Let's Watch This: An Episode of "The Save-Ums"

I was gonna do a review of Chop Socky Chooks this week, but then I decided to look up one of the companies that produced the show, Decode Entertainment. To my surprise, one of the other shows that they had a hand in was a little something called The Save-Ums, which I remember watching a lot when I was younger. So I'm going to review The Save-Ums instead. Don't worry, all three of you Chop Socky Chooks fans out there - we'll look at the show another time.

Now, before I talk about The Save-Ums, I should probably talk about the channel that it aired on here in the United States, Discovery Kids.

Discovery Kids was launched in October 1996 as part of four new Discovery cable channels (it also had a Saturday morning block on NBC starting in 2001). The channel aired a mix of live action "tweencoms" and cartoons like Tutenstein, but I always watched more of the show's "Ready, Set, Learn" preschoolers' block myself - along with Playhouse Disney, PBS Kids, and Boomerang, THIS was mainly what I watched when I was a toddler. Most of the shows that aired as part of this block, including The Save-Ums, are pretty obscure today, but I might unlock a few core memories in my readers' heads by mentioning them: ToddWorld? Hi-5? Peep and the Big Wide World? Animal Jam? Any of these a-ringing a bell? Surely you're familiar with the character who was for all intents and purposes the block's mascot, Paz the Penguin?

I'm not the only one who had a Paz plush, right?

Alas, in 2010 Discovery Kids became The Hub - which later on became Discovery Family. And so Paz, the Save-Ums, Peep, and the characters from ToddWorld wound up kicked to the curb, replaced by shows created to sell Hasbro toys. Fortunately, you can find episodes of The Save-Ums on YouTube for those of you like me who'd like to engage in some nostalgia.

So, what exactly IS The Save-Ums? Well, the premise is that a group of strange creature children known as the Save-Ums head out to help somebody, usually an animal, out with their problem. Sometimes they travel to a mountain-topped island called Rock World, sometimes they travel to another island with a volcano on it called Lava World, and sometimes they travel to the underwater location known as Wave World. No problem is too big or too small for the Save-Ums, who consist of...

- Jazzi, with her purple skin and pigtails
- Foo, who appears to be what happens when a penguin and a fish have a baby
- Noodle, presumably called that because he is (or at least looks like) a giant noodle
- Ka-Chung, a bombastic hippopotamus-esque fella
- Custard, who kind of looks like Chowder
- And the smallest and youngest of the Save-Ums, Jazzi's little brother B.B. Jammies

The show was created by Dan Clark, Don Asher, and Dave Pressler (who went on to create Robot and Monster for Nickelodeon) and premiered as part of the "Ready, Set, Learn" block on February 24th, 2003. It received two seasons, making for a total of thirty-nine episodes, each consisting of two segments. We'll be watching the fifth episode of the show, which consists of the segments "Save That Little Tree!" and "A Rock in Winston's Garden!", today because I want to see if the show holds up. This is The Save-Ums.

"Save That Little Tree!" starts off in the Save-Ums' home base (apparently the Save-Ums had the same contractor who built Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse), where Custard is teaching B.B. Jammies and these little fuzzy creatures called the Puffs how to do yoga. We hear the bones of one Puff crack, which A) is pretty disturbing and B) is also pretty surprising seeing as I didn't think the Puffs had bones. I have so many questions about Puff anatomy.

Think of them as being the Tribbles of The Save-Ums.

Actually, the Puffs are surprisingly good at yoga for creatures that don't have limbs. But their little yoga session is interrupted by the Save-Um Screen going off, prompting Jazzi to pop in and see what's going on. We also get a look at the planet that the Save-Ums call home - either Earth or a very, very similar planet that just so happens to have anthropomorphic noodles and fish/penguin hybrid babies living on it. I've seen the Save-Ums called aliens online, but I'm not sure if it's ever specified just WHAT, exactly, they are. I also don't recall it ever being specified where their parents were, either.

Did you know that you can see the Great Pyramids of Giza from space? Hey, if I can't be
funny, I think I should at least try to be educational...

Did you know that you can see the Great Pyramids of Giza from space? Hey, if I can't be funny, I think I should at least try to be educational...

As the Save-Ums gather around the screen, it's revealed that the call is coming from Lava World - specifically, from these two glum-looking monkeys. Maybe they're blue because they can't find their noses.

It must stink to be a monkey without a nose. You wouldn't be able to smell the bananas
you eat.

