Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Mr. Bogus"

"Bogus", according to the dictionary, means "not genuine or true; fake". So what does it mean that this show is called Mr. Bogus? Likely, it means that the creators didn't know or care what the actual definition was and just thought "Bogus" was a cool word to say.

Mr. Bogus is based on a series of claymation shorts simply called Bogus. It aired in syndication starting in September 1991, then wound up on the Fox Family Channel. The main character is a little yellow gremlin-like creature named Mr. Bogus (voiced by Cam Clarke), who lives in the walls of the house of a young boy named Tommy Anybody (Jeannie Elias). When not getting into shenanigans in Tommy's house, Mr. Bogus would travel via bathroom mirror to his homeworld of Bogusland.

Today, Mr. Bogus is another one of those 1990s cartoons that hardly anyone remembers. It was never released on VHS or DVD, and as a result many of the show's episodes are lost media. But clearly SOMEBODY really likes it if it has a pretty in-depth TV Tropes page. As for me, I've never seen a single episode of the show myself. Until today, that is.

We'll be watching the tenth episode, "Museum Madness" and seeing if Mr. Bogus is a hidden gem or if any claims of it being a good show are... well, bogus. 

Incidentally, this show was created by Calico Entertainment and Zodiac Entertainment, the same two companies responsible for Widget the World Watcher and Twinkle the Dream Being (both of which ALSO focused on some sort of not-quite-human-not-quite-animal-either being with human kids for buddies). We'll look at those two shows another time.

The episode begins with Tommy and his class on a field trip to the National History Museum (whether it's the one in Washington D.C. or the one in New York is unclear). Mr. Bogus is peeking out of Tommy's backpack... yep, this is one of those "kid has to hide the out of the ordinary creature from everyone for whatever reason" shows. I'm not sure why it's so important for them to hide this new undiscovered life form from everyone. Maybe they're afraid that if somebody finds Mr. Bogus, he'll get captured and dissected by scientists or something?

Also, Mr. Bogus sounds a lot like Freddy from Barnyard.

Tommy's teacher, voiced by Jim Cummings, tells the class about an Egyptian pharaoh who took power as a teenager and bullied his subjects. This attracts the attention of Mr. Bogus' enemy, Ratty (also Jim Cummings). Guess what kind of animal he is. No, really, guess. Yep, he's a rat. And he's usually aided by a dimwitted mole creatively named Mole. A clever reference to The Wind in the Willows, or could the showrunners just not think of better names for these characters? You be the judge.

If I saw this thing running around my house, I would immediately put out a mouse trap.

The pharaoh, Tommy's teacher explains, wasn't satisfied with the treasure he had already and wanted a Golden Scarab that, according to legend, has the power to bring objects to life. With this scarab, the pharaoh could rule Egypt forever... I'm not sure how having a scarab that brings inanimate objects to life would've accomplished that, but let's just go with it.

The people of Egypt hoped that a brave hero would save them from the pharaoh. Mr. Bogus notices a hieroglyphic that's part of the exhibit depicting this "brave hero" the teacher was talking about. And it just so happens to look exactly like him. Apparently Bogus' kind existed back in the days of ancient Egypt. So these little yellow guys have been running amok for centuries and they've somehow never been discovered by humans until Tommy met Mr. Bogus? Uh, okay then...

"Is my nose really that big?!"

The hieroglyphic doubles as a revolving door, sending Mr. Bogus into a secret room - with Ratty jumping in after because he thinks he has dibs on the pharaoh's treasures. The room turns out to be the bedroom of that pharaoh, as evidenced by the fact that he's currently waking up in it. And he hasn't even aged a day. Apparently that scarab also makes whoever wields it immortal, too.

That neon green shirt really clashes with the blue and pink-striped headdress.

Ratty tries to steal some of the pharaoh's royal treasure, but the pharaoh isn't having any of that. He uses the scarab to bring forks and spoons to life and launch berries at Ratty. And then the pharaoh... goes back to bed. Well, this was a really anti-climactic fight scene.

Mr. Bogus decides to steal the magic scarab while the pharaoh is asleep so he can't use it to, I dunno, bring shoes to life and have them kick people in the shin until they let him overthrow the president or something. Ratty wants the scarab for himself, but neither of them counted on the pharaoh having a Tress MacNeille-voiced cobra who wants to eat Bogus for lunch. Shouldn't she be going after Ratty? Cobras eat rats, after all.

"Y'know, this is just like that scene in The Jungle Book..."

"SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHH! Don't let Disney'sssssss lawyerssssssssss hear that..."

Fortunately, Mr. Bogus is immune to the cobra's hypnosis powers and manages to tie her into a knot and run off with the scarab just as the pharaoh is waking up. The pharaoh corners him, but then Bogus gets an idea - he uses the scarab to bring a pair of nearby mummies to life, then makes them dance around the pharaoh by playing a flute. As opposed to, y'know, just letting them eat his brains or whatever it is that mummies do.

...do mummies even count as "inanimate objects"?

I always thought mummies preferred WRAP music. Ba-dum kssssssh.

With the pharaoh distracted, Bogus ties the mummy's bandages around his waist, resulting in HIM getting all wrapped up and the mummies being reduced to skeletons. I hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure mummies still have skin under those bandages. They're basically zombies cosplaying as the Michelin Man. Unless stripping the bandages off also tears off their skin... yeesh, I didn't need THAT mental image...

No need to get your bones rattled, guys. You can always go audition to star in a
stop-motion Tim Burton movie.

