This show SUCKED!!!
Happy April Fool’s Day, everybody!
Tag Kids’ WB!
The Couch: Channel Umptee-3
Today the Couch looks at an underground TV station that skewered the television industry.
No, not that one. Don’t I wish??
Please stand by. We’ve just lost a good portion of our readers.
-Seriously though, if you’re not familiar with SCTV, head to your local video store or surf the web for it. You won’t regret it.
But no, the show we’ll be spotlighting today is another underground TV channel, Kids’ WB!’s Channel Umptee-3.
Channel Umptee-3 (also known simply as Umptee-3) is a Saturday morning animated television series created by Jim George and produced by Norman Lear that aired on The WB in 1997. The title is derived from the fictitious number “umpteen.”
This article won’t be very long or detailed, since a) is another one of those shows which takes longer to talk about than it actually ran; and b) I’ve only ever seen a single episode of this show; our local WB affiliate didn’t carry this show, so we had to literally disconnect the cable from our TV, stick a pair of rabbit ears on it and watch this show from a low-powered UHF channel from Washington D.C. Here’s the skinny:
Ogden Ostrich, Sheldon S. Cargo (a snail), and Holey Moley (a mole, of course) drive around the world in a van with their own underground television station, while fleeing the wrath of corporate-villain Stickley Rickets (Stickley and his henchmen are often called “The Frumps” by Ogden). This one-season cartoon show was designed to teach kids to appreciate the wonders of everyday things, such as sleep and water.
Channel Umptee-3, which exists between other channels and is broadcast from a mobile station, tries to focus on a specific topic in each episode, but is usually diverted from it and shifted onto another topic; e.g., one episode started out discussing cats, but quickly segued into the subject of ownership (which was the real topic of that show). Meanwhile, “The Frumps” (i.e., Stickley Rickets and his henchmen) would try to shut the station down or increase their own power, but whatever plan they came up with would fail (obviously–there wouldn’t have been any more show if they had succeeded).
The show made great use of stock footage, as did the earlier WB show Freakazoid! Also, the show sometimes made references to well-known movies and TV shows; e.g., the episode “Yours, Mine, and Ours” included references to Cats, Harvey, Star Wars, Dragnet, and The People’s Court, and the title was that of a classic movie.
“Oh my, we’re havin’ some fun now!”
The cast of Channel Umptee-3 was a unique and colorful bunch, to say the least:
Ogden O. Ostrich (voiced by the legendary Rob Paulsen) is an excitable yellow ostrich who first came up with the idea for a television program to show everyone that “the world is a magical place” after pulling his head out of the ground one day and looking at the world around him. At the start of every episode he comes running up the camera yelling “Hey!” over and over.
Sheldon S. Cargo (voiced by David Paymer) is a large pink snail whose shell is fitted with a unicycle-like wheel to help him get around. Sheldon is the serious, professional member of the team; he tries his best to hold the show together, despite Ogden’s almost hyperactive behavior. His name is derived from “escargot”, a French dish made with snails.
“Hoh-hoh-hoh! Oui oui, mes amis, sil vous plait, zut alour, merci bou coup, croissants, creme brule, Rue La La and other phrases, non?”
-These and other colorfully outdated cliches and generalizations are here for the taking, so come on down to STEREOTYPES R US!-
Now back to the article.
Holey Moley (no voice actor) is a pantomime character, a large mole who carries a number of portable holes that allow him and his friends to go anywhere.
Professor Edwin I. Relevant (voiced by the late Greg Burson) is the station’s resident expert on everything; Ogden and the others turn to him for information on the day’s topic in almost every episode. Interestingly, Prof. Relevant was a human.
Polly (voiced by Susan Silo) is one of two newscasters who work for Channel Umptee-3.
