Stanley Is Playing Catch Up

Welcome to the first of my new columns for Animation World Network, where I will review current TV series and specials on a weekly basis.

TV animation is certainly a unique breed of cartoon. Commercials and feature films have large budgets and longer schedules; shorts are usually the work of a solitary artist. Pity the poor TV cartoon, saddled with a bad rap due to a 40 year history of cheaply produced, badly written, horribly animated shows that have been blamed for every problem children get into.

But for every ten shows like The Smurfs or Super President or Turbo Teen, there is one Rocky & Bullwinkle, [2]Ren & Stimpy [3] or The Simpsons. [4] And when those shows come along, it makes watching TV animation very worthwhile.

TV animation has changed, mostly for the better, within the last 15 years. Before 1990, most TV animation was churned out for the big three networks' Saturday morning schedules, 13 episodes usually produced within six grueling months. Between 1960 and 1989, cartoonist driven classics like Beany & Cecil [5] and Underdog gave way to network dictated drivel like The Little Clowns Of Happy Town and The Gary Coleman Show.

Pee-Wee's Playhouse (1986), Bakshi [6]'s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (1987), Disney's Duck Tales (1987) and Spielberg's Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), followed by Nickelodeon's initial trio of Nicktoons (1991) were the instigators of TV animation's renaissance. Today cartoon series are produced mainly for cable channels like Cartoon Network, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and Disney, as well as broadcast outlets like Kids WB!, ABC, PBS and Fox (for both primetime adult and afternoon kids blocks) -- and that's just the U.S. market.

International co-productions and cartoon cable channels worldwide have created an insatiable demand for product, for both kids and adults, so much so that TV animation has become the genre to watch for the next big trends, popular characters and emerging creators.

You never know from where the next Rugrats, [7] South Park or Powerpuff Girls [8] will originate; I hope this new column will help locate and alert you to it first.

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Stanley at home with Dennis. All images © Disney.

First up, Cartoon Pizza's Stanley, a new pre-school animated series which runs weekday and Saturday mornings on Disney Channel's Playhouse Disney block. The show revolves around Stanley, a curious little boy with a talking pet goldfish and a strong desire to research wild animals.

The gimmick on this series is that after an initial fantasy where Stanley imagines himself playing with a lion, or a kangaroo or a shark, the boy looks up the animal du jour in the Great Big Book of Everything (queing a theme song each episode from Stanley's singing cat and dog). There he learns all he needs to know to use his imagination to get into a fantasy adventure, all within the confines of his home. Pet goldfish Dennis asks Stanley, and directly the kids at home, some questions, which nicely move the story along and mildly educate.

The show is based on a series of Stanley books by London-based Andrew "Griff" Griffin, published by Hyperion, and is produced by Jim Jinkins (Doug [9]) and David Campbell (PB & J Otter, both formerly of Jumbo Pictures).

Jinkins and Campbell are now producing through their New York-based company Cartoon Pizza, Inc. and have enlisted a team of respected educational consultants to ensure the series its learning based curriculum. That includes The Wildlife Conservation Society for "a lot of interesting information about animals," and The Cognitive Skills Group at the Harvard Project Zero, a research unit at Harvard University. The goal is to help the young viewers enter the world of Stanley and share in the opportunities for learning and growing, problem solving, early math, science and language skills.

Stanley on two of his many adventures in the wild.

The show successfully combines adventure, comedy, fantasy and educational values in a relatively appealing package. The angular production designs are appropriately simple and the vivid color styling is attractive. Stanley's character design is a cross between Charlie Brown and PBS' Calliou, and the program's interactive premise owes a nod to Blue's Clues. It should do well with its intended audience of under 6 year-olds -- and parents won't mind watching it along with their kids either.

But as technically efficient and well-meaning as this series is, it has the smell of a Nick Jr. wanna-be. It's hard to criticize such a well-intentioned effort, but there is no question that the Nickelodeon/Nick Jr./Noggin team are the current trailblazers in new-style interactive kids educational programming.

It's great that Disney Channel is joining this pre-school effort -- but I think we have enough Winnie The Pooh sequels, thank you. I'd like to see the old Disney pioneering imagination at work, coming up with something not-so-familiar. With this series they are playing catch-up. More original ideas and clever visuals (like their Rolie Polie Olie) could help.

Jerry Beck is an animation producer and cartoon historian who is simultaneously developing a show with MTV Animation and writing a book for Harry N. Abrams Publishers. He also has a cool Website at www.cartoonresearch.com.