Rumble leaf tumble leaf! Let's play!
Tumble Leaf is an Amazon Prime Video original series for children. Taking place in a land called (what else?) Tumble Leaf, with an all animal cast, the protagonist Fig is a blue fox who lives in a wrecked ship on the beach, with a crew of chickens who tend gardens and cook. Fig has rigged up a treasure chest in his ship and calls it "The Finding Place," and twice an episode, Ginkgo the Crab finds an item in the sea and tosses it into the treasure chest, setting off an alert system letting Fig know that something new is in the finding place. The discovery of the item sets off the plot of the episode.
The show was developed by education professionals, with a focus on play, and teaching kids discovery through play.
Tumble Leaf provides examples of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – Physics: Many examples, but the chickens floating on air geysers is definitely one of the more notable times. How are they staying up?
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Fig is a blue fox, Maple is a pink polar bear, and Stick is a bright yellow and orange caterpillar, among others.
- Beary Friendly: Fig's friend Maple is a polar bear.
- Catchphrase: Fig "Let me figure this out," and then "Bean sprout/turkey shout/dogfish snout/(something else rhyming)! I figured it out!"
- Friendly Neighborhood Spider: Pine the Porcupine has spiders who spin thread and yarn for her to knit with.
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: In the Finding Place sequence, this is especially apparent. Fig goes behind a shower curtain to change from pajamas into clothes.
- Funny Animal: The animals in the show fall under this category.
- Funny Background Event
- Maple freaking out about getting smelly pollen on her in "Yak Wash" while Fig examines a hose.
- Basically anything the chickens do.
- Furry Confusion: So Fig and Maple and others can speak, but the chickens and Stick can't, because...reasons.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Maple built a submarine! Some of Fig's creations also fall into this.
- Interspecies Friendship: Just about everyone, since most of the main cast are different species.
- Invisible Parents: The chickens seem to act as Fig's family, but Maple has no parental figures. Hedge seems to only have his Aunt Pine.
- Rube Goldberg Device: How Fig gets from the upper decks to the lower on his ship. It involves a shower, a slide, and a bag of bananas.
- Scenery Porn: The world of Tumble Leaf is GORGEOUS.
- Sliding Scale of Animal Cast: All animal cast, no humans at all.
- Stop Motion: Of the puppet variety, specifically (with CGI effects added in post)
- Theme Naming: At least during the first season, most of the characters are named after plants (Hedge, Pine, Maple, Buckeye), and most of the inhabitants of Fig's house are named after fruits or vegetables (Fig, Butternut, Squash, Zucchini, Rutabaga).
- Title Theme Tune: "Turkey shout, let me figure it out, in... Tumble Leaf! ... Rumble leaf, tumble leaf, come on, let's play. (In Tumble Leaf...)"
- Vegetarian Carnivore: Everyone seems to eat mainly plants and dairy (and insects eat mud, somehow) in order to avoid Carnivore Confusion.
- Virtuous Bees: In Hive Hollow, where Maple goes to get honey, the bees are friendly creatures. The snapdragons outside their hives, however...less so.
- Visible Odor: In the "Yak Wash" episode, Timber the yak gets into some stinky cheese plants. They leave behind orange pollen that is super smelly. Makes it easy to tell who's stinky and where the stink is coming from.
- Woodland Creatures: Much of the main cast, with the exceptions of Maple the polar bear, Gingko the crab and the chickens.
