YMMV / Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child

• Anvilicious:
  • A number of the stories, especially in the last season, have heavy-handed morals not in the original tale tacked on.
  • The amount of "female empowerment" shoehorned into several episodes in the last season also gets rather ridiculous. Rip Van Winkle being the worst offender. It tried to give the message of gender equality, only to become a Broken Aesop with the gender roles being completely reversed instead of said roles being shared. At least The Snow Queen actually had a female lead in the original.
• Awesome Music: This show is full of catchy numbers, one highlight definitely being the jazzy Villain Song "Cool to be Cold" from the episode The Snow Queen, performed by none other than Eartha Kitt.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The Emperor's New Clothes ends with the Emperor reconciling with his brother and how his kingdom was able to live "happily ever after". This glosses over the fact that he gave most, if not all, of the treasury to two swindlers leaving them in worse debt and there was no mention of what the Emperor or his brother did to save their kingdom from economic ruin.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In Pinocchio, Chris Rock plays along side Will Smith. Fast forward to 2005 where Rock would later costar with Will's wife Jada in the Madagascar films...But in 2022, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars for joking about Jada's hair loss.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Frog Princess, a spin on the Frog Prince fairy tale, is set in The Deep South and features a romance between a mixed-race couple. Sound familiar?
  • Then there's The Pied Piper where the jazzy titular character greatly resembles Sunny Bridges.
  • This series did a gender-flipped take on ''The Prince and the Pauper" four years before Barbie did.
  • The skin tones and hair color of the Three Little Pigs are similar to those of the Calamity Trio.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • "The Emperor's New Clothes": Keiji and Toshio are a pair of common swindlers who charm the clothes-loving emperor of Japan by offering to weave him the "Fabric of Dreams", visible only to the wise. Requesting the finest materials, as well as payment of the entire royal treasury, the two pretend to work tirelessly weaving the fabric over several days—tricking the emperor's staff, the populace, and eventually the emperor himself into thinking they are fools for not being able to see it. While the nearly-naked emperor becomes a public laughingstock, Keiji and Toshio get away scot free, having earned everything for doing nothing.
  • "The Pied Piper": The Pied Piper is a smooth-talking traveling musician who's solved many infestations with his saxophone playing and offers to do the same with Hamelin's rats. Despite the town's doubts, the Piper easily gets every last rat to follow the music out of town by playing at frequencies only they can hear. When the corrupt mayor refuses to pay the Piper the promised amount, he gets his revenge by luring every child in Hamelin out of town. The Piper, however, leaves behind a poor boy he befriended so he'd be the only child in town, making the townsfolk more compassionate and Hamelin a better place—with their only hope being that he will return someday as promised.
  • "The Snow Queen": The Snow Queen herself has a heart made of ice and a personality to match. Having created a magic mirror that would make everything good appear bad just for fun, she grows bored one day and lets it shatter, following its shards towards her next victim. The Snow Queen uses some shards to freeze the young Kai's eye and heart to make him more literally and figuratively cold, then appears to him the next day to appeal to his pride and comfort him with a kiss, erasing his memories. Though she and her army are defeated by the pure-hearted Gerda, the Snow Queen genuinely compliments her on her pluck before melting with her castle.
• Nightmare Fuel: Sometimes. It would mostly be considered Nightmare Fuel for the show's young target audience. Examples include:
  • During the climax of "Rapunzel," Madame Zenobia the hoodoo diva takes the titular character deep into the woods and pretty much lets her dangle over a crocodile-infested river. If not for a passing bird, Rapunzel might have died or at least suffered a grave injury.
  • Sly Fox, the stepmother from the "Snow White" episode uses the poisoned apple to try to kill White Snow, as in most versions of the tale. However, this version adds another attempt at murder from the original Grimms' tale that's usually left out. Sly Fox dresses like an old trader and cinches a beaded belt so tight around White Snow's waist that she cannot breathe and loses consciousness. This is arguably more upsetting to young viewers than the poisoned apple, since the effects of the attempt are immediate and more "graphic" than normal.
  • The "Hansel and Gretel" episode makes it abundantly clear that the stepmother, Delores, means to abandon the children and let them starve; she even reveals it in a Freudian Slip to her husband. Add in a brief shot of smoke and flames in the witch's oven, and you get the proverbial icing on the cake.
  • The finale of "Rumpelstiltskin" is much more intense than you'd expect in this show. This is because not only does Rumpelstiltskin have a huge Villainous Breakdown; but his constant crying of "The Devil told ya!", the crack he accidentally makes making the everything go red, and the Evil Laugh that happens after he falls into the crack seems to imply he was Dragged Off to Hell!
  • Keiji from "The Emperor's New Clothes", as his face is pretty creepy. His head is an odd shape, he has a Dick Dastardly-style mustache, and a demonic smile.
  • The antagonist of "The Shoemaker and the Elves" is Tonatiuh the Fierce, and his name doesn't lie. When he urges Tizoc the shoemaker to hurry up on his sandals and if he doesn't, he declares that he will put Tizoc's heart into his hand, complete with taking out a knife and holding his other hand out.
• Questionable Casting: Raquel Welch voiced Cinderella's stepmother with a normal American accent, which is bizarre since pretty much every other character (including the stepsisters, her daughters) had something of a Mexican accent.
• Retroactive Recognition: In a production example, Bruce W. Smith, who would later create The Proud Family, was the character designer of this series. Cinderella looks like a proto-Penny Proud. Snow White's stepmother also looks like an uncanny La'Cieniga.
• Seasonal Rot: The third season tends to worst by many fans for a few things. Mainly due to that a majority of the stories being focus on "female empowerment" and that was when some of the last stories switched to digital ink. At least "The Snow Queen" and "The Happy Prince" are well-regarded.
• Spiritual Successor: To Faerie Tale Theatre. Both are anthologies of fairy tale adaptations acted out by celebrities, with a tone that's often quirky and irreverent without crossing the line into Fractured Fairy Tale.
• Tear Jerker: Though the series as a whole is thoroughly Disneyfied and Season 3 is considered to be the worst of it, the ending of the episode "The Happy Prince" stays loyal to its material.

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