These two are Oscar and Tina, and they're worried because their friend Sally is in big trouble. Who is Sally? Not another monkey, but a tree. Not a sentient tree, just a regular tree. Presumably, there aren't many other residents in Lava World - which makes sense, because who wants to live on an island with a volcano on it? - so Oscar and Tina have decided to befriend a tree. The problem? The volcano is erupting, and the lava is headed right for Sally!

The Save-Ums don't seem to be too worried about this. Instead, Noodle cheerfully explains to the other Save-Ums - and the audience - what lava is. I mean, to be fair, it's a TREE, but if the monkeys are distressed by this, it's pretty insensitive of you guys not to show any concern. "Everyone in Lava World knows to stay away from the Hot Lava when the volcano is erupting!" Oscar claims. "But Sally is just a plant!" "She can't think for herself, or get out of the way, or ANYTHING! She's stuck in the ground!" Tina adds. Ah, so they DO know that Sally isn't sentient? I wasn't sure...

I bet Ka-Chung goes through a lot of ChapStick.

"Tell Sally we're on our way!" Noodle declares - and by "we're", he means himself, Ka-Chung, and Foo. For some reason, only two or three of the Save-Ums go on the mission in each episode. Wouldn't it make more sense if they ALL went? After all, if two heads are better than one, surely SIX heads (or five, since B.B. Jammies is just a baby) is better than THREE. What, does Custard have a dental appointment or something? Ah well, I'm glad Noodle is coming along - I think he was my favorite Save-Um. Probably stems from the fact that I love pasta...

Noodle suggests that they take the "Sub-Chopper", which can fly through the air and get them to Lava World quickly. Ka-Chung then says that his "Ka-Drill" could come in handy too, to which Noodle says that they can use the Sub-Chopper's robo-fingers to carry the Ka-Drill to Lava World. And so, with a shout of the team's catchphrase "Small is powerful!"...

"Beam us up, Scotty!"

The three Save-Ums going on the mission are on their way, with Noodle and Ka-Chung traveling in the Sub-Chopper and Foo using a jetpack. I love how when they get to Lava World, Ka-Chung says, "That volcano really IS erupting!" Well, obviously. Did he think that maybe the monkeys made up the "volcano erupting" thing just for the heck of it?

Yeah, the CGI in this show hasn't aged particularly well...

"We need to move that tree out of danger and replant her someplace safe!" Noodle tells the monkeys. Fortunately, Oscar knows of a great place near the beach where they can replant Sally. "Kaaaaaaaaaa-CHUNG!" Ka-Chung explains, because he couldn't think of a better catchphrase than just shouting his name whenever he's excited. "I can use my Ka-Drill to dig a comfy hole to plant her in!" And Noodle can use the Sub-Chopper to fly her down to them. But wait - how are they going to get Sally out of the ground? They'd have to somehow uproot her. Fortunately, Foo gets an idea after seeing some coconut shells on the ground nearby... she can just dig the tree out of the ground with the shells. Y'know, because apparently nobody thought to bring a shovel.

I bet Sally's not exactly DIGGING the situation she's in right now. Get it? DIGGING?
Ha ha ha ha ha... I amuse myself.

The lava is getting closer, so it's a good thing that Foo, Oscar and Tina are just about done digging. Now Noodle can use the Sub-Chopper's robo-fingers to lift Sally out of harm's way. Two questions about the Sub-Chopper: one, why is it called that? The prefix "Sub" means "underneath", so does the Sub-Chopper have the ability to go underneath things as well as over them? Did they ever show this in an episode? And two, where can I get one?

"Let me give you a HAND! Get it? HAND?



Hey, if the writer of this blog post can make bad puns, I don't see why I can't."

Noodle lifts the tree out of the lava's path, then Ka-Chung uses the Ka-Drill to dig a new hole. Zhe day, it is, how you say, saved! And it only took, like, three minutes!

Staring at Noodle makes me hungry for pasta. I still can't tell if he actually IS a walking,
talking noodle or if he just LOOKS LIKE one...

Now that Sally is safe and sound, the Save-Ums bid the monkeys farewell and head back to their headquarters. Foo tells Custard and Jazzi that they learned a valuable lesson about plants and how they need love... which doesn't really have anything to do with what happened. The problem wasn't that Sally wasn't getting enough love, it was that a VOLCANO WAS ERUPTING AND THE LAVA WAS FLOWING TOWARDS HER. So if anything, the moral is "don't plant a tree near a volcano, idiot". Who planted Sally anyway?