Ratty swipes the scarab and uses it to conjure up a miniature chariot... wait a second, this scarab can make random things materialize too? Well, whatever, Bogus manages to get it back and they run out of the room and back to the main hallway of the museum, where Bogus scares off Ratty by bringing a lion hieroglyphic to life. Bogus hands the hieroglyphic that looks like him the scarab, then gets scared off by a mummy's hand reaching out to grab him.

Then we cut to one of those stop-motion shorts that this show spawned from. I forgot to mention, before and after the commercials they'd play the shorts with new audio (so, for example, Cam Clarke redubbed Bogus' dialogue). So first we get a short where has Bogus pretending to land on the moon, only to be snapped out of his fantasy by a toy train. Then we get a short where Bogus plays Pong using an actual tennis racquet and ball. Neither short is all that funny, but they're charming at least.

"Eat your heart out, Buzz Aldrin!"

Now, please forget about the pharaoh and the scarab, because they're never brought up again for the rest of the episode. Now we're watching Tommy's class learn about the great inventors and the things that they invented - Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone, Samuel Morse and his telegraph, Thomas Edison and his lightbulb, etc. Mr. Bogus messes around inside a radio before Tommy puts him back in his backpack and tells him to stay out of trouble. I'm sure Bogus will do just that, right?

Oh, wait, maybe he won't. Three beings made of dust just came out of an air vent. These are the Dirt Dudes, also part of Mr. Bogus' rouges gallery.

My allergies are acting up just looking at them.

Mr. Bogus prepares to go fight the Dirt Dudes, but then something else for him to worry about rears its ugly head - a security guard's angry dog.

"This museum has a strict 'no shirt, no shoes, no service' policy, punk."

So now what? Do we get a wacky chase through the museum? Nope, Bogus evades the dog no problem and then it's back to focusing on the Dirt Dudes. They all wind up inside a primitive computer, and after Bogus does battle against the Dirt Dudes, they slip a CD-ROM into the computer's floppy drive that creates yet another foe for Bogus.

Ratty, the Dirt Dudes, the pharaoh, the snake, the dog, this guy... Bogus has more foes
than a Marvel superhero.

The robot chases Bogus over to a model of Christopher Columbus drawing a map. Bogus swipes one of Columbus' pens, using it to draw a black hole in the middle of the wall for the robot to run into. Conflict resolved. Then the dog shows up again, and the security guard sees Bogus and mistakes him for a rodent.

Yeah, I'm calling bull. Bogus doesn't look nearly enough like a rodent for somebody to mistake him for one. If I saw something like that, I wouldn't immediately assume "rodent". Anyway, Bogus takes down the Dirt Dudes using a spray cleaner bottle and a model airplane. "Bogey's got right stuff!" he quips.

You think Bogus is actually what happens when a Smurf and a Minion cross-breed? Bet now
you can't unthink it.

And then it's back to the stop-motion. First we see Bogus attempting to fix a radio only to destroy it, then we see Bogus playing a video game and somehow causing the laser-blasting rocket he's controlling to fly out of the computer and blast him. Always a risk when you're playing Space Invaders.

Maybe you should stick to Pong, Mr. Bogus.

Then it's off to the museum's art gallery, where Bogus causes some WHACKY SHENANIGANS using a cookie as a frisbee (it makes sense in context). But then guess who shows up again?

Ratty rehearses for his performance as - who else? - the Rat King in The Nutcracker.

But Ratty's not alone! He is accompanied by Mole (Pat Fraley), and he plans on stealing some of the art for his own art collection.

Did you know that male moles are called "boars" and female moles are called "sows"?




Hey, if I can't be funny, I think I should at least try to be educational.

Unaware of his foes' presence, Mr. Bogus jumps into a painting of a pirate ship in the hopes of finding some treasure. Ratty jumps in as well for the same reason, leading to a swordfight. Mole swings in after them, and winds up stupidly knocking himself and Ratty into the water. With them out of the way, Bogus swims for the nearby Treasure Island, but then Ratty and Mole climb back onto the ship and try to use a cannon on Bogus - only for Moley to wind up sinking the ship.

This is the weirdest adaptation of Peter Pan ever. Yes, even weirder than the one with
Christopher Walken as Hook.

Bogus finds a treasure map and a parrot that can lead him to the treasure. Ratty and Mole set a trap for him, but the parrot clues him in and he knocks them into the trap himself. Congratulations, Ratty and Mole, you officially make Scratch and Grounder look competent by comparison.

Bogus and the parrot find the treasure, but Ratty and Mole catch up with them and are all "That's ours!", only for actual pirates to show up and claim the treasure is theirs. Long story short, Bogus goes flying out of the painting and back into Tommy's backpack just as he and his class are leaving the museum.

The end.

What's the Verdict?

I personally thought Mr. Bogus was okay. Most of the jokes are kind of funny, Mr. Bogus himself is charming in a Stitch-esque "so grotesque he's actually kind of cute" sort of way, and the animation (both the 2D animation and the stop-motion stuff) is decent. What are my main problems with it? Well, it's a bit annoying that the episode sets up one plot and then discards it in favor of another one, which it then discards in favor of a THIRD one. As a result, all three plots feel rushed and repetitive - Mr. Bogus encounters foe. Mr. Bogus defeats foe via WHACKY SHENANIGANS. Foe comes back, Mr. Bogus defeats them again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Perhaps it would've worked better if each episode were actually three shorts in one, a la Animaniacs. I doubt I'll be watching more episodes of Mr. Bogus, but as is, it wasn't bad. I've seen far better cartoons from the 1990s, though. If you want to watch the show for yourself, you can find a couple episodes on YouTube.

What are we looking at next time?

Ah, the movie responsible for this scene. This is gonna be interesting...