Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The New Woody Woodpecker Show"

Today, we'll be looking at a show starring a certain cartoon bird. Can you guess who?

Be honest. You're probably hearing the laugh right now, aren't you?

In 1940, the world was introduced to a lunatic woodpecker named Woody. I believe that I was introduced to Woody through one of his cartoons (Pantry Panic, to be precise) appearing on a DVD I got of random cartoons that are in the public domain. As an animation buff, I would buy a LOT of DVDs like that. I'm pretty sure that I also got a DVD box set of Woody's cartoons, but I'm not sure if I ever watched it.

Like most cartoon characters from the Golden Age of Animation, Woody hasn't been as popular since, I'm not sure, the 1980s. Well, except in Brazil. He's super-popular there. He was once the mascot of the Universal Studios theme parks, and while you can still find him there, it seems that (ugh) the Minions have upsurped him as the mascot(s). He had a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 2000, he became the mascot of the Honda Motorcycle Racing Team. He makes cameos in films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Time Machine, and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. And in 2017, THIS came out.

It seems like every time I think that "live action movies based on cartoons" trend has come to a halt, we get ANOTHER ONE.

This movie, which features the great Eric Bauza as the voice of Woody, got a theatrical release in Brazil but ended up being straight-to-video in America. Critics and animation buffs on the internet tore it apart. But on a positive note, thanks to this film Woody's popularity seems to have come back a little - in 2018, a series of web cartoons starring Woody premiered online, with Eric Bauza reprising his role.

But long before all of this, there was a previous attempt at reintroducing Woody to the youth of America. 1999 saw the premiere of The New Woody Woodpecker Show.

"Hey, kids! It's me, Woody Woodpecker! You probably remember me from... uh, is Cartoon Network still airing my cartoons?"

The show debuted on the now-defunct FOX Kids programming block on May 8th. It featured an impressive cast - which included Mark Hamill, Elizabeth Daily, Nika Futterman, Blake Clark, Rob Paulsen, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Billy West as the voice of Woody. Three seasons were made until the show was cancelled after fifty-three episodes. While I haven't been able to find much behind-the-scenes information about the show, according to TV Tropes the staff had to put up with censorship and Executive Meddling. For example, Woody wasn't allowed to peck people on the head because... I guess they considered that too violent or whatever? Some episodes apparently weren't aired in the US, and only one episode has been released on DVD. The show used to be on Netflix, but now if you want to watch it you have to go to Hulu or YouTube.

Which is how I'm going to be watching an episode of this show - specifically, the first episode - so that I can review it on this blog. And since I'm somebody who's only seen, like, one of the original Woody Woodpecker shorts, I would recommend taking my opinion on it with a grain of salt.

So, according to Wikipedia the first short in the first episode of this show is called "Wiener Wars".

Get your minds out of the gutter.

So, the episode starts off with Woody (again, voiced by Billy West) running over to a hot dog stand run by a guy named Joe (Jess Harnell). After Joe gives him a hot dog, Woody discovers that Joe is planning on selling the cart, much to his horror.

"If you sell the cart, I'll have to buy hot dogs at the STORE!
And cook them MYSELF! And I'm too lazy to do that!"

Joe tells him that there's another hot dog cart nearby, run by Wally Walrus (also voiced by Billy West). "I'll never eat at Wally's!" Woody announces. "After all, he's my arch-enemy! Or maybe Buzz the Buzzard is. One of those guys."

Woody then tells Joe that HE'LL buy the cart. The one problem is that it'll cost him five hundred bucks (why so expensive?). Wally, meanwhile, is not thrilled by the fact that his arch-enemy is now his competitor in the hot dog-selling business. On a side note, am I the only one who doesn't think Wally looks all that much like a walrus? He just looks like a bald guy with tiny tusks.

Maybe he actually IS a human, and people just call him "Walrus" because of the mustache?
I don't know, maybe?

So after Woody sells a couple of wieners, Wally sends him and his cart flying off a dock and into the ocean. Of course you know this means war, and Woody uses a fire extinguisher to soak Wally. Thus begins a straight-up WAR between Woody and Wally. Like, with the weapons and tanks and everything.

And one of them can't just find another street corner becaaaaaaaaaause?

Long story short, a businessman gets covered in ketchup and mustard and thinks that the combination of the condiments is delicious. He announces that he, Woody and Wally are going to make millions. But wouldn't you know it, having Woody work with the character that is, for all intents and purposes, the Elmer Fudd to his Bugs Bunny isn't exactly the best idea, and their feuding results in the factory exploding with geysers of ketchup and mustard. Woody tricks Wally into feeding him hot dogs, and the short just, um, ends. No, really. It just ends.

Next up is Chilly Willy in "Electric Chilly".

Most of the Chilly Willy shorts follow this plotline: Chilly is cold. He tries to get warm. This short is no exception. It starts off with Chilly ordering an electric blanket by stuffing a ton of money into a mailbox (don't ask me where a penguin gets money) and it arrives within seconds via helicopter. Even though that's not how ordering something works in the slightest, but it seems pointless to bring realism into a show with a talking woodpecker in it.

