YMMV / Dragon Tales

• Accidental Innuendo: Just check out this little gem from "Goodbye Little Caterpoozle":
  Ord: You kissed a caterpoozle!
  Wheezie: It's no worse than kissing a brother! (kisses Zak on the cheek)
  Zak: Eww, sister germs!
• Americans Hate Tingle: While it was incredibly popular in America during it's run, it was an outright flop in the United Kingdom. Most of the episodes weren't even aired and it was very quickly forgotten.
• Ass Pull: In one episode, the gang must each perform a cartwheel to cross a drawbridge guarded by a grumpy troll to deliver soup to Quetzal's twin brother Fernando. Emmy, who had been struggling to master one the entire day, is the last one to take a turn doing it. Depending on who you ask, the fact that the dragons actually helped her by holding her legs up halfway through the maneuver may make this feel like a cheap victory as Emmy is never seen actually doing it all by herself after the fact.
• Awesome Music:
  • The reason all the songs on the show are available over two CDs. Additionally, the music played by Quetzal for the freeze dance game in "Tails, You Lose." Relaxing, majestic, and beautiful. It's helped by the fact all the songs were composed and several of them were sung by Joey Levine of Ohio Express fame. (He's also responsible for many well-known advertisement jingles.)
  • Zak and Wheezie’s rap in “Remember the Pillow Fort” is quite catchy!
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Fans either find Ord to be lovable, or are annoyed by his constant whining. (It helps that he becomes less whiny later on).
  • Enrique. Some felt he was too much of an ethnic stereotype, whereas others thought he was a nice addition to the cast who helped to distinguish the third season.
• Cult Classic: It never had the longevity of Arthur or Cyberchase and, despite being massively popular in it's time, has been largely forgotten. Despite this, it still has a dedicated nostalgic fanbase to this day.
• Designated Villain: Cyrus isn't really doing anything wrong. He's doing what nature intended for him to do and the gang is messing with nature by preventing him from eating eggs, which is what he's SUPPOSED to do; however, he does commit one outright villainous act when he steals Emmy's detective kit.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Enrique is not at all beloved by fans. He was introduced to teach viewers more about Hispanic culture, but most of them just saw him as an obnoxious walking stereotype (his every appearance is scored to Flamenco guitar and you can make a Drinking Game out of how many times he says that he misses his abuelita and Colombia), especially since the show already had three main characters (Emmy, Max and Quetzal) who are Hispanic but weren't defined by their being Hispanic, to the point where it seemed like him being introduced was really just an excuse to give Zak and Wheezie someone to ride on their backs. It doesn't help that his first appearance mirrors the first episode beat-for-beat. Deja vu indeed.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mr. Pop is quite popular amongst the fanbase for being a goofy troll and taking away Wheezie’s ability to laugh.
  • Lorca is seen as a better Sixth Ranger than Enrique. He averts the Inspirationally Disadvantaged trope we see in most disabled characters in each of his appearances and they don’t make a big spectacle out of his disability, fleshing him out into a three dimensional character. Him being flightless also makes room for some interesting new things.
  • Captain Scallywag is the only other human who has visited Dragon Land besides Max, Emmy, and Enrique. He also offers some wisdom of his time in Dragon Land when he visits.
• Fanfic Fuel: What happens to Dragon Land when Max and Emmy grow up? Will they still visit? Will they give the dragon scale to their kids? Do their parents ever find out about it? Or do they already know?
• Franchise Original Sin: In season two, Lorca is introduced as a Sixth Ranger of the cast. He is flightless and a paraplegic, but the creator wanted to make sure none of that defined him (although it is brought up sometimes) and slowly fleshed him out as a character in each of his appearances, proving him to be a great addition to the cast. Come the third season, we are introduced to Enrique, who instantly becomes a main character, spends most of (if not, all) his screen time waxing nostalgic about his Latin roots, and doesn’t get much character development.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Dragon Tales was even more popular in the overseas military territories of the United States than it was in the mainland US, where it aired on American Forces Network. It became one of the network's flagship preschool shows and ran until 2015, five years more than it ran in the mainland. At one point in time, the show aired every day, including on weekends, which has happened to only two other kids' shows on AFN.
  • The show was also pretty popular in India, where it aired into The New '10s on Cartoon Network. Also, the Hindi language Invocation is frequently quoted among those who watched it as kids.
• Genius Bonus: Quetzal being from Mexico becomes a lot more meaningful for those familiar with Aztec Mythology. The existence of "knucker holes" also counts—in medieval European folklore, a knucker was a type of wingless, underground-dwelling dragon.
