The Chipmunks

[Drtooth]

Actually, now that I really think about it, there's another reason why I don't particularly care for the DiC episodes as much as the Ruby-Spears episodes: the writing. The Ruby-Spears episodes were really cleverly written for a Saturday morning cartoon series.

Oh yeah... I love those RS episodes, especially some of the early ones where Simon looked like the version from the Christmas Special. I mean, they hung out with Mr. T and Dolly Pardon for one thing. Plus, let's face it, back under RS, they had more voice actors... Peter Cullen and Tress MacNeil among others... very familiar 1980's VA's were in those old ones. And the animation was better too. DIC's best stuff was the movie parodies, Back to Alvin's Future especially... but I virtually never watch Cadet's Regrets (DIC or MWS, I forget, only saw it once) on the ALVVIIIIIIN collection.

Some of the MWS episodes were pretty good, but they were mostly either spoof episodes ("Dreamlighting", "Alvey's Angels", "The Brunch Club", etc) or clipshows/flashbacks.
I'm not sure, but it seems MWS was actually some sort of off-shoot of Ruby-Spears (which itself was an off-shoot of Hanna-Barbera).

Actually, no... Fred Wolf Films (MWS) was founded back in 1967, and was based in Dublin Ireland. They made the film "The Point" and Puff the Magic Dragon. They're the ones behind the 1980's TMNT series as well as Toxic Crusaders, the American Speed Racer cartoon, James Bond Jr., and a couple others. They only did 11 episodes, and it was more of a partnership... sort of a transitional animation studio between RS and DIC. In fact, I think RS disappeared until the 1990's Mega Man cartoon... then they never popped up again.

 

[D'Snowth]

Oh yeah... I love those RS episodes, especially some of the early ones where Simon looked like the version from the Christmas Special. I mean, they hung out with Mr. T and Dolly Pardon for one thing. Plus, let's face it, back under RS, they had more voice actors... Peter Cullen and Tress MacNeil among others... very familiar 1980's VA's were in those old ones. And the animation was better too.

Yep, that's what I said earlier, they also had the likes of June Foray, Alan Young, Johnny Haymer... the MWS and DiC episodes had Ross and Janice's associate producer practically doing all of the voices, and he did not do very good ones. Honestly, neither did Ross for that matter, I know just about every episode, he voiced at least one of the one-shot characters, but he never even tried to do some kind of a voice, maybe an accent or a twang, but never a voice, which makes so many of the one-shot guest characters sound just like Dave. I swear, they MUST have lost tons of dough on The Chipmunk Adventure, that's why the show seemed cheapened afterwards.

And agreed again, the overall animation and production design of the RS episodes were really high quality and detailed, it took them a while to get the character designs quite right, but then again, a lot of animation studios were like that, like compare early Rocky and Bullwinkle from 1959 to later Rocky and Bullwinkle of 1964. DiC, again, the animation was cheap and somewhat "looser" than RS, not to mention the backgrounds and designs were considerably simplistic, like plain solid walls, or smooth floors as opposed to detailed wallpaper and textured grain on the wood floors.

DIC's best stuff was the movie parodies, Back to Alvin's Future especially... but I virtually never watch Cadet's Regrets (DIC or MWS, I forget, only saw it once) on the ALVVIIIIIIN collection.

I actually watched that one day after having not watched it in a long time, it was a MWS episode, but that's actually where I got my facts mixed up, because during the end titles, there's a tagline at one point that says like "In Association With Ruby-Spears Enterprises", so I thought perhaps they did branch out from them. I DO know that RS WAS an off-shoot of HB, as Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, and a number of their staff worked for HB backin the 60s and 70s; I read recently that both Ruby and Spears were actually the real creative maestros behind some of HB's hits, like Scooby-Doo. I think they attended a ComicCon here recently, attending with Sid & Marty Krofft.

 

[Drtooth]

RS is not only an off shoot of HB, but apparently, their animated products (with the exception of Mega Man, I'm guessing) are now considered HB for some reason.

