Cartoons That Never Made It was a series of adverts that aired on Cartoon Network in 1997 and were animated by AMPnyc Animation.
The shorts were about non-existent cartoons that never made it past the pilot due to their premises being laughably terrible. The four shorts consisted of "Rupert the Grouper", "Frothy Dawg", "Heidi and the Yodelers" and "Salt 'n' Slug".
Tropes:
- All Asians Wear Conical Straw Hats: "Heidi and the Yodelers" has a brief shot of an Asian villain wearing this type of hat.
- Artist and the Band: The titular characters of "Heidi and the Yodelers" obviously follow the naming theme of a band's name consisting of "[Lead Singer] and the [Plural Noun]", being a parody of Josie and the Pussycats to begin with.
- Audience-Alienating Premise: Invoked. Over half the humor is derived from the premises of these fake cartoons being awful.
- Black Comedy: Most of the shorts have a humorously morbid premise, juxtaposed with an incongruously upbeat theme song.
- "Rupert the Grouper" stars a dancing fish who ends up dying from being out of his fishbowl too long by the time the title sequence ends. The actual episode is just a brief clip of some people dancing around his corpse, while the end credits show his dead body starting to smell and attract flies.
- "Frothy Dawg" is about a manically grinning rabid dog with a bad habit of biting everyone who gets too close to him and in one shot is shown to have infected a raccoon, a monkey, a bat and a squirrel with his disease, all of them smiling as if they're friends hanging out who don't mind that they're afflicted with an infection that has drastically reduced their lifespans. In addition, the end of the title sequence shows that the episode is the seventh of his series, alluding to the fact that dogs infected with rabies typically die within a week when not treated in time.
- "Salt 'n' Slug" is about an anthropomorphic salt shaker and a slug being in love, which predictably ends with the salt shaker accidentally killing the slug by exposing her to his contents.
- Crying Indian: Among the criminals glimpsed in the theme song for "Heidi and the Yodelers" is a snarling Native American that then sheds a tear.
- Dogs Love Fire Hydrants: "Frothy Dawg" features a shot of the titular dog peeing on a hydrant.
- Gory Discretion Shot: When Salt ends up killing Slug in "Salt 'n' Slug", we only show the other characters' horrified reactions to Slug's exposure to sodium chloride and all that's left of her when we see her again is a pile of ash.
- Interspecies Romance: "Salt 'n' Slug" is about an anthropomorphic salt shaker being in love with a slug, a pairing that predictably doesn't end well.
- Lighter and Softer: "Heidi and the Yodelers" is this to the rest, being the only one that doesn't traffic in grotesque or morbid imagery (save a brief shot of the Alexandra Cabot Expy preparing to light the Yodelers on fire).
- No Animals Were Harmed: The credits to "Frothy Dawg" end with "No animals were seriously injured in the making of this Frothy Dawg gimmick".
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: In "Salt 'n' Slug", Salt is a male blue salt shaker and Slug is a female pink slug.
- Poking Dead Things with a Stick: During the end credits to "Rupert the Grouper", Rupert's dead body can be seen poked with a stick.
- "Psycho" Strings: A shrill musical sting is played in "Frothy Dawg" when Frothy turns around and the father and son browsing the pet store window see that he is rabid.
- Stylistic Suck: The shorts are intentionally of poor quality, as part of the joke is that these non-existent cartoons weren't nearly good enough to continue production.
- Swiss-Army Tears: Right after he accidentally kills Slug in "Salt 'n' Slug", Salt miraculously resurrects her when his tears come into contact with her remains.
- Yodel Land: "Heidi and the Yodelers" consists of a parody of Josie and the Pussycats where the band are a group of stereotypical Swiss yodelers clad in lederhosen who ride in a car shaped like Swiss cheese.
