One of the most frequently asked question about Cartoon Country is “Why do cartoon characters always wear the same clothes?”. Basically, the process of animation and character design is complicated and time consuming enough without having to come up with different clothes for the characters to wear in every episode. Also, a character’s daily outfit can become iconic and make the character instantly recognizable. Can you imagine Charlie Brown not wearing his trademark yellow shirt with the jagged stripe?
“Actually, I do have a pimp suit, but I left it at home.”
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However, there will be some cases in which some of the characters actually do change clothes. One of the more noteworthy examples of this would be Kimiko Tomoyo from Xiaolin Showdown, who sported a different hairstyle and outfit in almost every episode. Here are just some of Kimiko’s looks:
“What’s up with that last one? That hair looks ridiculous!”
Then there’s the curious case of Bart Simpson, who for the Simpsons merchandise is usually depicted wearing a light blue shirt instead of the orange one that he usually wears on the show.
Personally, I think that Bart should wear the light blue shirt all of the time. It contrasts better with the yellow skin.
“Hey, man, orange, blue, as long as FOX pays me, I’ll wear whatever they want. Well, maybe not plaid.”
Then there’s one of my current favorite characters, Mabel Pines from Disney’s Gravity Falls, who sports a different decorative sweater in every episode (so far). Here are just some…
How many sweaters does that kid own, anyway?
“Honestly, I stopped counting after 83. It helps that my walk-in closet is a gateway to Hammerspace. True story.”
Fun Fact: Mabel’s sweaters were inspired by series creator Alex Hirsch’s real life twin sister Ariel, whom Mabel is based on.
Then there’s Barbie’s sisters from Barbie: Life in the Dream House. each of these characters has an outfit that she wears for seasons 1 and 2, and another that she wears for seasons 3 and 4.
Skipper
Stacie
Chelsea
Stylin’!
Then there’s Blythe Baxter from Littlest Pet Shop, who has sported several different costume changes throughout the series.
“Well, I am based on a doll line, after all. It kind of comes with the territory.”
There are some cases where a character’s outfit change makes a huge impact and other times when it’s not so much.
“Check it out. It’s like my regular shirt, but it’s RED! Like, I’m a fashion forward!”
Speaking of Scooby Doo, Freddy Jones’ daily outfit was changed for What’s New, Scooby Doo?…
…only to switch back to the ascot look in Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated.
“What can I say? You can’t beat the classics. Also, hardcore fans resist change.”
Cartoon characters changing outfits doesn’t happen all of the time, and in my opinion, it doesn’t need to, because it makes the times when it does happen just that much more special.
“Changing clothes? Nah. Don’t see the fascination with it.”
Here’s a favorite funny vid of mine from the always funny Second City Network.
Just to give you an example of how on the vanguard I am, I didn’t even know Hogwarts had these 4 houses until I saw this sketch. Who says the internet isn’t educational?
The bit about ghosts has me on the floor every time!
Over the years, I’ve learned a few things about the laws of the universe. Among them:
The tide is inevitable.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction
TV stars are much more fun when they’re turned into cartoons
A good example of the latter would be when ABC was riding high on the success of Gary Marshall’s Happy Days and decided to air a Saturday morning cartoon based on the franchise titled Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.
Can you dig it? I knew that you could.
Fonz and the Happy Days Gang was produced by Hanna Barbera studios and debuted on ABC and ran from 1980 to 1982. Actors Henry Winkler (Fonzie), Ron Howard (Richie Cunningham) and Don Most (Ralph Malph) reprise their roles from Happy Days. The shows’ premise has Fonzie, Richie and Ralph, along with an original character, Fonzie cut-up dog named Mr. Cool (voiced by the legendary Frank Welker) having wacky adventures while traveling through various eras in a time machine owned by a girl from the distant future named Cupcake (voiced by Didi Conn, perhaps best known as Frenchy from Grease) trying each week to return to the gang’s own time, 1957, Milwaukee. All of this is explained in the shows’ intro, which was narrated by Wolfman Jack.
The episodes followed a predictable formula: The gang would travel to a different era and have a run in with the local weirdos (including King Arthur and Merlin in Camelot in one episode. Camelot is a work of fiction and not part of history, but whatever…), Richie and Ralph would panic. Mr. Cool would engage in some comically stupid shtick. Cupcake would use her 25th century magic, which more often hindered than helped the situation (more on this later), and Fonz would use his powers of cool to save the day and romance whatever young woman would be on the scene at the time. In fact, Fonzie’s coolness was downright super natural in this series. He could fix anything just by hitting or kicking it, everything that is, except for the time machine, which would routinely send the gang to the wrong destination in every episode. Just like the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, Fonzie could seemingly do anything, except take himself and his friends home.
