Fluffy Gardens is an Irish preschool cartoon created by Jason Tammemagi. It aired from 2007 to 2010 and has 81 episodes. The episodes air as two 7-minute shorts, each focusing on a different individual animal's story. The series centers around a world of anthropomorphic animals (and one tiny, green sentient ball) called the Fluffy Gardens, hence the series' name. The characters are diverse in personality, often with negative personality traits that they need to correct. The stories are narrated in past tense by a narrator (voiced by Michael Maloney) who provides the voice for every character. Furthermore, the narrator often talks to the audience.
In the first season, a typical short is structured in two parts: an exposition, where the narrator tells us about the character's defining traits, and the story itself, which varies from character to character. It's quite common for the more flawed characters to have a story where they have to deal with the consequences of their actions and in the end they have to (at least partially) correct their flaws. The other seasons only get the second part and the stories are made more freely rather than on a pattern.
This series provides examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: Every character has at least one episode focused on them, an obligatory one in season 1. These are the episodes where their main personality traits are fully displayed.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: While most animals have more or less realistic colour schemes (or rely on traditional cartoon animal colors), there are also quite a few animals who are especially brightly coloured.
- Scoopy the Pink Rabbit is pink, which is even in her name. Lampshaded by the narrator when he compares her to three other rabbits of normal colours (one brown, one white, and one grey).
- Mrs Toasty the Sheep has white wool, but her head, arms and legs are green. The same applies to her aunt Snugg, but in blue.
- Mavis the Pony is magenta with a light yellow mane and tail.
- Floella the Bat is blue.
- Bill the Platypus is blue with a yellow bill and feet. He almost looks like Perry.
- Lola the Mosquito is pink.
- Animals Not to Scale: The animals aren't exactly realistically sized in comparison to one another. The most exaggerated example is the insect characters like Lola the mosquito and the mantis character being almost the same size as cats, dogs, and other animals.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Green Ball, as its name suggests, is a living tiny green ball with eyes and a mouth. It can't talk, but it can communicate through squeaky sounds.
- Beware of Vicious Dog: George the Mean Yellow Dog earned this title because, besides being a bright yellow dog, he's very ill-tempered and generally rude to everyone with the occasional Pet the Dog moment.
- Blatant Lies: In his debut episode, whenever somebody sees Paolo reading a book, he denies his intelligence, saying that he's just a normal cat. This is not the case in other episodes, where everybody knows how smart he is.
- Blessed with Suck: According to the narrator, Mrs Toasty has the thickest fleece coat of all the sheep. He says it's wonderful to have such a thick coat to protect you from the cold... but not for Mrs Toasty, who lives in the hottest place in the Fluffy Gardens, which is especially hot during the summer. During her focus episode, she tries different methods to cool herself, none of which seem to work, and wishes she didn't have this thick coat. Her aunt Snugg, on the other hand, is a lot luckier, since her house is on the snowy mountains. At the end of the episode, Mrs Toasty decides to spend all the summers at her aunt's house.
- Cats Are Mean: Played straight with Fudge and Lily, twin kittens who enjoy to pull pranks on other people, but averted with the wise and intelligent Paolo.
- Characterization Marches On: Scoopy is introduced as somebody who can't resist the urge to ask questions to everything. In other episodes, however, she asks little to no questions. In the "Sports Day" episode from season 2, which is the second episode that focuses on her, this trait is completely forgotten.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Lola the Mosquito is not right in the mind. She uses "Hello" and "Goodbye" in reverse, she runs backwards, and generally says random things that don't make sense.
- Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: Chuckles the chicken, naturally, likes to crow at dawn.
- The Ditherer: Monty the goat is very indecisive about everything. When he goes to a restaurant with Mavis the pony, it takes him several hours to decide what to order. Before settling for two fried eggs, he goes back and fourth between ordering something and taking his words back. When he wants to paint a boat, it takes around a year for Monty to settle for a green boat.
- Diurnal Nocturnal Animal:
- While the narrator states that most owls are nocturnal, Oona is unlike the other owls because she's diurnal and afraid of the dark.
- Floella the bat is stated to be nocturnal, but aside from a few episodes, she is just as often seen during the day.
- Forgetful Jones: Bill the Platypus is very forgetful. The only thing he remembers is where he lives since he's the only character whose house is a boat. But in his focus episode, there was a boat competition held in the Fluffy Gardens and this made it hard for him to recognize his house.