Their nemesis, the Frumps, were led by one Stickley Rickets (voiced by Jonathan Harris) is the president of a corporation that produces boxes; because the “Umptee-doodies” (as he calls them) encourage people to take things out of boxes and look at them in a new way, he sees them as a threat to his business, so he constantly plots to shut them down and “put them in a box, where they belong.” Interestingly, this wasn’t Mr. Harris’ first time playing a corporate suit; he also played producer Basil T. Bitterbottom on Filmation’s Uncle Croc’s Block, a Saturday morning show which aired on ABC decades earlier.
Please stand by. We’ve just lost even more of our readers.
Pandora Rickets (voiced by Alice Ghostley, perhaps best known as Esmerelda from Bewitched), was Stickley’s wife, who wasn’t nearly as obsessed as her husband where the Umptees are concerned; she even likes to watch some of the shows, although she didn’t want Stickley to find out.
-Wait, Rickets’ company produces boxes, and his wife’s name is Pandora. It’s a reference to ‘Pandora’s Box’, the box in Greek mythology which contained all of the world’s evils and troubles which was given to Pandora, the first woman on Earth created by Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods, and her husband Epimetheus as revenge by Zeus for Epimetheus’ brother Prometheus stealing fire from heaven and was accidentally opened by Pandora, thereby unleashing death and all the evils into the world.
“They’re called BOOKS, kids. Try reading one sometime!”
Ed and Bud are two black-suited henchmen who carry out Stickley’s orders, and were almost never successful. Ed was the taller one, and Bud was the shorter, balding one.
Channel Umptee-3 didn’t run for very long; only a single season, originally on Saturday mornings, then it finished its’ run on Friday afternoons, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever seen. The show’s central theme of showing kids the wonder and beauty of the world around them, almost made Umptee-3 a modern-day Big Blue Marble or Vegetable Soup.
Please stand by. We’ve now lost the remainder of our readers.
It wasn’t perfect: I’d have rather they had gone with human leads as opposed to anthropomorphic man-things, and all the Umptees didn’t have to be guys, either, and I personally didn’t think they needed to deal with the Frumps every week, at the most they could have merely been recurring characters–but it looked like fun and it’s message was pretty decent. Plus, any show that manages to employ the talents of Rob Paulsen, Jonathan Harris and Alice Ghostley deserves some honorable mention. Channel Umptee-3 was actually kind of cool, though there were much cooler TV stations out there….
The Retro Bin: The Big Cartoonie Show (1999-2000)
Today the Retro Bin takes a gander at the last hurrah of the so-called Silver Age comedy cartoons at Kids’ WB!, the imaginatively titled The Cat & Birdy Warneroonie Pinky Brainy Big Cartoonie Show.
I hear tell the person who came up with that name is the same person who named Denny’s Rooty-Tooty Fresh ‘N’ Fruity Breakfast.
“I never said I was proud!”
For those who don’t know, The Cat & Birdy Warneroonie Pinky Brainy Big Cartoonie Show, or The Big Cartoonie Show for short, was a compilation program that aired on Kids’ WB from January 16, 1999, to August 24, 2000. It followed a theme similar to previous Saturday morning cartoons featuring Looney Tunes shorts (to name just one example, The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, which was still airing on ABC at the time).
“Yup, we’ve been a-shillin’ ourselves out ‘cross Saturday mornin’s for decades! Don’ gimme that look. Ten gallon hats don’t-a pay fer themselves!”
Here’s the first opening:
Well, what do you know? According to the clock on the wall, it’s time for some….
POINTLESS. OBSERVATIONAL. CYNICISM.
I suppose to kids who were fans of WB toons, this was supposed to be considered the ultimate crossover, a true synergy between Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, as evidenced by that opening and the numerous publicity images featuring various characters representing each franchise, and I might have felt that way too, had Kids’ WB!’s advertising and assembling of the show hadn’t been so made on the cheap. The way they just cut and pasted the images and looped the same animation footage that they were using for every other KWB teaser at the time just made the whole enterprise come off as forced and fake. It might have looked better if say they had made original bumpers and wraparounds for the show featuring characters from the various attractions interacting and engaging in little bits of business, telling bad jokes and doing wacky slapstick and such, all with their actual voice actors, but unfortunately that wasn’t to be, as one could have fit the entirety of KWB’s budget into a thimble. Yeah, I guess Cartoon Network’s City bumps have spoiled me, but then, they’ve spoiled a lot of us.
