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.
Well, here we go. This is another cartoon that is usually only talked about online when people want to complain about how bad it is. Mostly, they complain about how it's just a knockoff of Ren and Stimpy. I'm not even a huge fan of Ren and Stimpy, so I have my doubts that I'm going to like a cartoon that parrots it.
What on Earth happened to The Disney Afternoon? It gave us some of the most iconic cartoons of the 1980s and early 1990s... and then after 1994, it started spawning crap like this and Quack Pack. The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show was the creation of Bill Kopp, whose other claim to fame is the far more well-liked Eek! The Cat. Unlike the other Disney Afternoon shows, this one only aired once a week (on Mondays, specifically). It premiered on January 2nd, 1995 after five cartoons starring Snookums and Meat aired as part of a previous Disney show, Marsupilami (which itself was a spinoff of ANOTHER previous Disney show, Raw Toonage). Thirteen episodes of the show were made, each one consisting of three segments...
- Shnookums (voiced by Jason Marsden) and Meat (voiced by Frank Welker), a cat and dog owned by a couple simply known as Husband (Steve Mackall) and Wife (Tress MacNeille). They do stuff.
- Pith Possum (voiced by Jeff Bennett), a superhero possum who fights crime.
- Tex Tinstar (also Jeff Bennett), a cowboy whose segments are serialized sort of like Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Believe it or not, the idea for a show starring a cat and a dog was first pitched to Disney by Greg Weisman of Gargoyles fame. After Bill Kopp got involved and the shorts for Marsupilami were made, Disney decided to greenlit a whole Shnookums and Meat show to cash in on the success of Ren and Stimpy. Bill claimed in a couple interviews that the show wasn't inspired by Ren and Stimpy, but the similarities are pretty hard to ignore (a lot of the same artists worked on it, for what it's worth). Maybe those similarities could've been forgiven if the show was at least funny, but - spoiler alert - it wasn't.
Although the show got decent ratings, Disney eventually kept the crew in the dark for a while before giving the show the axe. They didn't even do much to promote the show before that - Gargoyles got tons of merchandise, whereas all Shnookums and Meat got was canned pasta from Franco-American.
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| But hey, at least it's SOMETHING. Wander Over Yonder never got its own pasta. |
Was Disney embarassed by the show? It would explain why it apparently never got a home video release (and it's not on Disney Plus either). But if they greenlit it solely to cash in on the success of Ren and Stimpy, why would they push it aside so quickly? That seems like a dumb idea. You make a show that's similar to another extremely popular show in the hopes of getting that same success, and then you don't promote it and are confused when it doesn't do as well as the show you're trying to cash in on?
Well, whatever the reason, The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show exists whether Disney wants it to or not. So, we're going to watch the first episode of the show. I was hesitant to do one of the early episodes because I feel like if I do there's a fifty-percent chance that somebody will tell me the show gets better as it goes on, but what are you gonna do?
The first segment, "Weight For Me", stars Shnookums and Meat.
We start off with Husband reading a magazine about incredibly buff cats and dogs. Apparently, in this world, it's common for cats and dogs to lift weights and have gigantic muscles. What, has Alpo been putting steroids in its pet food?
Shnookums and Meat aren't like most cats and dogs. They look like this:
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| The next time Jon is nagging Garfield about how fat he is, somebody should show him a picture of these two. Then he'll know that there are cats much fatter than his. |
"All these two do is lay around, sleep, and take from the food world!" Husband complains. He declares that if Shnookums and Meat don't go outside and "shed some poundage muy prontimo", he's going to replace them with physically fit pets. So Shnookums and Meat make it their mission to get in shape. I hope they do, I find their overly-flabby stomachs disgusting to look at...
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| Fortunately, it's slightly less disgusting in a still image. Slightly. |
First, they do some push-ups... and fail at them. Then they try some sit-ups... and fail at them too. Shnookums' attempt at lifting weights is a massive failure too. Honestly, at this point it might be easier to get some liposuction.