- Gentle Giant: Pertie the Bear is big compared to other characters, but he's polite and well-meaning, despite intimidating the others with his size.
- Green Gators: Camille the crocodile is green.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Stinky the Skunk fears that nobody wants to be his friend because of his smell. To combat this, he decides to make a cardboard robot to serve the role of a friend. However, after Paolo, Cornelius and Scoopy help him build the robot, Stinky finds out they consider him a friend, regardless of the way he smells.
- Informed Species: Lola looks more like a (very cartoony) housefly than a mosquito.
- Innocently Insensitive: Scoopy can't resist asking questions to the others, even though some of them come across as offensive. After she unintentionally offends Rex the piglet for asking him if stew will make his belly grow bigger, she decides it's better to not ask questions anymore. However, she later realizes it's okay as long as she chooses the words carefully in order to not come across as insensitive.
- Ironic Fear: Oona the owl is afraid of the dark, but she has to face her fear when she wants to form a band with the (allegedly) nocturnal Floella the bat.
- Lazy Bum: Lenny the Octopus is very lazy and messy. He sleeps the whole morning and doesn't bother to throw the trash out from the house.
- Motor Mouth: Sparkles the monkey, whose favourite activity is talking. When she starts talking, she tends to drag on the conversation for way too long, to the point where the person she talks to gets bored and falls asleep.
- Only Sane Man:
- Wee Reg the Puppy is one of the few characters who don't have any notable quirks and he is often the voice of reason in many stories.
- Paolo the Cat. The only quirk he ever had was denying his intelligence in his debut episode and he grows out of it quickly. He and We Reg often take turns for the level-headed member in the cast.
- Safety Freak: Mavis the Pony is very concerned about her own safety and refuses to do things that can potentially harm her. After Max finally convinces Mavis to jump on a trampoline together, she ends up enjoying it without getting hurt. It's Max the one who gets hurt.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Cousins in this case, but Mavis the pony and Max the zebra are opposites in personality. Mavis is overly cautious and fears doing anything that can potentially harm her, while Max is courageous, loves challenges, and tends to be reckless.
- Shrinking Violet: Chuckles the rooster is painfully shy to the point where he tries to avoid being seen by anyone.
- Semiaquatic Species Sailor: Bill the Platypus lives on a boat and wears a sailor hat.
- Smorgasbord Test: In Wee Reg's Day in the Limelight episode, the puppy invites Green Ball to dinner, but the ball doesn't like any kind of food. After several tests, Wee Reg discovers that Green Ball only likes food that is green.
- Species Subversives: The Narrator lampshades how some of the characters exhibit different behaviour from how their species are usually portrayed.
- Oona the Owl is afraid of the dark, hence why she stays awake during the day.
- Tootie the Elephant is very fit and athletic.
- Mia the Tapir is sociable instead of shy.
- Scoopy the Pink Rabbit likes ice cream instead of vegetables.
- Supreme Chef: Rex the Piglet's favourite activity is cooking and he's shown to be very good at it.
- Tall Is Intimidating: Pertrie the bear is the largest character in the Fluffy Gardens and he often intimidates the other animals with his size, but he's a Gentle Giant.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The female characters are always drawn with eyelashes, while the male characters are not.
- Trademark Favourite Food:
- Scoopy's favourite food is ice cream. The narrator separates her from the other rabbits in the show, which prefer lettuce.
- George's favourite food is mashed potatoes with sausages.
- Mavis the pony likes hay sandwiches.
- Green Ball likes every food that is green and nothing else.
- Trash of the Titans:
- Fittingly for a piglet, Rex lives in a house filled with piles of dirt (excluding the kitchen, which is clean).
- Lenny's apartment is full of garbage, but he doesn't bother to throw the trash since he doesn't mind it. Even Rex the piglet considers his house too dirty, an irony pointed out by the narrator. Only after Nigel the Naughty Rat becomes a pest in the house does he finally start to keep the apartment clean.
- World of Funny Animals: The inhabitants of the Fluffy Gardens are all antropomorphic animals.
- You Dirty Rat!: Nigel is a rat who enjoys to mess with the others for fun and claims that he doesn't care about anything. He's also the only one besides Lenny who enjoys the garbage in the latter's apartment, which causes him to become an invader.