We end with the Save-Ums all doing more yoga. On to "A Rock in Winston's Garden!"!

Foo takes some pictures of herself and the Puffs (this was before the days of cell phones with cameras in 'em, so no, the pictures that Foo takes do not qualify as "selfies"), then the Save-Um Screen starts going off. Who's calling them this time? Somebody from Wave World - their pal Winston the blue whale!

Y'know what always bothered me about Winston? Why the heck does he have EARS? HUMAN ears? It's just so OFF-PUTTING. Is he a mutant? Does he live in one of those parts of the ocean where people test atomic bombs?

And where on Earth does a blue whale find a pair of pants big enough for them to fit in?

Winston demonstrates that he is a Woody Allen parody by fretting to the Save-Ums about how it's time for his "Silly Sea Sammies" - which are a kind of underwater flower that suddenly pop up out of the sand and giggle - to bloom. The problem? A big rock fell on top of his Silly Sea Sammies, so when the flowers bloom they'll hit their little flower heads.

I hope this episode features an appearance from that baby dinosaur who looks like a giant
Larry the Cucumber. Save-Ums fans, you know who I'm talking about.

Noodle suggests that they take the Sub-Chopper, which in addition to flying through the air can also travel under the sea (so THAT'S why it's called a "SUB-Chopper"). In addition to Noodle, Jazzi and Foo - fitting, seeing as she looks like a fish - are coming along as well.

How many Save-Ums does it take to remove a rock from a whale's garden? I don't know,
ask the chicken who crossed the road.

Off the three of them go, Noodle and Jazzi in the Sub-Chopper and Foo in her jetpack. When they arrive at Wave World, Winston leads them to his garden - and the rock that's taking up residence in it.

"It's not just a boulder! It's a rock! It's a big, beautiful old rock! Oh, the pioneers used to
ride these babies for miles! And it's in great shape!"

The Save-Ums better hurry, because the Silly Sea Sammies are getting ready to bloom any minute now. Noodle says he can use the robo-fingers to push the rock off the flowers. Unfortunately, it doesn't work - methinks Noodle isn't very strong. He's high in fiber and carbohydrates, but he's pretty weak. And to make matters worse, everyone can hear the giggling of the Silly Sea Sammies from under the rock.

...actually, now that I think about it, has WINSTON tried to lift the rock? He's a blue whale. Blue whales have strong muscles.

Odd that Jazzi has pigtails but otherwise no other hair on her head.

Jazzi gets an idea - if the rock is too big for them to move, they'll just have to smash it into smaller pieces. So Foo opens up the Sub-Chopper's tool box and, sure enough, there happens to be something in it that could help them - a sledgehammer!

"I wanna be... your sledgehammer... why don't you call my name?"

Foo isn't sure that she's strong enough to smash the rock since she's so small - and judging from the fact that she's having difficulty lifting the sledgehammer, I'd say her fears are justified. "Remember, Foo - small is powerful!" Noodle claims, giving Foo the strength of ten Save-Ums plus two. She hits the rock with the hammer, and sure enough, cracks start to form and the rock falls apart into smaller pieces. Now they can just lift up the pieces and move them so the Silly Sea Sammies can do their thing.

So flowers are sentient in this world, but trees aren't?

Winston thanks the Save-Ums for their help - the giggling of the Silly Sea Sammies is music to his weird human ears (yes, I'm still harping on that). It's back to Save-Um headquarters, where Foo puts the photos she took earlier in her album.

What's the Verdict?

So, that's The Save-Ums. And yeah, it's obviously aimed for little kids, the ones who are more into stuff like Paw Patrol and Dora the Explorer than, say, Gravity Falls. But it manages to avoid falling into the same trap as something like Cave Kids by not being too sappy and cutesy-wootsy. The Save-Ums all have really appealing designs... with the possible exception of B.B. Jammies. He's a bit off-putting (probably because he's the only one with pupils). Maybe they're not the most complex characters, but they're likeable and the child voice actors all do a good job. And it manages to get you genuinely invested in the problems that the characters have to solve without making them too scary for kids. I'm not sure if I would recommend it to anyone over the age of five (unless you watched it when you were little and want to engage in some nostalgia), but it's a great cartoon for you to show your kids.

