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Nerdvana: Down on the Toon Farm

silverstar 2 Comments

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.
Zap Apple
 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.

I can only add one thing to that…..

Y’all come back now, y’hear?

Why Applejack is Awesome!

silverstar 2 Comments
  1. She’s cool, despite being an Earth pony and not having any special powers.*
  2. That stylin’ Stetson.
  3. She’s named after a a strong alcoholic beverage produced from apples. I’d buy that for a dollar!
  4. She’s voiced by Ashleigh Ball, doing an Ozark accent said to have been lifted from Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus.
  5. She owns and runs her own farm. Farm livin’ is the life for me, as long as I’ve got indoor air conditioning, high-speed broadband internet, fiber optic cable or satellite television, I’m a short driving distances from the malls, restaurants and shopping centers, there aren’t any animals on the property and I don’t have to do any actual work.
  6. She eats, drinks, sells, lives and breathes apples. We all know someone who’s married to their profession.
  7. She’s prolific with a lasso. It’s amazing enough that she can even tie a knot in a rope with no hands.
  8. Her mane and tail are braided. Nice.
  9. She’s one of the only two members of the main cast who were part of the original My Little Pony cast in the 1980s animated series, the other member being Spike, after Hasbro didn’t maintain the trademarks to nearly all of the original character names and most names had to be replaced. Kinda dropped the ball there, Hasbro.
  10. She has a gaggle of kinfolk, both immediate and extended, a large family of Earth pony farmers, who own apple farms all over Equestria, all of whom have similar apple-themed names. There’s  Apple Fritter, Apple Bumpkin, Red Gala, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Caramel Apple, Apple Strudel, Apple Tart, Baked Apples, Apple Brioche, Apple Cinnamon Crisp, Apple Cobbler, Apple Honey, Apple Pie, Gala Appleby, Lavender Fritter, Peachy Sweet, Apple Brown Betty, Braeburn, Big McIntosh, Apple Bloom and Granny Smith. Betcha thought I was going to screw that up.
  11. Her family are the original founders of Ponyville. That’s stroke.
  12. She can play the banjo and the fiddle. Again, no small achievement when you don’t have hands.
*Actually, Earth ponies are physically very powerful, capable of performing incredible feats of strength with little or no visible strain, and enjoy long-lasting stamina, and have a special connection to nature, animals, and plants. Though they lack the ability to consciously cast spells like unicorns or to fly and walk on clouds like Pegasi, the race possesses a passive, botanically focused magic unique to them, and their connection to nature makes them “just as necessary” as and “perhaps more important” than the other ponies. Plus, heck, I just like to route for underdogs.