Capelito is a Spanish
claymation cartoon which aired from 2001 to 2002 for 52 episodes. It is about the adventures of the eponymous character, an anthropomorphic mushroom named Capelito who has the ability to change his cap into any kind of hat by squeezing his magic nose.
Capelito contains the following tropes:
- Amateur Film-Making Plot: The episode "Filmmaker" has Capelito make his own film with help from the white mushrooms. The finished product is about Capelito fighting a dragon who has eaten his white mushroom friends.
- Bewitched Amphibians: In "Doctor", Capelito reads a book where a princess and a witch are having a battle using their magic powers. At one point in the book, the witch turns the princess into a frog.
- Dream Episode: "Capelito" (yes, that's actually the name of the episode) is about Capelito becoming trapped in a dream and trying to wake himself up.
- Droste Image: In the episode "Capelito", at one point during his dream, Capelito tries reading a book. The cover of the book shows another image of Capelito opening up the very same book, and the cover shown on the book in that image also shows Capelito opening the book, and so on.
- Extremely Short Intro Sequence: The intro is about 20 seconds long.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Almost all of the episodes have One Word Titles.
- Instrumental Theme Tune: The song heard in the intro does not have any vocals.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Very little intelligible dialogue is heard here. Whenever there is such spoken dialogue, it's restricted to one or two words; other than that, it's mostly just unintelligible blabbering and pantomime.
- Mushroom Man: Capelito is an anthropomorphic mushroom.
- One-Word Title: Capelito is one word. Similarly, most of the episodes have one word in their titles.
- Protagonist Title: The title of the show is the name of the main character, Capelito.
- Shout-Out: In "Daddy", Capelito shows his cap-changing ability to some Mexican tourists. When he changes his cap to a Mexican sombrero, one of the tourists responds with "Arriba, arriba!" To drive the point home further, another tourist outright says the name "Speedy Gonzales" only a second or so afterwards.
- Signature Sound Effect: Capelito has two signature sound effects associated with his ability to change his cap. The first is the distinct honking sound that his nose makes when he squeezes it to prompt his cap to change. The second is the sound the cap itself makes as it changes, which sounds similar to bubbling water.