I'll probably tackle the other Discovery Kids cartoons another time. It was never as iconic a channel as Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network, so pretty much anything animated that aired on the channel is pretty obscure nowadays. Oh, yeah - and remember the Discovery Channel STORES? Remember those?

I remember they had one in Baltimore at some point in the 2000s. Good times...

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Lilo and Stitch: The Series"

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 remember when Lilo and Stitch came out. I remember seeing it in theaters. I remember the bonus features on the DVD. I remember my sister having a Lilo doll. Lilo and Stitch was one of the only Disney movies of the 2000s to be considered (by the company itself, at least) a box office success. And you know what THAT meant, right?

ANSWER: it meant that they had a new cash cow.

And boy howdy were they going to take advantage of that - ESPECIALLY at the Disney theme parks. Well, at Walt Disney World anyway, I don't know if they did this at Disneyland too. Stitch received his own attraction in 2004 at the Magic Kingdom, Stitch's Great Escape. I never went on it, but apparently it was really bad, and it has since been shut down. Disney, however, was really proud of the attraction, because they promoted it perhaps more than they've promoted any other attraction in the resort's history... there were signs all over the park, Stitch stickers were pasted on the windows of the monorail, they even vandalized Cinderella Castle. Look at this:

And on top of THAT, somehow Stitch became the sixth member of Mickey's group of friends. On merchandise, he'd be included alongside Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto and he stuck out like a sore thumb. Eventually, the company calmed down on Stitch, but he was practically the mascot of Disney for a while.

Outside the parks, Disney kept the Stitch train a-chuggin' along with merchandise and direct-to-video sequels. He received three, the first of which was Stitch! The Movie. Kind of a weird thing to call a film's direct-to-video sequel, seeing as the name of the first movie was Lilo and Stitch. So this one is just Stitch? It's like if they made a sequel to Turner and Hooch and called it Turner! The Movie.

I've heard that the ACTUAL Lilo and Stitch direct-to-video sequel that came after
this one, Lilo and Stitch 2: Stich Has a Glitch, is better. The fourth one, Leroy and Stitch,
is apparently the weakest of the Stitch movies.

The name makes a little more sense if you know that Stitch! The Movie was actually just a feature-length pilot for the Lilo and Stitch TV show that Disney was making, which was going to be called Stitch! The Series at first before they decided to call it Lilo and Stitch: The Series instead.

This show, developed by Bobs Gannaway and Jess Winfield, premiered on September 20th, 2003. It was basically Disney's answer to Pokemon - Stitch's name, before Lilo found him, was Experiment 626, right? So that means that his creator, Dr. Jumbaa Jookiba, made 625 experiments BEFORE he made him, right? Thus, the show had Lilo (once again voiced by Daveigh Chase) and Stitch (once again voiced by Chris Sanders) chasing after all the other experiments that Jumbaa (David Ogden Stiers) created, which were stored in tiny ping pong balls that would free them when contact was made with some sort of liquid. Along for the ride were Lilo's big sister Nani (Tia Carrere), Jumbaa, and the one-eyed former Galactic Federation agent Pleakley (Kevin McDonald). The show received two seasons, making for a total of sixty-five episodes.

I remember watching the show when it was on, but to be honest, I don't think it holds up very well. Apparently, executive meddling resulted in the charm of the film it was based on being tossed out the window in favor of zany, more lighthearted antics. The original film was pretty mellow and laid-back. You're not gonna find any tender moments like Stitch's speech about his family here. Nope, we have episodes about experiments that turn people into babies, crossovers with Kim Possible and American Dragon: Jake Long, and... well, just look at this:

This episode, by the way, has a really heavy-handed moral about healthy eating.
Yes, it's one of THOSE shows...

The characters got Flanderized as well, most notably Pleakley. In the original movie, he was intelligent (he just didn't quite understand humans) and tried his best to keep the bombastic Jumbaa in line. In the show, he's now a massive idiot who exists so that the writers can make jokes at the expense of gay people. I shouldn't have to say this... somebody being gay is not a joke. Making fun of people for not being straight is wrong, okay? In fact, television shows' mockery of gay people is likely a reason why homophobes are still a thing.

All right, all right, let's get on with the actual review. We'll be watching the third episode, "Clip". As they say in Hawaii, E hoʻomaka kākou! Thank goodness for Google Translate...

