December 2022: BOFFINS

Produced in 1993 and remained unaired in Australian airwaves for various unknown reasons and instead being direct-to-video, this Australian edutainment series follows four alien-like creatures (in which costumes are designed and built by Studio Kite) discovering the many sciences of the world around them, whether its friction, the transmission of sounds or gravity.

Despite it being unaired on Australia, this show did aired internationally and was translated to various languages. In the United States, where I currently live, the series was also direct-to-video and was released exclusively to both schools and universities alike.

The series is also the home to a very tragic accident that Silbert Records founder Joseph Marshall don't even want to address about it, but I am still curious about the accident and what caused it. As for the costumes themselves, they are faded away to the point of never existing. It wasn't stored in the Film Australia vaults in mint condition. Nope. Aristotle, Echo, Newton and Curie are all gone, never to be seen again. Only time will tell if these costumes will be rescued somewhere in the Australian abyss and will be restored so that the Boffins can get some public presence in modern times. Hell, their last public appearance was at the 1995 MIP Film Festival!

While the costumes are since long-gone after their last appearance at the film festival, the soundtrack survived and you can actually listen to the songs and music heard in the show if you're curious on what it sounds like.

November 2022: ZIP & ZAP

In the early 2000's, BRB Producciones, an animation studio in Spain, was tasked on doing a cartoon series based on the beloved Spanish comic book with the same name (now owned by Escobar Licensing). The result? It isn't all that good or great as it was hated by many fans and enthusiasts of the comic when it premiered in 2003 (it was produced in 2002 according to the credits) on Disney Channel. It also managed to get a direct-to-video movie which wrap things up entitled Zip & Zap Meet the Monsters...which mostly compromises of clips of the episodes tied together with a new story rather than doing new animation. Lame and also a lazy job! No wonder that the current owners of the Zip & Zap comics, Escobar Licensing, don't even want to talk about it and want to forget it even existed in the first place!

Despite all that, the only remaining qualities about it is three things: the art style, character and background designs. This cartoon remained a huge inspiration and influence of me because of the simple, yet unique art style and the main reason why I draw nearly exactly like the cartoon. The simple, colourful plain backgrounds, the uniqueness of the character and prop design gives my drawings a nostalgic early 2000's BRB vibe, which, I happen to an early 2000's kind of person. You can see, and keep an eye out for, influences of this cartoon in my drawings and animations. I watch this cartoon on Tubi mostly for the appeasing art style and animation, but you can see what it looks like via the many screenshots I took of this cartoon on the gallery on the left (or above if you're a mobile user), because, hey, I still absolutely adore this art style!

October 2022: TELECHOBIS

No! Those aren't the Teletubbies! Those are the Telechobis! After TV Atzeca failed to get the Mexican distribution rights to a beloved childhood nightmare and acid trip of everyone as Televisa won the distribution rights, this was created as a result. This bootleg-ass series follows four elves (not weird-ass alien babies!), Nita, Toso, Tis and Ton who discover and learn the world around us, all accompanied with a creepy talking tree. It premiered in 1998 with 24 episodes but never lasted very long and for a good reason. Not only it crept children out, especially the tree, but the BBC and the Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Company filed a lawsuit against Atzeca due to copyright infringement and was never shown again. Despite that however, it did managed to get a Portuguese dub for Brazilian audiences released on VHS in 1999. Also the fact that because this premiered on the same year as the Teletubbies, many people speculated that the Telechobis "ripped off" the original Teletubbies itself, when in reality, it's the other way around. Oh well, at least the songs are very catchy despite them being wasted on a rip-off series!

September 2022: FROOTEES

When D'Ocon's "The Fruitties" hit Malaysian airwaves (mostly in RTM TV1), it was a huge hit with the country despite the "so bad it's good" quality of the cartoon. After the original "Fruitties" cartoon left Malaysian airwaves, this cartoon was locally created as a replacement to "The Fruitties". "Frootees" was Malaysian animation studio (and subsidary of EuroFine) Fine Animation's second animated series outing with their first being "Yokies" in 1997. It premeired at RTM TV1 in 1998 to replace D'Ocon's "The Fruitties" after it left and follows the adventures of anthopomorphic fruit getting into situations and whatnot, whether its helping a squirrel on getting out on some sort of orange glue or the banana being mad at an insect. I first stumbled upon this series on TV Tropes, and I thought it was a rip-off of the original Fruitties series, but in action, it wasn't all that bad despite the name sounding a bit too familiar. And that is what I got introduced to the world of Fine Animation's cartoons, and like the rest of their library, it is extremely obscure and any information regarding these cartoons are extremely impossible to find on the internet and maybe derives into lost media territory as the episodes are difficult to find on the internet outside of clips from select episodes. Same goes with the others, though Tulis got its second season resurfaced in the net (though in potato quality) and Yokies got an entire episode (entitled Banjir, clearly translating to Flood) uploaded. Unless Malaysians have their tapes ready, it may remain lost until the episodes starts to resurface on the internet.