And this has been…
POINTLESS. OBSERVATIONAL. CYNICISM.
Now back to the article.
Originally running for an hour and a half in length, the first four episodes featured Looney Tunes shorts with newly made title cards, as well as short segments originally featured on Animaniacs, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, Pinky and the Brain, and yes, Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain.
“Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain?? GACK! That ish was lame!”
But all that changed after the first 4 episodes, when Kids’ WB! began airing Pokemon on February 13th, 1999, and the “mon” shows and their ilk began gradually taking over the Kids’ WB! lineup.
“We take on all challengers. YOU…CANNOT..BEAT…US.”
After that, the show was reduced to a half-hour format and showed only Animaniacs and Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain segments. Notably, it was through The Big Cartoonie Show that most episodes of the latter program were shown, as its low popularity caused it to be swiftly removed from the schedule in November 1998. KWB just decided to exile P,E&tB to the weekend wasteland and burn off its’ remaining episodes there safely out of harm’s way.
“It was a mercy killing.”
Despite the fact that most of the show was made up of old material, the show was popular enough to garner a second season. In its second season, the show’s full name was changed to The Cat & Bunny Warneroonie SuperLooney Big Cartoonie Show and featured shorts from Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. One minor query: I get that they wanted to take the “Cat & Birdy” part out of the title since Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries was no longer part of the lineup, but “Cat & Bunny”? That just sounds weird (OK, weird is a relative term when it comes to this title, but still…) since Bugs and Sylvester have never really shared that much screen time; given the whole Bugs & Daffy connection, wouldn’t it have made more sense to go with “Duck & Bunny”?
“Thath what I said! But did they lithen to the little black duck? NO! My name would’ve come first for onth! Curth you, Kidth WB! A pox on all your condos!!”
Cue the second opening:
Come on, Kids’WB!. Are you gonna use that same clip of The Tiny Toons singing “We’re all a little loony ” EVERYTIME you need a group shot?? Sheesh!
-Now you may have noticed that many of the lines spoken by Dot Warner in the first opening were given to Babs Bunny in the second opening, putting voice actress Tress MacNeille in the unique position of being called in to replace herself.
As you may have also noticed from that second opening, for this season, the show was given host segments starring two noticeably flat animated kids named Karen and Kirby. (Think Henry and June from Kablam! minus the edge.) Speaking of Nick, it’s worth mentioning that Karen was voiced by Cheryl Chase (Angelica Pickles from Rugrats) while Kirby was voiced by Richard Horvitz (Daggett from Angry Beavers, not to mention the title character from Invader Zim and Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy). Great, now I’ve got the mental image of Angelica and Billy hosting a cartoon show together.
The Big Cartoonie Show was also now aired on weekday afternoons, where the Looney Tunes shorts were also being featured.
By this time, Pokemon and action cartoons had become increasingly dominant on Kids’ WB!, and The Big Cartoonie Show was finally cancelled at the end of the 1999-2000 season, with its last airing on August 24, 2000. With this, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and the Looney Tunes shorts were permanently removed from the Kids’ WB block. The show might as well have been called Take a Good Last Look, These Shows Will Be Gone by September. Sure enough, that fall Kids’ WB! said to the WB toons:
But to update the story, presently Kids’ WB! is no more, action cartoons have for the most part fallen out of favor with kids’ network execs and nowadays comedy cartoons rule The roost.
“Eh, we’re still standin’ and yer not. Who’s laughin’ now, bee-yotch?”
Eh-th-eh-th-eh-th…That’s everything we’ve got, people!
TV Special Tonight!: Zolar – The Extreme Sports Movie
Two things that kids like are space aliens and extreme sports (i.e., skateboarding, snowboarding, etc.). In 2004, Kids’ WB brilliantly and cynically combined these 2 elements by producing a made for TV movie about an extreme sports loving teenage space alien. Witness Zolar: The Extreme Sports Movie.