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Will and Dewitt"

What's the only thing weirder than a cartoon starring a studio logo? Well, for one thing, a two-headed rhinoceros playing an accordion while balancing on a gumball machine. Obviously. But another thing that's pretty weird is a cartoon series starring the mascot of WIPES. Are you familiar with Kandoo?

Kandoo is a line of children's personal care products - wipes, body wash, shampoo, hand soap... all of it featuring this green frog, on the packaging. In the 2000s, somebody said "Hey, what if we gave this character his own cartoon show?". I guess the mindset was that giving the frog a cartoon show would increase sales of the wipes? I don't know if it did, but they made that cartoon show.

Produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment (or, as it's called nowadays, WildBrain) and Two Presidents Productions, Will and Dewitt aired on Kids' WB in the United States and YTV in Canada starting in September 2007. It starred the frog, now given the name of Dewitt, and paired him up with an eight-year-old boy named Will. The show only received one season, and according to TV Tropes that's because...

1) It was a preschool show made for Kids' WB, a block consisting mainly of comedy or action-based shows (such as Loonatics Unleashed, Xiaolin Showdown, and Krypto the Superdog). The target audience wasn't there - especially since the show aired at 7:00, when most kids would still be asleep.

2) This was during the time period where Kids' WB was just limping along until shutting down in 2008.

Does any of this mean that the show is bad? Of course not. Maybe it was a good show that was just the victim of bad circumstances. So, let's watch an episode of Will and Dewitt to see just how good or bad it is. You can find a couple episodes on YouTube, among them the first episode, which consists of the segments "Things That Go Flump in the Night" and "My New Boots". That's the one we'll be looking at today. Let's hop to it! Y'know, since the show's about a frog...

Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Postcards From Buster"

This started off as a review of the 1990s cartoon show Monster Farm, but I wound up having to abandon the review when I discovered that there are no full episodes in English of the show online. So my review of Monster Farm is gonna have to wait until someone posts a full episode of the show (by which I mean both segments, it's one of those "two shorts in one" cartoons) in English on the internet. Sorry.

As we all know, spinoffs can be tricky. Taking a character from one show and putting them in another where they're the main focus doesn't always work out. Sometimes it does - I love Frasier, for instance, though I'm not even a huge Cheers fan so make of that what you will. And what about Pinky and the Brain? That was a spinoff of Animaniacs, and everybody loves it.

But for every Frasier or Pinky and the Brain, you get a spinoff that sucks. I tried to review an episode of The Cleveland Show but I wound up deleting the review because it wasn't giving me enough joke material. I'll tell you what I thought of it right now - it STUNK. There's also Planet Sheen, which you'd think would be good since Sheen was the funniest character in Jimmy Neutron but was total crap.

And speaking of spinoffs focusing on the funniest character from the original show, at some point when iconic PBS Kids show Arthur was in its eighth season somebody got an idea: everybody loves Arthur's best friend Buster, right? He's quite possibly the funniest (and one of the nicest) of Arthur's friends. So let's give him his own show!

The result was Postcards From Buster, which premiered in October 2004 on PBS Kids as part of its "PBS Kids Go!" block. The show focused on Buster (voiced by Daniel Brochu, just like in Arthur) traveling around the world with his father, Bo Baxter (voiced by Marcel Jeannin), who's an airline pilot. Buster records his experiences from around the world with a video camera, encountering live action children and learning about wherever it is that he's visiting. Four seasons were produced, with a total of fifty-five episodes - most of which took place in the U.S., probably because it's easier to fly or drive to Chicago or Seattle than to, say, Columbia.

I remember watching this show when it was on, but was never really interested in rewatching it. But ever since I reviewed Arthur's Missing Pal, I've had the urge to do a review of Postcards From Buster, so y'know what? Let's watch an episode. It's obscure enough for me to cover on this blog. I considered doing an episode that took place where I've lived so I could tell you firsthand if it's an accurate representation of the state, but apparently there weren't any episodes where Buster went to New Jersey (where I was born), and the episode where he went to Virginia (where I live now) had him going to Virginia Beach, where I've never been. I have been to Vermont, so I could do the episode where Buster goes to Vermont and meets a kid with two moms, but that's probably the most well-known episode of the show (I'd rather not into more detail about the controversy it caused, if that's okay). We'll be watching the tenth episode, "Moose on the Loose", which takes Buster to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I've never been to Wyoming, but that's not particularly interesting...