The Chipmunks

[D'Snowth]

It's been announced today that ALVINNN will be renewed for a fifth season, even though Nick still hasn't finished airing the rest of Season 3 yet.

While I'm glad to see the show is doing well enough to warrant another renewal (and it'll end up surpassing the 80s cartoon in episode count), unlike the 80s cartoon, ALVINNN has gotten very formulaic over two and a half seasons so far, so if it's going to continue on for more seasons, I wish they'd start doing some different things and break away from formula, because I'm beginning to get really bored with the show. With Janice and Michael doing roughly 90% of the writing themselves, it gives the show a one-tone feel; it needs some fresher blood.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

It's been announced today that ALVINNN will be renewed for a fifth season, even though Nick still hasn't finished airing the rest of Season 3 yet.

While I'm glad to see the show is doing well enough to warrant another renewal (and it'll end up surpassing the 80s cartoon in episode count), unlike the 80s cartoon, ALVINNN has gotten very formulaic over two and a half seasons so far, so if it's going to continue on for more seasons, I wish they'd start doing some different things and break away from formula, because I'm beginning to get really bored with the show. With Janice and Michael doing roughly 90% of the writing themselves, it gives the show a one-tone feel; it needs some fresher blood.

No Season 4 yet?

 

[D'Snowth]

No, they haven't even finished airing Season 3 yet. Nick is really unreliable with airing new episodes, and tend to do so rather haphazardly - usually with just a random week of new episodes (split in half) sometime in spring and/or fall. Usually they'll do that in the middle of August, but they haven't this year.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

Ooh boy, i'll be so happy when they get someone else in charge of Nick's programming/scheduling.

 

[minor muppetz]

In the last few months I have kept going back-and-forth on focusing my mind on The Chipmunks, looking up information and watching episodes/clips online. Right now I haven't been thinking that much about them, though.

I read that the 1980s series changed its name from Alvin and the Chipmunks to just The Chipmunks just because the Chipettes were so popular. Anybody know if that's really the case? Either title could have worked for the whole series, I feel if the Chipettes were popular enough to justify changing they title they would have called it something like "The Chipmunks & the Chipettes", rather than shortening it. They also would have put the Chipettes into the opening.

I can't remember if I ever saw the episode "Dave's Wonderful Life", but I was watching it recently, and it is a great episode, though it's weird seeing Dave be the one worried about disappointing the kids. But that closing song, "We're Just Glad It's You", is such a great song, I've had it in my head a lot these last few months (and been watching the clip a lot.... at least when I have some "Chipmunk fever").

I was watching a little of A Chipmunks Christmas, and recognize that shot of the Chipmunks skateboarding down the stairs. I've seen that in a number of promos for Chipmunk stuff (including the first Alvin and the Chipmunsk Sing-Along video... was that clip actually in the video? I thought it was just all music segments from The Alvin Show), and all these time I mistakenly thought the clip came from the episode "Every Chipmunk Tells a Story". Even ignoring how they look in that special (having freckles which they never had elsewhere).

It's interesting how some of the episodes were released on video with somewhat alternate titles for the main video release. Like "Dave's Wonderful Life" being titled "It's a Wonderful Life, Dave" or "Back to Our Future" being called "Back to Alvins Future". Was any of this title-changing necessary?

 

[D'Snowth]

ALVINNN!!! AND THE CHIPMUNKS was actually originally going to be called THE CHIPMUNKS AND THE CHIPETTES, but honestly, that's a really wordy title. But as for the 80s cartoon shortening it to just THE CHIPMUNKS, I find it ironic that if it was to reflect The Chipettes being a more major part of the show, why were they excluded from the opening title by then? We see them briefly in the opening for the first five seasons playing baseball with The Chipmunks, but the opening title for THE CHIPMUNKS seasons was just of The Chipmunks without The Chipettes.

 

[minor muppetz]

But as for the 80s cartoon shortening it to just THE CHIPMUNKS, I find it ironic that if it was to reflect The Chipettes being a more major part of the show, why were they excluded from the opening title by then? We see them briefly in the opening for the first five seasons playing baseball with The Chipmunks, but the opening title for THE CHIPMUNKS seasons was just of The Chipmunks without The Chipettes.

Were the Chipettes actually featured a lot more on The Chipmunks than before? I feel they always were major enough. I don't think many episodes from "The Chipmunks" seasons are in the syndication package*, which I am a lot more familiar with, and I remember them being major for almost the entire pre-"Chipmunks" series (yet they're not in many of the DIC-animated episodes that I've seen).

*Seems the majority of Alvin and the Chipmunks episodes released on video from Buena Vista are ones that were not included in the syndication package (including many of the Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies episodes.... I used to think that was a special direct-to-video series; I might have known otherwise if those videos contained two episodes instead of one). Seems Buena Vista Home Video did that for a number of licensed shows. Some of the Bullwinkle videos included storyarcs that were in the "Rocky Show" syndication package as opposed to the more-common "Bullwinkle Show" package (though I wonder if the amount of parts for each arc had anything to do with it), many of the Alvin and the Chipmunks video releases were of episodes past the cut-off period in the syndication package, and at least four Muppet Babies episodes not seen on Nickelodeon were released on video.

 

[D'Snowth]

They were, gradually. Episodes focusing solely on them without The Chipmunks were becoming a bit more commonplace.

 

[minor muppetz]

A few years ago, I found some online scans from issues of Billboard magazine, and saw in the July 4, 1992 issue an article about the start of Buena Vista's Chipmunks video releases, saying that not much Chipmunk content had been released before, with one of the few exceptions being a limited Target-exclusive release in 1990.

I recently decided to look up info on this video at the Chipmunks wiki, and I found that there was a collection in 1988 called The Chipmunks Library, with several videos (I think 1987). I guess either the article was wrong with the year (but that would have only been a few years back) or the wiki was. The article mentions the Target exclusive videos containing four or five episodes while the wiki mentions seven videos with three episodes each.

I agree with D'Snowth, there needs to be a commemorative book on the Chipmunks.

 

[D'Snowth]

If Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., a.k.a. David Seville, was still alive, he'd be turning 100 today: