At least they didn't hire Kennedy Cartoons to work on the final season of "Muppet Babies." That weird bouncy style (like their "Tiny Toon Adventures," "Darkwing Duck" and some of their "Goof Troop" work) would have been WAY out of place with the Babies. And even there, Warner had numerous problems with Kennedy, firing them after the first season of "Tiny Toon Adventures" (the studio quickly found work with Disney, whom seemed satisfied with them.)
There's a good reason for that. They didn't exist yet!
The founders of that studio were working for everyone else at the time. Now, that's not to say certain Tiny Toons episodes animated by Kennedy that didn't have their charm. If anything, that episode where Plucky was in the interactive adventure would
not have been insanely hilarious if TMS did beautiful animation for it. It needed stupid, gooey, over the top cartoony visuals that only they could provide. Especially the King Kong segment. Other than that, I could care less about them.
You have just proven that even though, IMO, the last two seasons of Muppet Babies were terribly disappointing, they could have been much worse.
While I can't agree that Kennedy is essentially worse than the hatchet job the second animation company gave the show (seriously... why did everything randomly turn purple in "Muppet Babies the Next generation" during the Jetsons sequence?), I can agree there's worse. I mean, Clutch Cargo exists... uh... and Problem Solverz...
I dunno... I have a bias with Japanese animation for American cartoon shows. Sometimes there's a cultural divide with the style that translates weird with certain studios, I'll admit. But there's just nothing like those random little anime influences that creep into the show. Those facial cheek highlight lines (for the lack of a better description), the "V" sign... plus, while it's not the most fluid stuff in the world, there's a great look to it. The older Muppet Babies Toei episodes look visually epic. While Akom did have some good looking episodes, overall they just weren't as visually stunning.
Check out this Toei animated song sequence:
Now check out the
less than creative visuals of this later song.
Now to bring it back, look at the
amazing Yellow Submarine influence of this one
The Marvel/Toei partnership happened well before hand (remember that weird Spider-Man series they made or that TERRIBLE Tomb of Dracula anime?)... that's why Transformers and GI Joe used them as their primary source of outsourced animation. It's a shame they never really used TMS, especially for Muppet Babies. Now if there ever was an anime studio that
got how American cartoons worked, it's TMS.