Iggy Arbuckle

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Iggy Arbuckle
The main cast of the show: (Clockwise from top) The Great Bamzeani, Robear[1], Catfish Stu, Robert, Jiggers, Iggy Arbuckle, Spiff, Zoop and Kira. (Background) Mooseknuckle.
Genre	Animation Sitcom
Created by	Guy Vasilovich
Voices of	Jonathan Wilson David Berni James Rankin Derek McGrath Stephanie Milo Stephanie Mills Novie Edwards Neil Crone Patrick McKenna
Country of origin	Canada
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	26 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Donna Friedman Meir Noreen Halpern John Morayniss Audrey Velichka
Running time	22 min approx.
Broadcast
Original channel	Teletoon
Original airing	June 29, 2007
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Iggy Arbuckle is a Canadian animated series, seen in Canada on Teletoon, in Australia on ABC Kids and in the UK on Jetix UK from August 25, 2007. The series has also been sold by Oasis International, the Canadian distributor, to channels such as Cartoon Network (in Korea, Southeast Asia, India, and the Philippines) and Canal + SA and TPS in France. The show is about a pig (Iggy Arbuckle) who happens to be a forest ranger, known in the series as a "Pig Ranger". The plot focuses on Iggy's attempts to protect the environmental structure of the fictional Kookamunga National Park.

It can be also be seen currently broadcasting on Saturday mornings on Toonattik (ITV1), and weekday mornings on Action Stations!, ITV4 and the CITV Channel.

Contents 1 Production 2 Setting 2.1 Legends and history in the show 2.2 Culture 3 Characters 4 Episodes 5 Reception 5.1 Awards/Nominations 5.2 Merchandise 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Production

Iggy Arbuckle began as a comic strip entitled Iggy Arbuckle: Nature Freak! that premiered in National Geographic Kids in the June 2004 issue.^[2] It was, to date, the only issue of the comic strip; in which the characters Iggy Arbuckle, Jiggers and Zoop made their first appearances. The plot involved Iggy and Jiggers trying to find an acorn so Iggy could make an acorn squash pie for Zoop as a birthday present. Created by Guy Vasilovich, creator of Kangaroo Jack: G'Day U.S.A.!, Moville Mysteries, and Hey Arnold!: The Movie, the series is loosely based on his childhood experiences while living in Tomahawk, Wisconsin.^[3][4]

On April 11, 2005, Oasis International, Blueprint Entertainment and Teletoon announced that they were coproducing an animated series based on the comic. The series would be targeted at children ages six to eleven and feature twenty-six episodes comprised of two eleven-minute sub-episodes. The animation was done entirely in Flash, with over 100 workers involved in the series' creation.^[5] National Geographic holds the US distribution rights for the series, while Blueprint holds the international rights.^[2] Jetix Europe acquired the European broadcast and DVD distribution rights to the series in February 2007.^[4]

In January 2008, Oasis International sold distribution rights of Iggy Arbuckle to Canal + SA and TPS in France, to ABC in Australia, and to the variants of Cartoon Network in Southeast Asia, Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and India.^[6] The series is licensed for US broadcast by Animania HD, and is currently licensed for distribution in a total of seventy territories.^[7]

[edit] Setting

The show takes place in a fictional vast national park known as the "Kookamunga" (The "Kook" for short). It contains many different types of environmental areas and humorously named landmarks, including a swamp called All Agog Bog (or Agog Bog for short), a woodland named the Heebie-Jeebies Forest, and Mango Tango Beach, a beach whose design is similar to Hawaiian beaches, and is home to a flock of vicious pink flamingoes. In the desert is a rock formation known as Big Honkin' Boulder, which the characters often use for rock-climbing. There is also a mine called the Mine all Mine, which is supposedly cursed (see below).

The Kook also contains an Iceland, Brain Freeze, at the center of which is the "Norse Pole" (an obvious take on the North Pole. South of Brain Freeze, according to promotional maps of the show, is a volcano called Mount Kaboom, who at times seems to be on the verge of erupting even though the lead character, Iggy Arbuckle, always professes that it's been dormant for centuries. This was the focus of the first half of the series premiere. There is also a benign mountain called Mount Peekaboo. Along with the mountains, there are at least two geysers mentioned; Old Reliable (which is a take on Old Faithful), which is seen in "I Fought the Laundromat", and Geezer Geyser, which has not as of yet been seen in the show, though in "Any Friend of Yours", Iggy mentions that it contains fossils. An interesting note relating to its name is that Scottish people pronounce "geyser" as "geezer".

