Back to the Drawing Board: "Gigantic"

You might recall that in my previous edition of Back to the Drawing Board about the scrapped Disney film My Peoples, I mentioned that I would do posts about other scrapped Disney films called Gigantic and King of the Elves another time. Well, you'll still have to wait a while for King of the Elves - I'm not one hundred percent sure how much information about it there is online - but I'm going to talk about Gigantic today. Huzzah!

In the 2010s, Disney figured out the secret to making financially-successful, critically-acclaimed animated movies. Tangled was a huge success, so all they had to do was make films very, very similar to Tangled and keep repeating the formula over and over again: have a female main character, preferably a princess, who's optimistic, quirky, and at least a bit awkward. Maybe they're sheltered, maybe they've been stuck in one place all their lives and desperately want to go somewhere else. Eventually, she meets a snarky, morally-ambigous male and makes some sort of deal with him. They go on their little adventure, butting heads all the way, but eventually warm up to each other and fall in love, or at least become best buddies. Rapunzel was the optimistic quirky female and Flynn was the snarky morally-ambigious female. In Frozen, Anna was the optimistic quirky female and Kristoff was the snarky morally-ambigious male. In Zootopia, Judy was the optimistic quirky female and Nick was the snarky morally-ambigious male. In Moana, Moana was the optimistic quirky female (although less blatant in this case than Anna and Judy were) and Maui was the snarky morally-ambigious male. And it worked - the money was pouring in, the critics were applauding, nobody cared that they were basically just recycling the same character types over and over again. It wasn't until they ditched the snarky moral-ambigious male and just had the optimistic quirky female (Mirabel in Encanto and more recently Asha in Wish) that people figured out the formula and became bored of it. But that wasn't until the 2020s. In the 2010s, Disney was once again the king of the theatrical animation game.

The year was 2015. Disney was still milking the heck out of Frozen, and they had also recently released Big Hero 6, which was also pretty successful (but wound up getting ignored by Disney for a while because it was released after Frozen and followed by the also much more popular Zootopia). PIXAR had also released Inside Out, which was a huge hit and briefly got people to start liking PIXAR again. And it was this year, at the 2015 D23 Expo, that John Lasseter announced Gigantic.

Actually, Gigantic was kinda sorta revealed to the world in July 2013, before Frozen was released. One of Tangled's directors, Nathan Greno, said, "Trust me, we are hard at work on the new film! I wish I could say more - I'm REALLY excited to tell everyone what it is! If you enjoyed Tangled, I believe you'll love the new project." Then on July 10th, a blog by the name of Blue Sky Disney revealed that Nathan Greno's film would be called "Giants" and be released near the end of 2016. Considering how successful Tangled was and how obsessed Disney was with repeating its success, it makes sense that they'd want to get a new film from the same director out there ASAP (the other co-director of Tangled, Bryon Howard, was working on Zootopia at the time for those unaware).

Before this, however, I'd like to bring something up. At some point in the 2000s (before 2009, I'm pretty sure), I found a list online of Disney films that were in production - both theatrical and direct-to-video. I have no idea what site I found it on, or if it was even accurate, but among the multiple sequels that I know were indeed in production beofre John Lasseter ordered them to stop with the sequels (The Jungle Book 3, Chicken Little 2, Meet the Robinsons 2: First Date), I distinctively remember seeing a film called You Don't Know Jack and the Beanstalk being listed. I couldn't find anything about a Disney film called this online right now. Judging from the title, I'm guessing it was going to be another one of those "fractured fairy tale" type of movies greenlit to cash in on the success of Shrek. Y'know, sorta like Disney's Rapunzel Unbraided movie that eventually evolved into Tangled... but we'll talk about that one some other time.

The film's logo, after they decided to call it Gigantic instead, was going to look
like this.

In August, bleedingcool.com posted some information about "Giants" - this post has since been removed, but posts on various discussion forums have repeated the information, preventing all of this neat behind the scenes stuff from being lost and this post you're reading right now from being very short. Among the things they said...

- "Animated films have very long development times, and sometimes they go a long way into that process before going no further. Perhaps the most famous example of this would be PIXAR's Newt, and it happened with Disney, most recently, with King of the Elves. It's possible that a similar fate might befall Giants. The film hasn't been official announced, and it could disappear from the schedule even after it is. But for now, work on the film continues, and I understand that director Nathan Greno has had a couple of table reads and is getting the basic shape of the film into good order. I think this one's going to go all the way." Oh, the irony.

