- "Keep your Eye on the prize!"
Airdate: September 8, 2002
"Eye Candy" is the second episode of the second (internet) season of Happy Tree Friends. Notable for being one of the most viewed episodes in the series (along with "Out On a Limb" and "Eyes Cold Lemonade") and winning the award for "best internet series"
at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival of 2003.
Toothy's day takes a turn for the worst when he ends up tripping over a log while carrying a big lollipop. The lollipop ends up being lodged in his right eye. He pulls it out, but this results in his eye being launched into a tree branch, tied up by the optic nerve. Toothy tries to pull it back to no avail, so he tries climbing up the tree, all while enduring pain. At the tree branch, Toothy tries to reach for his eye, but his differing visions hinder him. Suddenly, a woodpecker perches near the detached eye. It then pecks the eye, inflicting more pain on poor Toothy and causing him to slip off the branch. He falls a great distance, with his optic nerve the only thing keeping him from falling further. Now Toothy tries to climb up his own optic nerve, but his hands soon slip from it, sending him back down again. This time, his brain gets pulled out along with his other eye as Toothy himself falls a short distance and lands on solid ground. His head is then defecated on by the bird.
"Eye Candy" contains examples of:
- Artistic License – Biology: Everything related to Toothy's detached eye thanks to Rule of Funny.
- Bird-Poop Gag: During the closing iris.
- Break the Cutie: Poor Toothy goes through absolute hell in this episode.
- Eye Scream: The main gist of the episode, with Toothy's eye socket getting jabbed with his lollipop. It also happens to start the series-wide gag of Toothy constantly suffering from eye injuries.
- Impairment Shot: The viewer gets to see from Toothy's POV where one eye looks at the tree while the other looks at the branch where the eye is.
- Literal Cliffhanger: The optic nerve tied on the tree branch is the only thing that keeps Toothy from being splattered on the ground down below after he falls down the cliff the tree is located on. Subverted when it's revealed that he was only a few feet from the ground by the time the optic nerve stopped his fall. Not that it's much comfort, considering that does nothing to help him out of his predicament and he's already dead from other causes when he lands.
- Shout-Out: The woodpecker depicted in this episode resembles Woody Woodpecker.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Toothy dies.
- Updated Re-release: One of the early episodes to be part of the "Classics Remastered" releases, which rerelease early HTF episodes in HD.
- Your Size May Vary: The tree shrinks in size when Toothy starts falling.
