Disney’s Shnookums & Meat
present lacked edgy humor and confronted limitations, making it look like a lesser model of Ren and Stimpy
.
Supporting characters Tex Tinstar & Pith Possum overshadowed the primary duo attributable to sturdy voice performing, resulting in uninteresting moments for Shnookums & Meat
.
The dearth of originality in Shnookums & Meat
, with rip-offs from different exhibits, contributed to its cancelation after solely 13 episodes.
Airing on Nickelodeon for over 4 years and releasing a complete of 52 episodes within the ‘90s, John Kricfalusi’s Ren and Stimpy rapidly grew to become a staple for the kids’s tv channel. It’s no shock why this present grew so rapidly with the youthful viewers – it’s fairly laborious to look away from the wacky and wild adventures surrounding a thin, neurotic chihuahua and a large, brainless cat. Their weekly skirmishes concerned moving into tussles with psychotic circus staff, pondering that they gave beginning (when it was really simply flatulence), and attempting to promote rubber nipples to the native firehouse.
As a lot as these shock-value storylines created a adverse fervor amongst Nick executives and oldsters alike, these dream fever conditions mixed with high quality animation helped to make Ren and Stimpy an excellent success amongst critics and audiences alike. Even with this controversy standing within the shadows of the present, Disney couldn’t take the truth that Nickelodeon was racing forward, and so they had been in dire want of a equally animated present.
Premiering on The Disney Afternoon programming block a month after Ren and Stimpy concluded its ultimate season, Invoice Kopp’s The Shnookums & Meat Humorous Cartoon Present got here to have a really comparable dynamic. This was really a spin-off of 1993’s Marsupilami, which sprang out of CBS’s Uncooked Toonage from 1992 (neither of which had nice episode runs). Shnookums & Meat additionally offered viewers with a cat named—you guessed it—Shnookums and an enormous however inept canine named Meat. This duo had equally loopy outings, like being harshly judged in limbo after getting hit by a truck and creating unhinged monsters with a brain-altering system, so why was this seemingly wonderful sequence canceled after solely 13 episodes? What was so flawed with Shnookums and Meat that made individuals change the channel?
Disney Could not Be Edgy Like Nickelodeon
First, audiences ought to notice that Disney clearly has stricter rules than Nickelodeon. The underlying darkish and grownup humor that made Ren and Stimpy pleasing for all ages is non-existent in Shnookums and Meat. Kopp certainly had the flexibility – have a look at his work on the ultimate episode of Tales from the Crypt.
Nonetheless, Disney would by no means have let him go along with that a lot violence and black comedy on this animated sequence. Because the creator talked about in an interview with a former web site, Animato, think about if this present was on a much less restricted community like Fox Youngsters. However due to this tight grip on the content material they distribute, individuals will at all times contemplate Kopp’s creation to be a lighter, nearly bargain-version of Ren and Stimpy and nothing extra.
The Wuzzles gave us one thing that ’80s TV was missing: a very good dose of Disney’s authentic animation genius.
As aforementioned within the introduction, The Shnookums and Meat Humorous Cartoon Present solely ran for 13 episodes earlier than being axed. On this quick interval, the featured canine and cat had been surprisingly overshadowed by the 2 supporting shorts within the episodes – Pith Possum and Tex Tinstar: The Greatest In The West. Whereas they had been certainly parodies in and of themselves (Pith was a play on Batman, and Tex was a satire of old-time cowboy protagonists), these facet tales inevitably shined as a result of the exceptional Jeff Bennett stepped in for each main roles.
With over 600 animated productions below his belt, Bennett might make something entertaining. Sadly, this unbalanced casting was a detriment to the Ren and Stimpy counterparts. When reviewing the present, Scott Moore from the Washington Submit stated that Shnookums and Meat had been the weakest of all three cartoons proven within the half-hour time slot.
Tex Tinstar and Pith Possum Stole the Present From Shnookums and Meat
Apart from trying on the different segments, Shnookums and Meat was simply plain awkward with its pacing at instances and thus was by no means corresponding to the unique animated duo of Ren and Stimpy. For instance, many chase sequences (resembling when Meat tries to hit Shnookums with a range) or comedic windups (like when a baseball goes by way of too many shenanigans earlier than hitting Meat sq. within the head) go on for too lengthy. When the title of the present is predicated round characters who share the display with two different segments, a fast tempo is at all times wanted. Perhaps it was a artistic selection or a call that was pressured by Disney, however this slower story-telling will inevitably sign viewers to the opposite, extra entertaining animated faces in your program.
How a lot ache did Disney spare its viewers or characters? These are 10 instances Disney lower scenes or storylines as a result of they had been too darkish.
Let’s face it – Invoice Kopp’s collaboration with Disney was marred by a scarcity of originality. Despite the fact that some should still argue to this present day that Tex Tinstar deserves to be given a second likelihood, all three segments had been rip-offs of one thing else. Everyone knows what Shnookums and Meat had been based mostly on. However Pith Possum’s riff of Batman got here proper off of the heels of Darkwing Duck, one other play on the caped crusader. Despite the fact that Bennett’s vigorous depiction helped, the premise of Pith was tiresome at this level. Whereas Tex (the Johnny Bravo-cowboy hybrid) undoubtedly had a allure and copied cartoons of previous with its weekly cliffhanger ending, most viewers by no means stayed lengthy sufficient to see the way it performed out.
Whereas The Shnookums & Meat Humorous Cartoon Present has not been made accessible on Disney+ or any type of tv since 2007, it may be watched on YouTube without spending a dime.