• Improved Second Attempt: Quite a few of Emmy’s focus episodes in season 1 don’t paint her in a very positive light at all, among them “Tails You Lose”, “Emmy’s Dream House” and especially “A Smashing Success”. Compare the Emmy-centric episodes in season 2, in which she’s generally portrayed as more sympathetic and likeable.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Do Not Pass Gnome": Simon Says is a friendly, mystical gnome who tells Emmy he'll fix the yo-yo her younger brother Max broke if they play a game of "Simon Says". After Simon tricks Max onto the board and reveals he can only get off if he wins the game eventually, the others then agree to play too. Playing a very congratulatory and happy host, Simon trips up several of the players throughout the game with levels like a Twister-like one, an upward path one and a Limbo one. When the players reach the very end, Simon nearly tricks them all into failing before Max catches on and Simon then proudly declares they've won the game and Emmy's yo-yo is fixed.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I wish, I wish, with all my heart..." ^ExplanationPeople often parody the rhyme Emmy and Max use to go to Dragon Land to wish for other things. The most popular example of the meme ends with "To pass my classes and exams".
  • "Yeah, Mom. We're just coloring!" ^ExplanationA line from the episode "The Forest Of Darkness" that Emmy says while coloring with Max in response to her mom asking if everything's alright that's often captioned with "The two biggest liars on television".
  • "Who the hell is watching Dragon Tales on Netflix?" ^ExplanationA post detailing a scenario about what might happen if a member of the Periphery Demographic's love of the show was discovered by their parents, accompanied by a weird image of Zak in a pirate costume.
  • TheOdd1sOut's cover of the theme song^Explanation In TheOdd1sOut video "Growing Up Without Cable", a hilarious rendition of the theme song is sung when the show is brought up among the programming that PBS Kids aired. It's common to see comments on the actual theme song of the show saying that the video lead them to discover the actual song.
  • Ord flattens two kids with his mammoth meat ^ExplanationOrd is actually pulling out a sleeping bag in that scene from "The Big Sleepover," but since the bag in the gif shares both of its colors with Ord's skin and is pulled out of a Body Pocket that's near crotch-level, this often leads to joking that it looks like Ord is whipping out something else. It's common for the gif to be posted without context on Discord servers. The gif appears to be edited, because in the actual episode, the sleeping bag is green and not Ord-colored.
• Moe: All of the dragons are this, especially Cassie.
• Nightmare Fuel: One would find it jarring just how creepy Cyrus looks. The few antagonists this show has aren't usually as creepy as he is, and it's really off-putting how he appears in an otherwise saccharine and friendly show like Dragon Tales.
• Periphery Demographic: Probably one of the few shows to have accomplished gaining a fandom of both the intended target audience of little kids and dragon lovers.
• Popular with Furries: It has a niche, especially among the scalie type of furries. Many scalies have treated it as their gateway into the furry fandom.
• Retroactive Recognition: For any My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fans, it can be rather humorous hearing the Great and Powerful Trixie as Wheezie, Fluttershy/Pinkie Pie as Emmy, or Diamond Tiara as Cassie. That's not even counting Gundam fans who could recognize a young Lacus as Cassie (equally pink and adorable).
• Rooting for the Empire: Considering how annoying Wheezie's laugh can get (it goes hee hee hee, ha ha, snort snort!), you'll almost be thankful that Mr. Pop steals it in "Wheezie's Last Laugh."
• Seasonal Rot: Season 3 is an odd case. While it in part can be attributed to the mixed reception of Enrique, it’s largely considered the weakest of the three due to how frequently it recycled earlier episodes (generally from season 2, although some season 3 episodes were also reused).
• Special Effects Failure: The “tickle twinkle” that’s in one of the boxes Wheezie can’t resist opening (in the episode “Let’s Dance”) is clearly a piece of CGI superimposed over the actual animation of the show.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Pretty much the entire show, especially the theme song and Dragon Tunes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Priscilla, the dragon with the large wings, had potential to be a more prominent character on the show, but only received two speaking roles, and only one of them had her in a major role (she did make a handful of background appearances).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In the first episode, Quetzal mentions that there are other dragon scales out there in the real world, waiting for children to find them. Other than Captain Scallywag, we never see other humans visit Dragon Land or even meet the dragon who blew the scales into the real world. While another kid, Enrique, does join the cast later on, he uses Max and Emmy's dragon scale rather than finding one himself.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Cyrus’s long eyelashes, effeminate voice and rather ambiguous name make him quite easily mistakable for a female.
• The Woobie:
  • Due to all the little abuse Zak regularly takes, it's hard to not want to reach out and give him a hug or a cuddle.
  • Cassie too, given how easily she gets upset and how hard it is for her to speak up. She's also the nicest dragon in the show, tied with Quetzal (which admittedly is not saying much since most Dragonland citizens are friendly), so even on the very, VERY rare occasions where she's acting selfishly (jealousy over little brother Finn, for example, or getting worried that a new dragon will take Emmy's friendship away), her reasons are realistic enough that the viewer doesn't lose sympathy. And easy to want to give her a big gigantic hug.
  • Ord is one of the most relatable characters of the show, because of how nervous he is much of the time.
  • To offer a different perspective on the character, Enrique also qualifies. The biggest point being his very real anxiety and shyness when it comes to making friends and trying new things, due to coming from a family who has constantly moved and travelled around the world many times during his young life. And in a meta sense, Enrique evokes feelings of Woobieness based on the general reaction he received upon his debut, as is recorded and reflected on this very page.

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