How did this character not become more popular? Just look at how cute he is!

The one problem here is that Chilly only has one outlet, so he can't have both his blanket AND his TV plugged in at the same time. The solution? He goes all the way to the house of Smedley the dog (Billy West again), who is ALSO watching TV, and uses the outlet that HIS television is plugged into to plug in his blanket.

I like how Chilly tips his hat to Smedley before he waddles off.

"You like how I unplugged your TV just as the announcer
was about to reveal the secret ingredient to the recipe?
That wasn't a coincidence. I totally planned that."

So, yeah, you can see where this is going, right? Smedley unplugs the blanket so he can plug his TV back in, and when Chilly goes back over to his house to plug the blanket back in. Smedley apparently knew that he would do this and boarded up the door, but Chilly gets around that by just sticking the doorknob in the wall and instantly creating a door that way. Apparently Chilly has magic powers or something?

The expression that this dog is making right now is honestly freaking me out...

Smedley unplugs the blanket again, and is in the process of boarding up his whole house as Chilly shows up, enters the house via the door that he magically conjured up, then presumably plugs his blanket in there.

Smedley is too big to use Chilly's door, so he somehow uses the chimney to get into the house. How the heck does he fit? The pipe is skinny and he's, to put it bluntly, not.

Quick question - what kind of dog is Smedley supposed to be? A Saint Bernard?
He doesn't look a whole lot like one, but hey, Wally doesn't look a whole lot like a walrus...

Anyhow, when he gets inside, Chilly's asleep, so he decides to bring Chilly back to his house, then sees that there's a good movie on TV and sits down to watch. While he's doing that, Chilly wakes up and seizes the opportunity to go back to Smedley's house and plug his blanket back in.

Oh, and thank goodness Chilly just so happens to have a garage door opener under his hat. Lucky him.

Is Chilly's hat just a TARDIS or something?

Once Smedley discovers that Chilly has plugged the blanket in again, he gets agitated despite the fact that he wasn't even watching HIS television when Chilly unplugged it to plug his blanket back in. He's so angry, in fact, that he decides to blow up Chilly's igloo. Because that's not an overreaction at all!

"NO ONE unplugs my TV!"

Spoiler alert: this backfires on Smedley, and he ends up sinking into the icy water. And then about five seconds later he's back watching TV in his house, and as a result of this Chilly's blanket is unplugged, and this time Smedley locked Chilly's magic door that he'd used to get inside. No matter, though - Chilly uses the doorknob to open the entire front wall of Smedley's house up, then unplugs the TV so that he can plug his blanket back in. Then he somehow opens up a small door in Smedley's stomach. At this point, I'm fully convinced that this penguin is magic.

Let's be honest, you'd probably be making that expression too if somebody
opened up a door in YOUR stomach.

Smedley decides to trap Chilly inside his TV, but that backfires on him as well, as Chilly uses his magic powers to change the channel just as Smedley's about to find out if he has a winning lottery ticket. So the moral of today's story, I guess, is that you shouldn't only have one outlet in your house. That, or don't mess with penguins. The end.

Finally, we have "Woody and the Termite".

The cartoon begins with Mother Nature (Betty Ward) telling Woody that he hasn't been pecking enough and tells him to get pecking or, according to Woody, she'll "demote him to a chigger" (whatever that means). Thus, Woody decides to buy an "uber-termite" named Lester (Pamela Adlon) from a scientist to create holes in trees for him. Lester, of course, is uncooperative and starts devouring entire trees.

"No termite is gonna make a dodo outta THIS woodpecker!"

Blah blah blah, Woody fights Lester but Lester comes out on top, until Woody comes up with a plan. That plan, as it turns out, is to put steel on the trunk of a tree so Lester can't bite it. But alas and alack, Lester gets around that.

Yeah, this is gonna be one of THOSE shorts. You know, where a little jerk with zero likable qualities torments our protagonist and constantly comes out on top every time the protagonist tries to fight back. Kind of like that Sylvester short "Canned Feud". Remember that short? The one where he's tormented by a mouse who wants to make him starve?

Woody uses invisible paint to make the forest invisible, but that rassa-frassing termite outsmarts him AGAIN, then proceeds to devour his house. Fortunately, Woody traps him in a jar and takes him back to the scientist. I love the really threatening way he says "I'm taking you BAAAAAAAAAAAAACK..."

Woodpeckers actually eat termites, so Lester should consider himself lucky
that Woody is just taking him back to the scientist as opposed to having
him for lunch.

The scientist gives him some seeds that'll instantly grow trees, allowing Woody to regrow the forest, then dresses as Lester's father to get him to get those holes in those trees. It works! But guess what, this ALSO backfires on him as now Woody is forced by Mother Nature to do all of the Termite's duties. D'oh.

This is another show that I'm gonna put in the "meh, it's okay" category. While not a laugh riot, there wasn't anything awful about it. It's mainly carried by Billy West's voice acting. The only short that I didn't really like was "Woody and the Termite", which stems from the fact that it was really frustrating seeing Woody tormented by that stupid bug. Who knows, maybe I'll review another episode of this show at some point.