Trivia / Maple Town

• Channel Hop: The English dubbed version made its U.S. premiere in syndication in April 1987 on several Fox affiliates under a "barter" agreement whereas the stations could have the show for free in exchange for running Tonka toy commercials. Two months later, the series began airing on Nickelodeon, becoming part of the Nick Jr. block in January 1988, and then moved to The Family Channel (now Freeform) in 1989.
• Edited for Syndication: The English dub tacks on the Mrs. Maple live action segments. Other dubs do not have that segment and are essentially one-to-one with the original Japanese version.
• Follow the Leader: According to the Japanese Wikipedia page for Maple Town, the franchise was created as a response to the popularity of the Sylvanian Families toyline in Japan.
• Franchise Killer: Moving the setting to Palm Town did not go well with the fandom (particularly the Patty/Bobby shippers), and despite an attempt to salvage the series, ensured that the show will not see a third season.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The entire series was released in Spain on DVD under its Spanish title La Aldea del Arce and select episodes were released in Hungary. Unless you have access to discs from these countries, good luck getting any physical copies of Maple Town. In the 4th quarter of 2013, the original Maple Town series along with part of Palm Town were finally put on DVD in Japan (the final part of the Palm Town arc was also later released in Japan). No word yet on whether we'll see it in any other country. Good luck finding the English dub of the anime while you're at it, although a few VHS cassettes were released in the U.S.. As of 2013, rights to the English dub are held by Multicom Entertainment Company. Due to licensing issues, no release on home media or streaming services is planned for the English dub. Many of the French dubbed episodes also appear to be missing, although France got the Palm Town series as well.
• The Merch: While Maple Town and its sequel had the usual fare like puzzles, coloring books, paper dolls, etc, it's best remembered by fans and collectors for the figurines, play sets and vehicles. Bandai released the figurines in Japan and Europe with Tonka handling North American releases.
• Missing Episode: For the North American English dub. Rumor has it that all 52 episodes were dubbed into English but withheld from Nickelodeon and American syndication for reasons unknown. A few have claimed to have seen the remaining unaired episodes in Canada; these dubbed episodes were said to not have Mrs. Maple at all unlike the earlier episodes. This rumor though has not been verified yet.
  • According to The Other Wiki, there are two Very Special Episodes made for the Japanese education market, one teaching fire safety and another teaching traffic safety. These PSAs are full-length episodes, but they did not air on TV nor are they sold on home video, instead they were provided on either 16mm film reels or VHS to preschools and public libraries and screened as part of the school's curriculum. They have not been released on the collection boxsets either. The only way you'll be able to watch them nowadays is if you go to a public library in Japan and request for the tapes or reels, and even then the tapes and reels cannot leave the library's premises, so you can't just check them out, take them home and rip them.
  • As of Feb. 2022, the fire safety episode was leaked onto YouTube.
  • As of April 2023, the traffic safety episode was finally leaked as well, although getting it is harder as it required interested viewers to locate a torrent for it.
• No Export for You: A great deal of the later episodes never made it to the U.S. market. The same goes for the video compilations from Family Home Entertainment in North America, and an obscure distributor going by the name of M.S.D. in the U.K. Moreover, the sequel series, Palm Town, was never shown in English.
  • There is no record of the show ever airing in Malaysia, although there are records indicating that the English dub had aired in Singapore some time in the late 80s or early 90s.
  • As noted above under Missing Episode, there were two full-length educational episodes released to teach fire and traffic safety, these were never exported out of Japan. This is likely because they had hardwired in the Japanese emergency number for public services as part of its transition effects which made exporting difficult (as seen in the fire safety episode, the numbers 119- which is Japan's fire station emergency number- was used as part of the transition effects a number of times). Additionally, it could've been funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education which made it much harder to export.
• Screwed by the Network: Due to Palm Town chapter not raking in viewership, the final 12 episodes of the chapter were in fact 6 episodes split into two parts of 15 minutes each. This was also why snack-based Bikkuriman anime series premiered as a 15-minutes paired with Palm Town chapter for its first 12 episodes. After Palm Town ended, it expanded to a half-hour series.
• What Could Have Been:
  • It was planned for the US broadcast to be a 65-Episode Cartoon, but even the entire 52 episodes were never completely dubbed for said market. Considering that Maple Town had only 52 episodes, we can only speculate how the remaining 13 episode slots would have been filled to meet the 65-episode count.
  • Production art included in the 2013 Japanese DVD release shows Patty with a slightly different design, having a ribbon around her ear instead of the bead decoration in her final form. Her original proposed name was going to be Cathy or Cassie.
  • The DVD production notes reveal that Patty's older sister was originally going to be Maple Town's protagonist.
  • The final episode of the Palm Town arc sets up Patty to return to Maple Town. If the anime had been allowed a third season, the setting would have returned to Maple Town and would had very probably rescued the franchise.

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