Now time to indulge in a bit of Talkin’ Nerdy: It was hard to know exactly what to make of the character of Cupcake. All we knew about her was that she apparently owned the time machine (how she came into possession of the device is anyone’s guess) and that she was from the distant future. Yet she had these magical powers. Was Cupcake a witch? Was she an alien? Do all humans evolve to have magical powers in the future, or was Cupcake in some way unique? Not a single one of these points was ever addressed on the show. Perhaps Cupcake’s magic was the result of scientists genetically modifying tomatoes too much. Who knows?
Fonz and the Happy Days Gang apparently did pretty well in it’s initial season, since it was renewed for a 2nd season. During this time, ABC and Hanna-Barbera produced another animated series based on one of Happy Days‘ spinoff series, Laverne and Shirley. The series was titled Laverne & Shirley In the Army (although the “In the Army” part never appeared on the shows’ title cards) and it debuted on ABC in 1981.
Be all that you can be, and many viewers chose to be somewhere else when this cartoon was on!
Here’s the shows’ intro
The series was loosely based on one episode of the live action L&S titled ‘You’re In the Army Now”, in which L&S join the army and are ordered around by a tough drill sergeant named Lavinia T. Plout (played by Vicky Lawrence). H-B execs must’ve said “We love it! But let’s replace Vicky Lawrence with a pig!”
Yes, that’s right. The shows’ premise had L&S having wacky adventures in the army while constantly being at odds with their commanding officer, a talking pig named Squealy (voiced by Ron Palillo, who’ll be forever known as Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter), who was constantly threatening to report L&S to his commanding officer Sgt. Turnbuckle, who was mentioned more often than seen. Penny Marshall (Laverne) and Cindy Williams (Shirley) reprise their roles for the cartoon.
“Where’s our cartoon? We was on dat sitcom since day one! An’ then we get passed over for a talkin’ pig?!? What the what,man?!”
One of the most frequently asked questions regarding Laverne & Shirley in The Army (it was posed at least thrice on YouTube) was “Why was L&S’ commanding officer a pig?” I’m guessing that this was still during that time when network executives thought that the presence of an animal character instantly made a cartoon seem more appealing to kids. Apparently, Hanna-Barbera really liked the idea of a cartoon about wacky WACs because over on CBS, The All New Popeye Hour was renamed to The Popeye and Olive Show (which ran for only a half hour) and featured a regular segment titled “Private Olive Oyl” which had Olive and Alice the Goon serving in the army for who knows what reason and driving their commanding officer, one Sgt. Bertha Blast (voiced by Laugh-In‘s Jo Ann Worely) bonkers on a daily basis. Both ideas were inspired by the 1980 movie Private Benjamin starring Goldie Hawn.
Private Olive Oyl. Yes, this was a thing that actually happened. Someone thought of this. Someone greenlit it, and someone put it on the air.
Anyway, Fonz and the Happy Days Gang ran for 2 seasons. L&S’ 1st season was Fonz’s 2nd season. The following year, an additional 8 episodes of L&S in the Army aired as part of another series which sported one of the longest titles for a Saturday morning cartoon ever: The Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour. In these episodes, L&S were joined by Fonzie and Mr. Cool, who were now working in the auto maintenance department of L&S base. There was no final episode of Fonz and the Happy Days Gang where the gang was returned to their own time, but we can assume by this series that Fonzie and Mr. Cool eventually made it home, although the whereabouts of Richie, Ralph and Cupcake were unknown. Either they, like Fonzie, successfully made it back to 1957 Milwaukee or the 3 of them shacked up together in a harem in ancient Baghdad. The mind boggles. Meanwhile, on the live action sitcom Happy Days, Ron Howard and Don Most had left the show. Ron Howard would go on to become a famous movie director, while Don Most would go on to voice Eric the Cavalier on CBS’ Dungeon & Dragons. Ironically, the in universe explanation of why Richie and Ralph were no longer on Happy Days was the 2 of them had joined the army (although both actors returned for Happy Days‘ series finale). Having Squealy and Mr. Cool together in the same cartoon must’ve blown the needle off of the Annoying Meter, and having a talking animal appearing with a non talking animal pet was just…bizarre. As previously stated, there were only 8 episodes of Laverne & Shirley with Fonzie (the other 5 weeks were reruns of L&S’ 1st season), so I tend to think of this season as Season 1.5 rather than season 2. This series was a co-production between H-B and Ruby Spears (the Mork & Mindy cartoons were produced by Ruby-Spears).
