action."

And Tom McGrath claimed, "We wanted to do something, animation-wise, that was more than what youve seen in 3D and to have a 2D sensibility, much like animation in the Forties: Tex Avery, Warner Bros. Because of the advancements we were able to do squash-and-stretch broad animation, and have this in a stylized world thats really believable in 3D."

13) And he does mean "stylized". "There were careful considerations in the design of this world that Kendal Cronkite had worked on with the simplification of things, and caricatured," Tom McGrath explained. "There were no straight angles. Everythings slightly off-skew. We called it Wack Factor. When things got to crazy we pulled it back. On Antz, when they surfaced the environments, they'd do it with photographs. They would photograph textures and use those. In Madagascar, it was all art. It was all hand-painted designs that were stylized that every surface was treated with. As opposed for using photos, the surfacing was all hand-painted."

Concept art for Alex.

"The artists in the surfacing department had a blast," Eric Darnell claimed. "Because they could invent every surface, every texture, for the surface of a leaf, the bark of a tree. Everything then could fit into this design paradigm that Kendal and her team devised. They just had a great time. They felt they had a creative input. What's up there on the screen is theirs. The majority of the plants that you see in the film are actual plants that are from Madagascar. But they're also very designed and stylized and fit in the style of the film. Even their organization and arrangement inside the frame and the environment, it's very different than how they would occur naturally, as we try to create this stylized fantasy of a jungle based on the Malagasy rain forest."

14) Jeffrey Katzenberg contributed to a lot of the film's jokes. For example, Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath thought of having that old lady beat up Alex, and Jeffrey suggested having her also kick Alex in the groin and mace him. And when the scene where the characters were all doing spit-takes ("You don't swallow it. It's just temporary 'till the plumbing's done.") wasn't getting the laughs the filmmakers were expecting in test screenings and they were getting advice that maybe it just wasn't a good gag, Jeffrey claimed, "No, the problem is, you don't have ENOUGH. You need two more big spits." And it worked!

Concept art for Madagascar itself.

15) Dana Carvey turned down a role in the film. I don't know which character they wanted him to voice.

16) The scene where the penguins arrive in Antarctica and discover that it, in Private's words, "sucks" was suggested by Bob Saget (who also voices a mnor character in the film - that one zoo animal who shouts at Alex and Marty to shut up because "WE'RE NOT ALL NOCTURNAL, YOU KNOW!"). It was originally going to be the film's stinger - for those unaware, that means the scene after the end credits. The filmmakers decided that they wanted the penguins to come back into the story, so they moved it.

17) Look closely at the patch on the suit that the ship captain is wearing - apparently, the name of the boat is "S.S. ACT II".

Food tie-ins for the film - maybe you remember seeing the Madgascar fruit snacks?

18) Remember how Mason and Phil escape the zoo because they've heard Tom Wolfe is giving a speech and they want to fling their crap at him? According to a behind-the-scenes bonus feature, the line was originally "I saw in the Times that Donald Trump is speaking at Stony Brook." Ah, remember the days when Donald Trump was just a punchline and not our president? Good times...

In the German dub, Tom Wolfe is replaced with Hilary Clinton. In the Hungarian dub, it's simply a lecture on evolution. In the Russian dub, they want to visit a lecture on "anarchy in the society". Speaking of foreign dubs, in the Hungarian dub Marty wants to go to Miami instead of Connecticut (probably harder to get to via train, unless you live in Florida already), and in the Korean dub, Melman assumes that they've wound up in Hollywood as opposed to San Diego.

19) The look of the jungles on the island was inspired by the paintings of Henri Rousseau.

A billboard for the film.

20) At some point in production, there was a reference to The Lion King in the movie - specifically, Maurice made a comment about the "oval of life". For some reason, this line was removed, but it's still present in the junior novelization.

21) Madagascar was released on May 27th, 2005 - the very same day that The Longest Yard, starring Adam Sandler, was released. Why is that noteworthy? Because both movies feature Chris Rock as a main character.

22) 2010 saw the launch of a live touring stage show adaptation of the first film that I believe is still being performed every so often today. Here are some photos of some productions:

Not exactly Shrek the Musical, is it?

23) Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa was originally going to be called "Madagascar: The Crate Escape". Presumably, somebody pointed out that at no point in the second film do the animals wind up in crates (unlike the first) so they gave it a new name.

24) In the second film, Young Alex is voiced by Ben Stiller's son, Quinn Dempsey Stiller, and Young Gloria is voiced by Jada Pickett Smith's daughter, Willow Smith. According to Eric Darnell, "You can’t coach [Quinn]. Ben was doing most of it, he was trying to get stuff out of his son and the most valuable stuff we got was things like when he didn’t want to sit in a chair and he was like, 'No, I don’t wanna…' and we had the mic on him and could use it when [young Alex] gets thrown into the crate.  So we really weren’t able to coach a performance out of him as much as we were able to follow him around with a mic and get what you would get following any toddler around."

For those wondering, no, Young Marty and Young Melman were not voiced by the kids of Chris Rock and David Schwimmer - Young Marty was voiced by Thomas Stanley and Young Melman was voiced by Zachary Gordon, who would go on to play Greg in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies.

