WMG / Mapletown

The reason they changed to Palm Town was because the toyline was starting to resemble Sylvanian Families too closely

While Mapletown toys were originally hard plastic, Bandai switched to plush figurines the next year when Sylvanian Families were proving to be very popular. Naturally, Epoch wasn’t pleased with the move since the competing franchise was starting to resemble theirs too much and told Bandai to knock it off. Instead of going back to hard plastic figurines which would be seen as inferior at the time, Bandai probably took a long look at the franchise and decided to modernize the environment the franchise was set in, switching the franchise to Palm Town that is decidedly more chic and modern to see if it could capture a different corner of the market.

• Recently Sylvanian Families has a Town line…
  • Though, one could argue that the town line came in 2017, almost 30 years after Maple Town ended for good. Bandai may be on to something, but they were 30 years too early.

Had the series continued, It would have been retconned that Maple Town and Palm Town are very close to each other geographically.

That way, both sets of casts can hangout without alienating fans of both shows.

• Or alternatively, the more popular characters of Palm Town would move to Maple Town “to seek a quieter life and/or simpler lifestyle”.

Eventually, there will be a reboot of some sort.

• The reboot will end up merging Palm Town and Maple Town, so Maple Town is now a bustling 80s style Canadian town, in order to not anger Epoch, assuming my above theory about the shift to Palm Town holds water. However...
  • The reboot will also introduce a new set of characters, but with the older characters making cameos. This is sadly inevitable as the marketers will try to convince the producers to bend to the Fleeting Demographic Rule and try to appeal to newcomers instead but only give enough nods to the older fans to keep them happy.
    • Alternatively they could simply do a Time Skip and make Patty's younger sister Pippia/Bunny the lead and Patty has Rachel/Ann's role.
  • Worst case scenario is that they don’t even bother with pandering to the older fans, which is the route Sylvanian Families ultimately took- You hardly find any reference to the first gen characters/80s western animation series in the latest iteration of the toyline. The oldest family still in production are the Cottontail Rabbits who’re from the mid-90s, and even then they’ve been thrown into the backseat in favor of the Milk Rabbit and later, Chocolate Rabbit families. To make things worse not many other families survive that long in production, with many families having came and gone without a trace.

Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō is a Spiritual Successor to Maple Town

Firstly, there is some noticeable art style similarities for some of the characters (A character called Sakurako has an art style is suspiciously similar to Joey). Secondly, I had unearthed images that shows Bandai Namco did create little plastic figures of Shimajiro characters early in the franchise’s run that are similar in style to the early Maple Town figures (which of course was made by them). Thirdly, according to the Japanese Wikipedia page for Shimajiro, a number of Maple Town VAs were present in the early years of the series when it was still a segment of the Kodomo Challenge educational tapes. And lastly, perhaps most telling of all, Maple Town was marketed as an educational show that encourages communication and emphasises EIQ according to some of the materials that the toys came in that released in Japan- while Shimajiro does emphasises learning in general and covers a wider curriculum, EIQ and communication is still emphasised as a core component in the show. This has led me to conclude that there might be a deeper link between the two franchises that is just more than coincidences.

• Oh yeah, and both shows have deers as schoolmarms.
• And the fact that the father of the protagonist of both shows are postmasters.

Palm Town is located in southern California or somewhere on the coast of Florida.

Palm Town is shown to be warm all year around, right by the beach with plenty of swimmers and not prone to cold weather. This is shown when Patty gets a letter in the last episode of Palm Town that is dated December 1987; it is still bright and sunny outside with no hint of cold weather, let alone snow. Southern California is warm all year round and descriptions of Palm Town say the anime has an American "West Coast" feel so Palm Town may be somewhere on the coast of Cali. Alternatively, it could be along the coast of Florida, also warm all year round with cold and snow being rare.

The Cockers are way richer than the Foxes

This is mostly due to Rolley's family living Way below their means, so they save a ton of money.

Patty and Rachel Rabbit have Abusive Parents and a straight-up dysfunctional family.

Technically that would probably apply to just about all the parents because Corporal Punishment is regularly used in the setting and the kids one day were left completely alone without any adults in an episode, but surely the Rabbit sisters especially have them.

• For starters, in one episode, Rachel, Patty's older sister, smacks her in one episode. That's evident that their parents likely treated Rachel as if she were a third parent to Patty instead of the sister she is supposed to be. Parents spanking kids is bad enough, but older siblings doing that to their younger ones? Now that's brutal.
  • Maybe Rachel was likely threatened to receive the punishment herself by her parents if she didn't use it on Patty, or perhaps she was smacked by her parents in the past and thought it was a good idea to use that on her siblings when they misbehave. Generational trauma in Maple Town, wow…
    • This probably ties into Maple Town being initially in a 1930s-esque world. Back then doing such things was actually seen as the norm when it comes to parenting and being an elder sibling.
    • Then again in Palm Town, Rolley was also subject to corporal punishment from her mother.
      • Yeah it was the 80s. Moms were allowed to be mean.

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