- "The look of this film - at least for now - is very much in the Tangled and Frozen vein, and the plan is to realize the film with the same sort of CG processes and styling - though I'm sure it will be pushed even further to allow for better textures, more expressive animation, advances in the tech all around. That's what happens at Disney, film by film."

- "A few years from now, we'll be some distance away from Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer, a film with which Giants shares more than a few specifics. For one thing, they both have a hero named Jack, and Giants named for the Fee Fi Fo Fum rhymes. In this story, these names are abbreviations of Feebus, Fifen, Fogel and Fobert, a family of giants at the heart of the tale. There's another brother too, Faustus, their leader. Like all good villains, he's got a relatable point of view, he's just not quite joining the dots correctly."

- "Also like Singer's film, we see the introduction of a love interest from a class above Jack. In this case, Angelica isn't royalty, but just from a merchant family, though her parents do see him as being 'below' her."

- "The real money is manifest in Marco, born to nobility and the third corner of a love triangle between Jack and Angelina. He's a good guy, though, and the only reason he and Jack can't be fast friends from the off is that they're both drawn to Angelina. And, yes, he's called Marco because, like Polo, he wants to travel - and to open up trade routes."

- "The fourth human lead is Inma, a scrappy tomboy type - and something of a class warrior, I understand. She's the one I'm rooting for in this story, the tireless fighter against injustice, taken less seriously because she happens to be a pre-teen girl. Of course, there is that story about David and Goliath..."

- "But, okay, it's not the humans that get the title billing here. It's the giants. The Storm Giants. Huge, thunderous figures. In this story, the Storm Giants have made a pact with the humans. If the humans work for them and give them a percentage of their harvest and livestock, hey'll return the favour by keeping danger and threats at bay. At first, it must have been appealing to have a Giant agree to fight your corner, but the people are't getting enough for themselves now. Faustus' name is seeming a touch ironic."

- "And this is where we find ourselves at the beginning. As you might expect, there's then a journey up to where the Giants live and some terrible conflict between the humans and the Storm Giants. There's a lot of sneaking about and gruesome recipes and all that good stuff you're used to from fairy tales about ogres and their ilk. But what you may not expect is how Jack ends up befriending one of the Storm Giants - and this is what sews the beans, if you will, for the adventure."

Now, I'm sure you're wondering "How do you know the guy who posted this to bleedingcool.com didn't just make it all up?". Well, Blue Sky Disney posted again and confirmed that most of what they claimed is true - and that apparently, Nathan Greno pitched the idea to John Lasseter around the same time he was working on Zootopia, which he was going to co-direct with Byron Howard again. However, a comment from somebody simply called "Anonymous" on the post said that they knew Nathan and Byron personally and that what they said was false.

Visual development by Michael Giaimo.

Rumors started flying around in 2014 that Robert and Kristin Anderson-Lopez would be writing songs for the film and that Dasiy Ridley was brought in to audition for a character. There were also claims that the film was going to be pushed back to 2018, with others insisting that it was still going to be released in 2016. In August 2015, Bobby Pontillas was revealed to be working on the film as a character designer. Then came the D23 Expo, when - as mentioned earlier - the film was finally announced, now called Gigantic as opposed to "Giants", and it was confirmed that the Lopezes were writing the songs.

The film was described as being set in Spain during the Age of Exploration. Inma was now a sixty-foot-tall eleven-year-old girl with a "super-sized personality" and the secondary protagonist. Apparently, she was based on an actual kid the filmmakers met in Spain. She had a song in which she plays with Jack as though he were a doll, with lyrics like "You can toss him in the air / you can comb his tiny hair" and "You can make him do this, you can make him do that, and he even makes a pretty good bookmark!".

The film's presentation at the D23 Expo.

Apparently, Angelina and Marco had both been removed, or maybe Angelina had been turned into Jack's pregnant wife? From what I've read on the DVDizzy forums, Inma's father was the evil king of the Storm Giants and the film's Maximus equivalent - the hoofed animal that doesn't talk but acts like a dog - was to be a cow. There was also going to be at least one goose - Nathan Greno and Paul Briggs both posted (on Instagram and Tumblr respectively) about studying real geese for the film. Most versions of Jack in the Beanstalk have a goose that lays golden eggs, so presumably this goose character was going to fill the same role.

