Trivia / 3-2-1 Penguins!

• Children Voicing Children: Both Jason and Michelle Conrad had two child voice actors. Jason's first voice actor, Mark Marten, was around 7-9 years old. His second voice actor, Quinn Lord, was 7 years old. Michelle's first voice actress, Melissa Peterson, was around 7-9 years old. Her second voice actress, Claire Corlett, was around 7 years old.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: LocateTV's description for the show read as follows: "Follow the adventures of Jason and Michelle, a pair of young penguin twins". One has to wonder if they even bothered to watch the show, or even look at promotional art, as anyone can tell you that Jason and Michelle are a pair of human twins. The eponymous penguins are the four penguins (Zidgel, Midgel, Fidgel, and Kevin) whom Jason and Michelle go on adventures with, and not Jason and Michelle themselves.
• Creator's Oddball: This is the only thing produced by Big Idea Productions that isn't related to VeggieTales
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Jason is voiced by Marie-Laure Beneston (a woman) in the French dub.
  • And in a bizarre case, Zidgel is voiced by Gordana Kamenarović (a woman) in the Serbian dub.
  • A case involving a man: Grandmum is voiced by Antonín Navrátil in the 2nd Czech dub.
• Dueling Dubs: Two Czech dubs were created: one that aired on Minimax, and the other that was not only aired on TV Nova, but released on DVD.
• Dawson Casting: Averted, since Jason's and Michelle's voice actors were around their age.
• Edited for Syndication: To be expected when the first six episodes were broadcast on television. However, unlike most other examples of this trope, those six episodes' TV edits are the only ones easily accessible on current home video or streaming releases today.
• Fake Australian: Midgel is voiced by Greg Mills and Paul Dobson, an American and Canadian.
• Fake Brit: None of Grandmum's four voice actresses are British. Pamela Thomas, Annie Walker-Bright, and Kymberly Mellen are American. Ellen Kennedy is Canadian.
  • Same applies for Fidgel (American Page Hearn and Canadian Lee Tockar) and Kevin (American Ron Smith and Canadian Michael Donovan).
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • For a while, only 13 out of the 20 episodes from the television series were released on DVD. Hulu did have them up for free, up until July 2016. This is averted after Hulu's takedown, as Big Idea released all the episodes on DVD, as part of a 3-disc "Complete Series" release.
  • Played straight with "Songs From Cosmic Cafe", a compliation of the song segments from the original Direct to Video releases that aired during the initial qubo run. Eventually averted as it was recovered and uploaded onto Archive.org.
• Newbie Boom: This show was not as popular as its' sister series VeggieTales, and thus only had 6 videos released. Then in 2006, qubo picked up the rights to Big Idea's shows and paired 3-2-1 Penguins with LarryBoy: The Cartoon Adventures as part of the anthology series 3-2-1 Penguins! and LarryBoy Stories. Surprisingly, the episodes of this anthology series featuring 3-2-1 Penguins! did better than VeggieTales in the ratings and became qubo's top-rated program among children, many of whom had never seen the show before. As a result of this boom in popularity, 20 new episodes were commissioned.
• Only So Many Canadian Actors: Happens in the seasons that were produced for qubo. Most notably, Lee Tockar plays Fidgel.
• The Other Darrin: Jason, Michelle, and the Penguins got new voice actors when the series got renewed for T.V. due to the original actors not being available and Jason's and Michelle's voice actors were grown up. Zidgel's original voice actor, Ron Wells, was the voice performance consultant.
  • Grandmum got a new voice actress three times.
• The Other Marty: Grandmum's lines for the first three videos (originally Pamela Thomas and Annie Walker-Bright) were redubbed by Kymberly Mellen when they were rereleased starting in late 2002 and 2003.
• Playing Against Type: Paul Dobson, who usually voices a cunning evil villain or a thuggish strong guy, voices Midgel in the T.V. version, who is neither of these things.
  • Lee Tockar is notable for playing either super obnoxious or below average intelligence characters. Here, he plays super-smart, anxiety-ridden Fidgel.
• The Resolution Will Not Be Identified: The show ended in 2008 with no resolution with either Cavitus being caught, or the kids leaving their Grandmum's place for the summer.
• Shrug of God: It's never clearly established whether Jason and Michelle were daydreaming their adventures or if they really happened.
• Un-Canceled: Four years after the sixth direct-to-video episode was released, qubo renewed the series for television And then it got re-canceled in 2008 because it wasn't getting as many views as expected.
• Unspecified Role Credit: The only supporting characters who have their voices credited are Admiral Strap and Sol.
• What Could Have Been: According to Tim Hodge, an arc in the series where the Penguins crew have to chase Cavitus because he has the Metric Magnetic Matter Disperser was originally going to be added. In it, Fidgel needs to fix the galeezel so Jason and Michelle can return back to normal size at the end of the series. However, this was changed because they still wanted Grandmum in the series. Though they kept the idea of fixing the galeezel in the first and last episodes of the series.
• Working Title: 3-2-1 Penguins! was originally going to be Jason and the Penguinauts.

---