Muppet Babies started a trend

[Beauregard]

What was Disney babies? Mickey, Donald, etc?

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Interprited:

I'm a Gnu, looking at you. Disney Babies? G'gosh what g'next?

 

[lowercasegods]

Disney Babies was more of a marketing concept than an actual cartoon. They promoted baby toys and other baby related itmes like diapers and pajamas. The commercial I recall shows a baby sitting on the floor while animed Disney babies cavort around him. I think it was a commercial for diapers. At any rate, Disney Babies are still used to market many products. Go into the baby section of any major department store and your bound to find a baby Mickey bib or juice bottle at least, as well as other Disney Baby merchandise. And baby Winnie the Pooh merchandise has been popular lately as well. They have a new baby Eyore doll that talks and vibrates, and a baby Pooh doll that talks and, I think, crawls around.

 

[zanimum]

Little Alvin and the Minimunks was actually pretty good.

 

[MJTaylor]

I said at the beginning that Muppet Babies started a trend. I had no idea that I myself was starting something! What a lot of replies!
I used to like The Flinstone Kids, but as the old saying goes, "Nothing beats the original." Same goes for Tom and Jerry Kids. As for A Pup Named Scooby Doo, I loved it! Espically when Freddy blamed Red Hering for something and Red would ring up or something and say something like, "I'm not even in this episode!"

 

[lowercasegods]

A Pup Named Scooby Doo was, in my view, the only one besides Muppet Babies that actually worked. Pup was so much fun, and actually made sense, like it could have happened that way and would logically lead to the team as they were in their original, older incarnations. If we want to be technical, Tiny Toons could be considered a hybrid of the "baby phenomenon." Though they had different names and were touted as entirely new characters, the Tiny Toons were obviously child representations of Bugs and his pals (except for Babs, who was the most original character on the show with no adult connection at all). And mad props to Zanimum, because for as knowledgable in cartoons as I am, I've never heard of Little Alvin and the Minimunks. Way to introduce me to something new, my friend.

 

[GonzoLeaper]

as knowledgable in cartoons as I am, I've never heard of Little Alvin and the Minimunks.

That's probably because it's brand new. Check out www.chipmunks.com

It's a new project out from Bagdasarian.

It sounds interesting. I haven't had a chance to see it yet myself.
And yes, I think Tiny Toon Adventures could count. It's not technically young versions of the Looney Tunes gang (we have Baby Looney Tunes for that!) but Buster is obviously a "Bugs" character, Plucky is a "Daffy" character, Hamton is a "Porky" character, Little Beeper is a "Road Runner" character, Calamity Coyote is a "Wile E. Coyote" character, Dizzy Devil is a "Tazmanian Devil" character, Furball is a "Sylvester" character, and Sweety is a "Tweety" character. Babs doesn't exactly have an adult counterpart, but there is the character of Lola Bunny and I would consider her Babs' adult counterpart. Lola didn't show up until "Space Jam" as far as I know, but she has definitely shown up as one of the main or at least supporting characters in the ongoing Looney Tunes comic book from DC. Shirley MacLoon isn't really based on a Looney Tunes character that I know of, but she is a parody of real life personality Shirley MacLaine (who started the New Age movement). Elmyra is another character that's pretty well original. I might almost say that Montana Max could be a young version of Elmer Fudd, since they're the two main villians for Bugs and Buster, but Montana could also be likened to Yosemite Sam. I don't know.

Hey, anyone know if there was ever a "young" version of Foghorn Leghorn? I can't remember any off hand.

This same kind of concept was used on the Saved By the Bell: The New Class show.

One other example of this is Disney's "Jungle Cubs" series. I used to watch it some and it's pretty good. It's the story of The Jungle Book when they were all young cubs, thus "Jungle Cubs". Of course, Mowgli hadn't come along yet, but Bagheera had his hands full keeping Baloo out of trouble. I'm pretty sure the baby elephant (the one who was a young kid in the movie) was there too, along with Kaa and Shere Khan. I'm thinking the monkeys and vultures might have been in there too. And King Louie was definitely there.

While I'm talking about The Jungle Book, I might as well mention Talespin. This is an awesome Disney cartoon that I well remember discovering by accident around 1990 or so. I mainly was interested because I saw Shere Khan, Baloo and Louie all there and all still called their same names. Although this Shere Khan, Baloo, and Louie wore clothes, they were very similar to their Jungle Book characters in personality traits. Anyway, it's a great cartoon, but not an example of a "Young" or "Baby" cartoon series. That's just an example of Disney reusing their hit characters. (But let's not start on Disney. I still love Disney cartoons and movies, but seriously, do we really need a Bambi II? Well, whether your answer is yes or not, Disney is making it. I've long since determined that Disney is determined to make a sequel to every animated movie they've ever made. Basically to squeeze every bit of money they can out of all their franchises. Most of the time the sequels really aren't needed and really aren't all that good. The only exception I've really noticed is Toy Story 2, which was awesome and quite possibly better than the first. That's a rare thing, there.)

Anyway, yes, I think Muppet Babies really did get a trend going. I think it worked out well for most shows and maybe not for some others. There were probably examples of this before Muppet Babies but I'm too tired to think of it right now.

Let's just be glad we didn't see this trend on some other great cartoons. I'm sure Baby G.I. Joe and Baby Transformers would have gone over real well.

 

[lowercasegods]

Elmyra was meant as a younger version of Elmer Fudd (you cans see it in her face, and when her hair is occassionally knocked off, she looks just like him), and Montana Max is meant to symbolize Yosemite Sam.

As for Foghorn, voice actor Ron Paulsen voiced a character called Fowlmouth, who was meant as a very loose child version of Foghorn. The character didn't have a southern accent, but he was a chicken, and his schtick was that he swore a LOT (obviously bleeped out creatively).

I think Shirley the Loon was added so Plucky would have a girl counterpart like Buster. And I suppose it's fair to say that babs is the child version of Lola, Though Babs predates her by almost ten years.

And don't forget Fifi LeFume, Pepe LePew's child connection. She wa sa cute character.

 

[lowercasegods]

Okay, I was skeptical of Alvin and the Minimunks at first. But when I saw that the characters were puppets, my interest was aroused. The concept may be stupid (they're kids already, for prete's sake! How much younger do they need to get?!), but one more puppet show isn't going to hurt anyone.

I'm an old school Alvin and the Chipmunk's fan, from the early 60s "Alvin Show" (which I had to watch in re-runs in the 80s because I'm not old enough to have seen it first aired) to The Chipmunks cartoons beginning with the Chuck Jones produced Christmas special from 1980 to the Ruby Spears cartoon which ran from'81 until the mid 90s (switching hands with DIC animation towards the end, with disasterous results). I even saw their theatrical cartoon in the late 80s, which was actually pretty cool. And I've still got The Chipmunk's Chistmas album, Chipmunk Rock, Urban Chipmunk (a country album) and an album of songs from their show which I listened to religiously (man it was great to be a kid in the 80s).

 

[Bean Bunny]

The Muppet Babies also helped spawned Popeye and Son, Yo Yogi!, and Baby Popeye. Of course in Yo Yogi, Yogi bear was teenage security guard at Jellystone Mall along with his pals, Boo-Boo, Cindy, Huck & Snaggle Puss.

 

[GonzoLeaper]

There was also the James Bond, Jr. cartoon. I'm not sure how good it was, but apparently it was good enough to merit a Nintendo Entertainment System video game.