"
Ooh, they got o-ri-gi-nality!/Living with a split... personality!"
—opening theme song
The Wuzzles was the first
Disney original animated series. It debuted in 1985, and aired on broadcast television as a
Saturday Morning Cartoon. It is also their shortest running series of
The Eighties, at 13 episodes, though it went into reruns for quite a while.
Like many other shows of the 1980s, it had a plush line (which it
may have been was designed to sell) and each stuffed animal character came with a picture book that helped set up the world of the series.
It was a fun little cartoon and toy line that followed the great tradition of
80’s cartoons and toys: It was colorful, had kind of a sci-fi/fantasy theme, and
made you wonder what kinds of medication the people who came up with it were taking at the time.
All of the main characters were
Mix-and-Match Critters:
- Bumbelion (bumblebee/lion)
- Hoppopotamus (hippo/rabbit)
- Eleroo (elephant/kangaroo)
- Butterbear (butterfly/bear)
- Moosel (moose/seal)
- Rhinokey (rhino/monkey)
- Tycoon (tiger/raccoon)
- Croc (crocodile/dinosaur... maybe)
- Brat (boar/dragon... despite his misleading name)
- Flizard (frog/lizard)
The plush line actually outlived the cartoon, and
involved several more characters who never got a chance to appear in the cartoon
. Additionally, a few episodes of the television show were given theatrical runs in Europe, acting as animated shorts before Disney films.
This show has examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Said Mix-and-Match Critters are often bright shades of nonsense, such as purple or pink.
- Animal Gender Bender with a sometimes Viewer Gender Confusion chaser: Eleroo, who is a male, and has a pouch.
- Appropriate Animal Attire: Though the main characters were naked most of the time, they would occasionally wear clothes.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: One episode revolves entirely around the rest of the gang mocking Moosel for being afraid of monsters. This is after it's been established that things like Sharkasaurus (half Great White Shark, half Tyrannosaurus rex) apparently exist.
- Big Eater: Eleroo and Hoppopotamus.
- Broken Aesop / Moral Dissonance: Surprisingly, a lot of it.
- Carrying a Cake: Subverted in the episode discussed in the above link.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Oh yeah. Word Of God is annoyingly inconsistent as to whether Crock is half-crocodile, half-dragon or half-crocodile, half-tyrannosaur... or if he's a hybrid at all! Further, all the monsters Moosel lives in fear of are named [something]-saurus.
- Fat and Skinny: Hoppopotamus and Butterbear.
- Fat Comic Relief: Hoppopotamus. Also Eleroo to a lesser extent.
- Hollywood Density: Sometimes Hoppo would be heavier than usual when a joke called for it. At least once, she made the ground shake just by walking.
- Jerkass: All the characters had their jerkass moments, but none moreso than Rhinokey.
- Merchandise Driven
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The entire cast and the core concept. In fact, this isn't limited to just the creatures — the gadgets they use and food products they eat all seem to be odd combinations, some of which make no sense at all (such as a pedal bicycle with pogo stick springs instead of wheels — what do the pedals even do?)
- No Fourth Wall / Medium Awareness: In the course of thirteen episodes, Freberg manage to address the audience or the presence of the show every single time.
- Off Model: Ye Gods. Some examples can be seen here.
- The Renaissance Age of Animation
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Pretty hard to miss this one. All three of the recurring villains are at least part reptilian (including Brat, despite his name suggesting a wholly mammalian combination), in stark contrast with the main cast, who are all predominantly mammals with the occasional cute bug mixed in.
- Saturday Morning Cartoon
- Shipper on Deck: Hoppopotamus x Bumblelion
- Talking Animal: The Wuzzles themselves.
- Unrequited Love: Hoppopotamus/Bumblelion.
- Wings Do Nothing: Only Butterbear's wings seem to be made for flight.
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