Then a commercial appears on the TV for the "Loungerizer", what looks like a seat on an airplane but can apparently help you lose weight. It even works on elephant seals, apparently. Here's what the model in the commerical looked like before they used the chair:
And here's what she looked like after:
I call shenanigans. First of all, am I supposed to believe that what looks like an airplane seat caused this elephant seal to change species? Second, female elephant seals don't look like that. Ergo, that must be a MALE elephant seal in drag.
Despite my skepticism, Shnookums and Meat are convinced, and they order themselves a pair of "Loungerizer"s. They quickly learn that it's not a good idea to set them too high, unless you WANT them to come to life and start pummeling you.
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| In Shnookums and Meat, the chairs sit on YOU! |
After setting it to "medium", we see just how the "Loungerizer" works: it has mechanical hands that move your body parts for you while you just sit there. Believe it or not, it actually works. Soon Shnookums and Meat are roughly the size of a barge. And they have chest hair too. Eugh...
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| Why do muscle-bound cartoon characters usually have really tiny heads? |
There's just one problem: they're so muscle-bound they find it difficult to move. It takes Shnookums an extremely long time to pick up a protein drink - and even then, he can't even open it. "We'll take a sauna trim-down just to get some mobility back, and then we'll be perfect!" Shnookums exclaims. Conveniently enough, their owners just so happen to have a sauna in their house that they can use. But wouldn't you know it, they wind up getting locked in the sauna, and by the time their owners come home and let them out, they look like this:
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| Oof. I've seen pipe cleaners fatter than that. |
Husband force-feeds them food until they're incredibly fat again. So basically nothing was accomplished. I do love cartoons where nothing is accomplished. Next segment...
I've heard that the Pith Possum and Tex Tinstar segments of the show were a lot better than the Shnookums and Meat segments. So I'm cautiously optimistic as I go into "Phantom Mask of the Dark Black Blackness of Black" (in spite of the stupid name).
Narrator Jim Cummings tells us that Pith Possum was originally an ordinary laboratory possum until an experiment turned him into a superhero. His secret identity - all superheroes have one - is Peter Possum, copy boy for a great metropolitan tabloid. He stands up for truth, justice and the forest critter way.
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| "I am the terror that crawls in the night! I am the something that affects your other something in a negative way! I am PITH POSSUM!" |
What challenges await Pith Possum today? Well, the Easter Bunny (Jess Harnell, if I'm not mistaken) is being released from a mental asylum... jeez, I guess Peter Cottontail went down a dark path after the events of his special. Maybe that's why it took so long for them to make a sequel.
This Easter Bunny isn't a cute, cuddly little lagomorph. He's a demented rabbit who's whipped up a serum that'll turn him into a huge, carnivorous beast. Why does he want to be a huge, carnivorous beast? If he hates his job delivering Easter eggs, why doesn't he just let another rabbit take on the Easter Bunny mantle and find a new line of work? Oh, right. Because he's EEEEEEEEE-VIL!
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| They told that rabbit "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!" one too many times. Now he's out for blood. |
After the Easter Bunny drinks the serum, we cut to the tabloid where Peter Possum works. Forest animals are hard at work on typewriters. The only employee there that ISN'T an animal, despite her name, is Doris Deer (April Winchell), the apple of Peter's eye. I guess he's hoping she's into interspecies dating.
Doris is sent out to get the scoop on the giant mutant Easter Bunny running around the city. When Peter hears about this, he becomes Pith Possum and calls up his dimwitted raccoon sidekick, Obediah (Patric Zimmerman). Then he jumps out the window, completely forgetting that he can't fly. Something tells me this guy is going to make the superheroes from Sidekick look competent.
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| This reminds me: no, I am not going to do a review of Fanboy and Chum-Chum. So please don't ask me to. |
The now gigantic Easter Bunny and his army of Easter eggs with legs are robbing a bank. As he leaves the bank, Doris climbs into the bunny's Easter basket just before he walks into his giant Easter egg-shaped aircraft and takes off. Dang it, Doris, you're not supposed to LET yourself get captured. You have to wait until the villain decides to kidnap you himself.
Anyway, Pith Possum and Obediah arrive at the police station, where Commissioner Stress (Brad Garrett) tells them what they know: the Easter Bunny has already struck various places around the city, and they think his next robbery will be at the museum now containing the world's most precious collection of pinecones ever gathered in one place. What would a bunny want with pinecones? I dunno, just go with it...