Now, I suppose there's an elephant in the room that I should address: Disney already did an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk back in the 1940s. That was the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" segment of Fun and Fancy Free (it was originally going to be a full movie, but then the war started up and, combined with some other reasons, led to it winding up as a segment of a "package film"). Despite the film's general lack of popularity, it did spawn one thing that's kept it more or less out of obscurity online - the character of Willie the Giant, who's since popped up in other Mickey Mouse productions like Mickey's Christmas Carol and House of Mouse. Would that have made things complicated for Gigantic? Probably not. Disney also made two adaptations of Chicken Little after all.

It seems that even the folks working on Gigantic knew about "Mickey and the Beanstalk". I have a copy of the book They Drew as They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney's New Golden Age, which features four pieces of concept art for Gigantic. One of them features a giant who looks very much like Willie. I doubt it's just a coincidence.

This fella, right here.

In 2016, it was announced that Inside Out writer Meg LeFauve was going to be the film's co-director. As far as the voice cast goes, we know that Ava Della Pietra, then only ten and a half years old, auditioned for Inma. No idea who was considered to voice Jack.

The film wound up getting delayed AGAIN in 2017, this time to November 2020. Nothing about Gigantic was talked about at the 2017 D23 Expo, not a particularly good sign. However, animator Malcon Pierce did say on Instagram that he was working on the film. That was in October. A few days later, it was announced that Gigantic had been shelved.

Concept art by Dan Cooper.

Ed Catmull explained that it was just one of those projects where, even though they loved the idea and a lot of heart went into it, it just wasn't working (and yet nobody said that at any point during production of Wreck-It Ralph 2. Go figure). Instead, they'd be focusing their energies on another project in the works, also set for release in November 2020. Disney didn't release any animated films, be it in theaters or for streaming, in November 2020, so I have no idea what that project was (maybe it became Encanto or Raya and the Last Dragon or something?). As for Nathan Greno, he wound up leaving Disney in 2018 - he's now working at Skydance Animation.

Animator Andrew Chesworth stated in 2019 that, when he was working at Disney, he got to see some early screenings of Gigantic. "I loved this version," he said. "Fantastic mix of modern Tangled and 1940s Sleepy Hollow-era Disney influencing the artistic conversations."

What went wrong with Gigantic? A few folks on the aforementioned DVDizzy forums suggested that an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk should be a "huge and epic adventure" a la Aladdin - sneaking around the castle, facing off against giants, climbing a beanstalk. Disney was basically turning the story into, as somebody put it, "Tangled meets Wreck-It Ralph"... basically just recycling the "optimistic quirky female and exasperated morally-ambigious male team up" formula, except in this case instead of another pretty princess the female was a little girl. They were playing it safe once again.

Even Inma's character model, as seen here, just looks like they
gave Rapunzel a haircut.

And I think that's more or less why Disney's output as a whole is in a rut. They're still playing it safe by attempting to recapture previous successes. Every time a live action remake is super-successful, they greenlight five more, and they generally suck. Frozen was successful, make four sequels to it. Even with PIXAR, they're basically sabotaging their original films like Elemental and Elio (though the internet's turning on PIXAR after 2010 is definitely not helping with that) and demanding they make more sequels. Did we need a Toy Story 5? I know, I know. Disney is a business, it's all about making money, but they became such a huge deal because they used to give people things we didn't know we wanted, not just what we knew we already liked.

So is that it for Gigantic? Maybe not. Remember how I said that Nathan Greno is now working at Skydance Animation? Well, in 2023, it was announced that Skydance was working on an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk, to be directed by... Rich Moore, not Nathan Greno. Did Nathan, Rich, and John Lasseter take the ideas for Gigantic with them when they left Disney?

Oh, one more fun fact for you guys - Robert Lopez revealed in a podcast that one of the songs he and his wife wrote for Gigantic was reused for an episode of WandaVision. Another song was reused for a Netflix show called We the People. I've never seen either of those shows, but somehow I doubt the songs still had lyrics about using somebody as a bookmark.

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!