All of these shows were gone from ABC’s Saturday morning schedule the following season. Both series resurfaced (in reruns) on the Pat Roberston owned Family Channel (formerly the Christian Broadcasting Network – CBN) and ran on weekday afternoons under the umbrella title “Fonzie and Friends”, with Fonz and the Happy Days Gang running on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and Laverne and Shirley in the Army running Tuesdays and Thursdays (FAM didn’t air any of the L&S episodes with Fonzie for whatever reason. Perhaps it was felt that Fonzie’s green army pants clashed with his treademark leather jacket. Who knows?). Fonz and the Happy Days Gang turned up one more time in 1999 as part of TV Land’s short lived Saturday morning program block “Super Retro Vision Saturdays”.
The trend of doing SatAM cartoons based on live action prime time sitcoms seems to have petered out, although one can only imagine what things would be like if networks were still making cartoons based on their popular prime time shows.
Sheldon: A Saturday morning cartoon about us? I suppose that I’d be open to that idea, provided that we wouldn’t be saddled with some annoying, unrealistic non-human comic relief mascot.
Strap on your overalls, tune up your banjos and grab yourself a swig o’ moonshine, ’cause today Nerdvana embraces its’ inner bumpkin by celebrating some of my favorite rural themed cartoons. That’s right, we’re a-headin’…Down on the Toon Farm. Hit it, boys!
Now that we’ve so tastefully set the mood, let’s begin:
One of the locations which has been tickling my animation fancy lately is the farm/orchard home/bread-and-butter of the Apple family from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sweet Apple Acres.
Fun trivia fact: It was originally called ‘Big Apple Orchard’.
Not only does the property contains a farm house, a barn, and several apple orchards, but it’s also where the legendary Zap Apples are harvested.
I hear these are like Ecstasy, a rocket ship ride and ingesting Pop Rocks and soda all at the same time!
Next, 2 of my favorite Lalaloopsy characters, Sunny Side Up and Berry Jars ‘N’ Jam.
For one thing, these 2 are twins, so they already grabbed my attention. For another, they live in adjacent farm houses. Sunny Side Up, the more tomboyish dressing twin, is named for eggs, which her pet chick specializes in, while Berry is named after berries (duh) which she puts into her trademark pancakes. One sister was named after berries and the other after eggs. You’ve gotta love farm country.
“Eh, we both fared better than our cousin Colt 45!”
Next, this spot for Farm Heroes Saga. It’s long on cute, but I still like it.
That kind of reminds me of a cutesier version of U.S. Acres (known as Orson’s Farm outside of the US), Jim Davis’ not-Garfield comic strip which served as the added attraction on Garfield & Friends. If this were a series, then I picture Richard Horvitz voicing Rancid Raccoon, but that’s just me. One question, though: what the heck are those fruit thingies with the faces? I know some farms genetically modify their crops, but that’s just plain freaky! Speaking of mutants, the bird in that spot looks like a mutant Tweety Bird.
Next, one of the recently retired Ferris’ Funky Farm spots for the McDonald’s Happy Meal, before they axed this campaign in favor of a cringe-inducing red box with a manic grin.
“I like watching you sleep!”
-It’s best not to stare directly at it.
Anyway, opinions on the Ferris spots were mixed to say the least, but I kind of enjoyed them; they had a certain cheesy oddball appeal. I can usually take or leave Klasky-Csupo’s brightly colored sketchy art style, but I thought it worked here.
You know, it occurs to me: these spots were sort of like a bucolic version of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. (Today’s secret word is ‘hayseed’.) The surreal setting, the odd characters, the presence of such incongruous extinct creatures like a dodo and a dinosaur on a farm setting, all that’s missing is the King of Cartoons. Hey, a dino and a dodo on a farm make more sense than a male cow with an udder.
“OK, I’m a chick! ‘Sat what you wanna hear?! I just feel like a bull on the inside, AWRIGHT?!?” Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the first things that attracted me to rural toons, Daisy Mae from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.
She’s gonna git her a man!
And honorable mention goes to her funhouse mirror knockoff, Daisy Mayhem from Hanna-Barbera’s Laff-A-Lympics.
Twin Images 
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