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| And what's a gorilla doing in a presumably North American (judging from the other animals we've seen) forest? |
Sure enough, Pith Possum and Obediah arrive at the museum just as the Easter Bunny is about to squish Doris' head. Because the Easter Bunny is so much larger than Pith is, it's not much of a fight. But eventually Pith uses a carrot filled with some sort of exploding liquid to take out the rabbit. Doris repeatedly kisses Pith. Word of advice, girls: don't kiss a possum. It's probably a good way to get rabies.
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| Meh, still a better love story than Bee Movie. |
The narrator then tells us that the rabbit seen in this cartoon isn't the actual Easter Bunny, he's an imposter, and that he's serving his time at a mental asylum and making "egg-cellent" progress. I believe he eventually learned his lesson, turned a new leaf, and became the spokesrabbit for Nesquik.
We are now in the Wild West, the frontier of promise and hope, the land of the singing cowboy. But this Tex Tinstar segment has nothing to do with singing cowboys because that would apparently be really boring.
No, no, our story is about the villainous Wrongo (Brad Garrett), leader of a group of outlaws known as the Wrong Riders. He's that charming fella featured in the previous screencap. He's got a score to settle with Tex Tinstar.
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| Okay, positive thing: this guy looks pretty cool. |
In town, Tex Tinstar is telling everyone about the Wrong Riders' a-fixing to ride in and cause trouble... which prompts everyone except him to make a run for it in increasingly ludicrous ways (one of them gets on a PLANE). Sure enough, the Wrong Riders show up, and Tex and Wrongo have themselves a showdown... which Wrongo wins by pulling the "Look over there!" trick on Tex.
Soon, Tex is tied up and subjected to some sort of Rube Goldberg-ish trap. As Wrongo puts it, the rope that holds Tex up will be burned through by a candle. When he falls, he'll land on a trampoline, which will send him flying onto a ramp that will send him into a pen full of rabid badgers. And then a torch will fall over, igniting a trail of gunpowder, which will light a cannon. The barrel that Tex is in will roll to the cannon, and his head will be stuck in it, and then the cannon will fire, the blast igniting the waterproof fuses of the dynamite surrounding Tex's head. The cannon will then shoot him through the roof of the barn and down into a giant tank full of sharks. The sharks will eat Tex, the dynamite will go off, and his remains will fall into an envelope, which Wrongo will place on a boat bound for Indonesia. Needlessly complicated? Maybe, but that's what makes it funny.
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| Even Tex looks confused by all this. |
And I have to admit, I was starting to get into this. Like I said, this whole plan of Wrongo's is actually pretty funny. How would Tex get out of such a strange situation?
Guess what? They don't show us! The narrator (also Jim Cummings) tells us to tune into the next episode, and that's it! The episode just ends! WHAT? You're gonna throw a CLIFFHANGER at us? The segment just started and it's over already? Figures. The one segment in this show I actually kind of like, and it doesn't even have an ending.
Side note, I know this is a minor thing, but why was this segment called "A Fistful of Food Stamps" when it had nothing to do with food stamps?
What's the Verdict?
The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show is mediocre at best. The only thing I kind of liked about it was Tex Tinstar, that segment was at least sort of funny in spite of its incredibly abrupt ending. But the Shnookums and Meat and Pith Possum segments sucked. None of the jokes in those segments were funny, and in a show where the main goal is to make you laugh, that's the biggest problem. The characters are dull as dirt, I couldn't tell you anything about Shnookums or Meat other than "they're idiots". The animation is fine and the voice actors are doing their best, but that's not enough to make the show watchable. Honestly, why couldn't the whole show have just been about Tex Tinstar? I think that would've been a lot better than just one short Tex Tinstar segment and two long unfunny segments before it.
The same year that this show came out, Disney also released the Timon and Pumbaa show - which was very similar in tone and style, but had much funnier jokes and felt less like a Ren and Stimpy wannabe than this. My advice? Watch that instead. Heck, watch 2 Stupid Dogs instead. I haven't watched an episode of Cow and Chicken in years, but I'm guessing that show is a better use of your time than this too. Was the pasta even very good?
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