25) Once a month during production on Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, the crew would act out scenes. "We put wigs on the layout artists. The animators got involved," Tom McGrath claimed. "We did 60 percent of the film in this high-school play type of video. In the first movie, we locked off the camera to reduce rendering time. It felt a lot like postcard shots. With this one, we had more processors."

Concept art for Alex's father, Zuba.

26) What was the hardest thing to animate in the second film? According to Scott Peterson, the film's effects head, "Grass - that was a big one. The African plains are vast, big vistas, where you can see a couple of miles out. Our challenge was to fill those plains with grass and do it in a way we could manage. We designed a tool for the layout department that would distribute grass by positioning geometric chunks of it in a shot. From there it went to the surfacing department where they handle its density: how it clumps, how scraggly it looks. They add accent grass and come up with the overall texture.

Then it goes to the lighting department. They had to develop tools that would regroup those chunks of grass into layers that make it easier to render large amounts of geometry. The surfacing department had to come up with a way of changing the grass' density -- have it very detailed when it's close to camera and more coarse as it get further away, but do it in such way that the audience doesn't notice the transition. We spent some time implementing that, making it efficient and coming up with intuitive controls for them to set up. On the rendering side, one of the ways we fixed the 'buzzing problem' [between the grasses' differing textures] was from a trick I learned at SIGGRAPH. It was the same one they used to fix King Kong's fur, which was to make the grass transparent as it gets skinnier -- it makes it blend better."

27) A couple of DreamWorks' other films have cameo appearances from the franchise's characters. For example, Roddy's owner in Flushed Away has an Alex doll:

Mason and Phil are seen on a newspaper at one point in Turbo:

And Gloria makes a cameo in How to Train Your Dragon... being carried by a dragon presumably to be eaten:

28) Some early plot summaries for the third film mentioned that Alex, Marty, Melman, Gloria, the Penguins, the Lemurs, and the Chimps would be joined in their quest to get back to New York by a performing llama. There aren't any llamas in the actual film, so I don't know if there WAS a llama in early script drafts or if the plot summaries were inaccurate (probably the latter).

29) Gia was initially going to be an albino jaguar kept in a cage at the Monaco casino. She would've been freed by Alex and joined the zoo animals in the ensuing chase (in the book The Art of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, you can find storyboards for the car chase scene featuring Gia among the animals in the car). The filmmakers decided it'd fit the story better if Alex met her in the circus.

Concept art for the third movie by Travis Koller.

30) Look closely at the multiple hunting trophies on Captain DuBois' wall. Among the animals she's hunted down are Nana's dog from the Madagascar Penguins: A Christmas Caper short (released theatrically in front of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), a larger version of King Julien's gecko buddy Stevie from the first movie, that fish from the second movie who screamed when the watering hole went dry, and Eggy the duckling from the Penguins of Madagascar TV series.

31) At the end of the third film, when DuBois and her crew are in crates on a ship headed for Madagascar (yeah, sorry about the spoiler), take a look at their crates. Stenciled on them are "Freedom Fries", "Freedom Dressing", "Freedom Toast", and "Freedom Dip Sandwiches". For those unaware, this is a reference to the House of Representatives' decision in 2003 to start calling the French fries served in their cafeteria "Freedom Fries" in response to France refusing to support Iraq.

32) Character designer Craig Kellman modeled Stefano's face after his own.

34) Marty's (in)famous "Afro Circus" song was ad-libbed by Chris Rock - he was originally just supposed to hum that usual circus music, but he made up his own lyrics. So if you hate that song, you now know who to blame for its existence.

Concept art by Samuel Michlap - you can see the albino version of Gia among the characters here.

35) Finally, I found an interesting tidbit in an interview with Eric Darnell for the second film. Now, as you probably know (if not... sorry again about the spoiler), Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted's third act has Alex, Marty, Melman, and Gloria making it back to the zoo... but they realize that they actually prefer being free and traveling the world, and that when they were with the circus, they were already home. So they, the penguins, the lemurs, and the chimps join the circus.

But back in 2008, Eric had this idea for the third (or fourth, I'm not sure if the plan was for three or four films at this point) film's ending: "I have this idea of them back in the zoo and Marty saying something like, 'You know, we never made it to Connecticut,' and so the last shot would be a freeze frame of them jumping over the wall for one more adventure."

Sources:
- https://www.awn.com/animationworld/survival-funnies-lion-zebra-and-wack-factor
- https://www.awn.com/animationworld/madagascar-escape-2-africa-what-next
- https://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2008/Volume-31-Issue-10-Oct-2008-/Home-is-Where-the-Art-is.aspx
- https://www.skwigly.co.uk/behind-the-scenes-of-madagascar/
- http://am.animatedviews.com/Madagascar.html
- http://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/15457
- https://www.razorfine.com/news/film-news/madagascar-2-the-interview/
- https://www.awn.com/animationworld/madagascar-20-qa-tom-mcgrath-and-eric-darnell
- https://animationscoop.com/interview-madagascar-back-in-theaters-for-20th-anniversary/

Seriously, twenty years of Sacha Baron Cohen singing "I Like to Move It Move It". It doesn't feel natural.