Mediocrity….TO THE XTREME!!!
Kids’ WB’s first (and only) live action movie, Zolar tells the story of a blue-skinned teenaged extraterrestrial who possesses immense galactic power but is interested primarily in skating with his friends and reconciling his freakish exterior with the norms of society. And surviving attempts on his life by the evil interstellar overlord Hedion. That concerns him too.
Here’s the skinny: Fourteen years ago, a burst of galactic energy collided with Earth. This burst contained a blue skinned alien baby (I didn’t know energy bursts could do that). Said baby was found by a guy named Skip, who lives in a bus. Skip claimed the baby as his own and did what any human would do with an alien baby; teach it to skateboard to the max, man!
Here’s Zolar and his adoptive parent dude Skip. Skip is the one on the left.
Zolar’s bright blue skin and the fin things for his ears are OK, but there’s something familiar about that nose…
“Ha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha!”
Moving on…
Fast forward to the present day. Four meddling kids (they’re names are Keiko, Dex, Hanson, and Chelsea, but you don’t need to know their names. I’m just going to call them by their character archetypes: Leader Boy Who Gives Everything His All, Nerd Boy Who’s a Technical Whiz, Wacky Dressed Girl Who Has Kooky Colored Hair and Ca-Razy Kewl Outfits and Little Sister Who’s Out to Prove She’s Not Just a Kid, Even Though She Is) are trying to break into the extreme sports circuit, be it rollerblading, skateboarding or snowboarding. Problem is, they all suck at all of them. One fateful day, they run into Skip and Zolar. Skip offers to train them in the way of awesome skateboarding, while also giving his adopted alien freak boy a chance to make friends with some normal kids. Zolar also has a propensity for making the following ejaculation:
“BLUE-YA!!”
“Blue no!”
Seriously. Stop trying to turn “Blue-Ya!” into a catchphrase. It’s not going to happen.
There’s also a cameo by professional skater Jason Ellis, who provides lengthy exposition and makes the startling revelation that all extreme sports athletes are actually aliens in disguise!
“That sounds ridiculous to me, and I used to work for a guy who eats planets for sustainance!”
“File this under: bull crap.”
All of the world’s extreme sports athletes are space aliens. Really, that’s like saying that all of TV’s famous cooking show stars are actually mutant Morlocks.
You always wondered. Now ya know!”
Everyone immediately becomes friends. However, the evil Hedion (C. Thomas Howell), a powerful space bad guy, seeks the power that Zolar has within him. To capture Zolar and retrieve this mojo, he dispatches some cronies to Earth, chief among them some clown named Geommer.
Geommer puts together a scheme to trick Zolar and takes him prisoner. It’s now up to Zolar’s new friends to spring their blue chum, and prevent Geommer from taking over the universe.
Thanks to dvdverdict.com for the synopsis.
On the upside, Zolar is harmless family fare. There’s no blood, death or sexual innuendos. On the downside, the movie is very, very, very stupid. The premise alone opens the door for all kinds of unanswerable questions: How does a hippie guy living in a bus manage to hide an alien for 14 years? What’s with Wild Grrl’s look?
Normally I’m all for chicks who wear wacky outfits and crazy colored hair, I actually liked the pink hair, but this chick was wearing FAR too much makeup. Seriously, no need to cake it on, sister; any more and you can officially qualify as a clown. Seriously, all she needs is a pair of big floppy shoes and a red honking nose and she’d be in the house.
“All of a sudden I’ve got somethin’ in my pocket. It’s as big as my shoe, but it feels just like a rocket!”
Where are these kids’ parents? Aren’t they concerned about their kids being chased and blasted by laser gun toting evil aliens from another planet? And how does anyone not notice a teen with blue skin and gills wearing street clothes? Yeah, sure. All you have to do is dress the space alien in a baseball cap, a plaid shirt and blue jeans and everyone thinks that he’s a normal person.
“That’s just stupid.”