I swore this WAS a RS production, but it's got an HB label on the cover

So I guess it might be a situation similar to DIC where the license depends on the series and character ownership. The Chipmunks cartoons are owned by the Chipmunks rights holders...

 

[D'Snowth]

It's still interesting that a majority of the DiC episodes that have seen official DVD releases still retain the DiC logo, but none of th RS episodes on DVD do (the MWS episodes in syndication also had RS logos).

But anyway, a good friend of mine managed to download the infamous "Sploosh" episode when it was posted on YouTube recently (and was quickly removed, apparently), and sent it to me; it was good, but again, it was also pretty cheesy, especially the romantic fluff between Simon and Jeanette (or as their characters were named in the episode, Trusty and Montana), BUT, there was a line that had me doing a double-take:

BRITTANY: Are mermen sexier than human men?

Wow, you don't hear a line like THAT on a children's cartoon, Saturday morning or not.

 

[Drtooth]

BRITTANY: Are mermen sexier than human men?

Wow, you don't hear a line like THAT on a children's cartoon, Saturday morning or not.

Sexy was used in a LOT of shows in the 90's. Even recently, the Fairy Idol episode of Fairly Oddparents, Juandissimo sang "I'm too Sexy for my Sexy." I still can never forget the episode of Disney's Doug where his dad tried to talk to Doug about the subject and Doug said, "Sex?"

You can't really do that anymore on Saturday morning because... well, anything that is on is for 6 year olds.

Oh, the innuendo from Ultimate Muscle I can recite...

 

[Drtooth]

Well, the Bagdasarians have take it upon themselves to release DVD's themselves

And they're STILL kiddy 3 episodes for 15 bucks releases.

What's the hold up with a complete Alvin Show already?

 

[D'Snowth]

Well, the Bagdasarians have take it upon themselves to release DVD's themselves

And they're STILL kiddy 3 episodes for 15 bucks releases.

What's the hold up with a complete Alvin Show already?

I'm not familiar with an episode entitled "Mother's Day", I'd have to look that up... but the "Driving Dave Crazy" DVDonly has two episodes that haven't been released before... that "Incredible Shrinking Dave" was a hoot for Alvin turning the tables: "David? David! DAAAAAAAAAVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID!!!"

The Christmas DVD isn't worth the buy, sorry Ross and Janice... not only have all the episodes on that disc already been released, but they're not very good ones either... I agree with Drtooth, come on Bagdasarians, give usthe complete series of The Alvin Show... THEN, give us season sets of the 80s cartoon!

 

[Drtooth]

Look, as much as I'd love the entire 80's show, the music rights would be impossible to get all clear no matter how many suits they try to pull. I'm wondering how hacked up the California Raisins DVD is going to be. I saw an episode of the cartoon series recently, and it had 3 musical numbers in a single episode. ALL old Motown hits.

Plus, I dunno about you, but I want my Clyde Crashcup. I want the 60's series just for that.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm still not so sure about the music rights junk and all... again, I mean of the handful of 80s episodes that HAVE been released on DVD, I think only like two of them have had to have song replacements... one of which I DON'T understand is replacing "Surfin' USA" with "Surfin' Safari", they're both Beach Boys songs, I don't get it. I can see them having issues with whatever episode it was that had them singing "Puttin' On the Ritz", since I've heard the nasty stories regarding the estate of Irving Berlin.

You know, it's actually hard for me to tell whether or not "The Girls of Rock n Roll" used in the episode "Bigger" was a replacement or not... mainly because the lyrics and the lipsync don't quite match, but then again, it was a DiC episode, and the DiC episodes weren't the best example of animation.

 

[CensoredAlso]

You know, it's actually hard for me to tell whether or not "The Girls of Rock n Roll" used in the episode "Bigger" was a replacement or not... mainly because the lyrics and the lipsync don't quite match, but then again, it was a DiC episode, and the DiC episodes weren't the best example of animation.

Does it seem like the same version of the song that they used in the Chipmunks feature film?