“Real stupid!”
Zolar is nothing but a cynical attempt to cash in on two popular fads to make money off of gullible kids. It would be like making a movie about giant robots who know Kung-Fu. Or a movie about Wild West cowboys fighting alien invaders.
Oh, wait. That actually happened. Anyway, as evidenced by shows such as Prostars and “Hoop Squad”, arguably the single worst episode of Static Shock of all time, trying to pass off pro athletes as super heroes is always a terrible idea. I think that Chad Rocco (CR!) said it best, “Just because you can play basketball, that doesn’t make you a super hero!”
All of a sudden, the concept of extra terrestrial ducks who play hockey seems plausible.
The Couch: Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!
Today the Couch looks at the quickly gone and forgotten 10th incarnation of Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo franchise, Warner Brothers’ Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!.
Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! debuted on September 23, 2006, and ran for two seasons during the Kids WB Saturday morning block of The CW Television Network. The show’s second season premiered on Teletoon in Canada on September 6, 2010.
This series boasted a number of notable features: Despite being produced by Warner Bros. Animation, this was the last cartoon series produced by Hanna-Barbera co-founder Joseph Barbera. This show also came along right on the heels of the 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo movie, so the characters were redesigned to resemble their movie counterparts; Scooby was drawn with dot eyes, for example. Get a Clue! was the third show in the Scooby-Doo franchise, after A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and What’s New, Scooby-Doo?, that was not animated or drawn in the usual Hanna-Barbera style. This was also the first series in which Casey Kasem did not voice Shaggy, but was instead done by Scott Menville (although Scott Innes or Billy West have portrayed the character in many of the Scooby-Doo animated movies made for television or home video). However, in this series, Kasem did voice Shaggy’s rich and on-the-run Uncle Albert. Another noticeable difference was that Shaggy wore a white short-sleeved shirt with a green stripe across the middle and green sleeves instead of his trademark green t-shirt (Shag didn’t even sport his red shirt from the 80’s here). Frank Welker still did Scooby’s voice, replacing the late great Don Messick, who died of a stroke in 1996. In addition, Shaggy and Scooby are considerably not as cowardly this time around.
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Get a Clue! was one of the rare Scooby shows which deviated from the usual formula of the Mystery, Inc. gang solving mysteries involving fake ghosts and monsters. Unlike in, say, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, in which the selling point was that the monsters were real, here we got no ghouls, spooks or ghosties at all, real or otherwise. The premise of the show revolves around the fact that Shaggy Rogers’ incredibly rich Uncle Albert Shaggleford disappears and names Shaggy as his sole heir for an inheritance. With the help of the inheritance, Shaggy has upgraded the Mystery Machine, so it now has the ability to transform itself into a number of other different vehicles, like the “Hot Dog Making Machine”.
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Dr. Albert Shaggleford had made some enemies before disappearing, though. Among the most dangerous is the archetypal evil genius and technology pirate out to take over the world and/or become immortal–truth be told, his motivations were about as clear as Gargamel’s—Dr. Phineas Phibes (who gets his name from the Vincent Price villain The Abominable Dr. Phibes). Dr. Phibes recruits various sidekicks and minions to help him with his plans, among them Dr. Trebla. (Dun-dun-dunnn!)
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It appears that the supposedly late Dr. Shaggleford was, beyond being rich, an inventor in his own right, and his clueless young heir is now in possession of some very interesting nano technology. The top secret nanotech formula has been mixed in with Scooby Snacks, which, when eaten, cause a variety of day-saving side effects.
The duo are also aided by Robi, A loyal robotic servant with a tendency to bust through walls and other highly destructive things without second thoughts. Robi would also have various uses for Shaggy and Scooby, though he is a rather lousy cook, various impressions, and giving out safety tips Insector Gadget style. He also projects holograms of Uncle Albert when he wants to talk with Shaggy. One clever bit was that Robi also usually called Scooby “Rooby Roo” due to misunderstanding Scooby’s unique vocalizations.
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Shaggy and Scooby-Doo have a mission: armed with an updated Mystery Machine, a loyal robot servant, their new riches and the new and improved Scooby Snacks, they must stop the evil plans of Phineas Phibes and save the world. In episode 2, Shaggy upgrades the Mystery Machine from its original form, to a high-tech transforming vehicle. However, it usually transforms into machines inappropriate for the tasks at hand. In their spare time, Shaggy and Scooby are fans of the show Chefs of Steel, the famous mystery solver Chad Chatington, and the giant monster-fighting robot named Badgerly, the Adverb.
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What of the rest of the gang? Fred Jones, Daphne Blake and Velma Dinkley only made occasional appearances; only appearing in 2 episodes of season 1. Fred and Daphne made a non-speaking cameo in a single season 2 episode, getting barred from entrance to a party. However, their silhouettes run across the screen in the opening credits in amongst the silhouettes of all the show’s regular cast.
“Hey kids, you’re probably wondering why we didn’t get a bigger role on this show. Well frankly, so are we! Why do I keep getting passed over? I’m hot!”
“No parts for us in any of the Superstars 10 movies and now this? Seriously, what’s the deal? You gotta be perpetually hungry to get a decent role on one of these shows??”
“Look on the bright side. At least we didn’t have to appear in those lame-oh Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show episodes where it was just Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy driving around the countryside being chased by somebody! Geez Louise, what were they thinking??”
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Trivia Time: Coincidentally this is not the first time that Frank Welker has done the voice of Scott Menville’s pet as the two of them did the voice of Ma-Ti (Menville) and his pet monkey Suchi (Welker) in the 1990-96 cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Further coincidence is Scott Menville’s voicing Shaggy, a character previously voiced by Casey Kasem. Both voice actors have also played Robin in Teen Titans and Super Friends respectively.
Here’s the opening:
A YouTube commenter referred to Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! as “the series which raped the Scooby-Doo franchise”, and apparently Warner Brothers must have felt the same way, as this show hasn’t seen the light of day since its’ initial run on Kids’ WB!. So far it’s never even resurfaced on Cartoon Network, and they used to carry Pink Panther and Pals. A friend told me that WB has basically swept this show under the rug and refuse to so much as acknowledge it anymore. Myself, I have no comment on how good or bad the series was, for you see, there’s another notable feature about Get a Clue!: I’ve never actually seen an episode of this show. I kept saying that I was going to check out an episode just to say I’d seen it, but the series went off the air before I ever got to. That said, based in what I’ve read about Get a Clue!, I have to say that I didn’t think the idea sounded all that bad, at least not on paper. The show’s theme song was delightfully ear-splitting, and the premise actually sounds pretty fun: 2 kooky funsters suddenly finding themselves super-rich living it up in a mansion with a robot butler, the latest high-tech toys and super power-inducing nanotech to play with, that sounds pretty cool to me, sort of like Richie Rich meets Dexter’s Laboratory. In fact, it sounds similar to a show idea I had about a year ago with the working title Dream, about the kooky children of wealthy boo-billionaire celebrity parents who have crazy-cool fun in their high-tech pleasure-filled mansion while driving their butler/nanny crazy; it would’ve been like Disney’s Jessie, only good, but I digress. I think perhaps the problem people had with this show is that it was just too great a depature from the usual Scooby fare. No fake ghosts, no mysteries, little to no Fred, Daphne or Velma, and those dot eyes on the Scoobster were just kind of jarring. Like another infamous Kids’ WB! bomb, Loonatics Unleashed, Get a Clue! might have fared better if the producers had went with all-new characters in the lead roles instead of placing this in an established franchise since it was such a huge deviation from the norm.
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So while I never actually saw Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! (I know some episodes of this are available on DVD, so maybe I’ll check it out one day), I can’t entirely hate on this show. Ultimately it may not have worked, but I have to at least give Warner Bros. credit for trying something different, especially since it didn’t involve Scoob and Shag just drifting aimlessly around in the Mystery Machine and getting into endless brainless chase sequences with some big goon again and again.
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