In "The Beaver Who Would be King", a canyon filled with cobras, known as Hiss Abyss, is featured. Promotional maps seem to imply that it is connected to a canyon called Rattler's Pass, which is home to a flock of blue birds who feed on the juniper berries from the bushes in the canyon.

Directly east of Brain Freeze is a gigantic maze of thorn bushes called the Nasty Gnarl. Below it is a batch of thistles dubbed the Sticklerbush Gulch. Flowing through the Kookamunga, protruding out of the ocean surrounding Brain Freeze, is the River Whoosh, which runs down a waterfall into the Lake Gottalottawatta. Lake Gottalottawatta, being on of the character Catfish Stu's most frequent haunts, is arguably the most featured landmark other than the Wet Wally's Rainforest, in all the series to date.

Most of the goings-on in the stories takes place in a town called Mooseknuckle, which is in the center of the park. The name "Mooseknuckle" might be a parody of the city Moose Jaw, in Saskatchewan.

[edit] Legends and history in the show

The oldest of the legends in the series is that the entire Kookamunga National Park was created by a spirit called "Yawny Yump-a-lot". Yawny Yump-a-lot also apparently made The Great Bamzeani out of three explorers who captured him, after they gave him a wedgie so he would grant them three wishes. This story and Yawny himself were the focus of the episode story "Yawny Come Lately".

In 1712, there was apparently a lemon/lime famine in the Kookamunga. The Lake Gottalottawatta was along the trade route during the citrus trade, hence why The Golden Rhind, one of the first ships to partake in this trade, is found as a wreck at the bottom of the lake in "Voyage to the Bottom of the Lake".

In the 1850's there was an old prospector named "Sourdough" Sulley, who had worked for twenty years in the Mine-all-Mine. However, after a friend of his, named Fuzzy, stole some gold from his claim, he cursed any gold contents of the mine by shouting out "May Nature itself turn against he who steals my gold!!!". In "Miner Misfortunes", Iggy and Jiggers bring this curse to life in order to stop Catfish Stu from destroying the Kookamunga just to get the gold out of the mine.

[edit] Culture

In honour of Yawny Yump-a-lot's creation of the Kookamunga, and of the creation of the Great Bamzeani, the characters celebrate a holiday called "Yawny Yump-a-lot Day". The rituals mainly consist of playing practical jokes on each other (a parody of April Fool's Day).

The town also considers the annual migration of the monarch butterflies to be a big thing. Everyone decorates the buildings with pictures and cutouts of butterflies, and live flowers. As of "The Great Kookamunga Standoff", the characters have begun an annual autumn holiday celebrating the good harvesting of their fruits and vegetables. Upon Iggy and Jiggers' ideas, the festivities include dressing up in costumes and a huge feast made up of the well-grown produce of the Kook. This holiday might be meant to parody Thanksgiving.

The characters have a special game called "Tippy Canoe", which involves a miniature canoe filled with various sweets and candies. The object of the game appears to include keeping the boat from toppling off a narrow perch in the middle of the gameboard, all the while players taking turns stacking more and more items onto it.

[edit] Characters

Main article: List of Iggy Arbuckle characters

The characters in the show are drawn as various species of animals, including many different types of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and even insects. Rather than refer to the male characters as "men" and the females as "women" in the appropriate contexts, the characters refer to each other by their species (Though the words "lady/ladies"^[8] "gentleman/men" "girls"^[9] and "boys"^[10] do exist in their vocabulary). An interesting feature is that the wild animals and the anthropomorphized characters understand each other quite well, and the wild ones seem quite intelligent.

A gag in the series is that whenever one of the characters gets conked in the head, bluebirds start flying around their heads, then come to life and fly away.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Iggy Arbuckle episodes

The series has currently run for one full season, consisting of twenty-six episodes. The episodes were produced in January 2007, and aired in Canada in June 2007.^[11]

[edit] Reception

Iggy Arbuckle has been received well in Europe, with Jetix Europe receiving strong sales on the show.^[12] In the United Kingdom, its biggest timeslot is among young male viewers.^[12]

[edit] Awards/Nominations

As of March 2008, the sub-episode "Petition Impossible", of the episode "Yawny Come Lately/Petition Impossible" was among the finalists of the children's programs nomintated for the 2008 Canadian Screenwriting Awards.^[13][14] On April 14th, the day the award winners were declared, the episode won the Children/Preschool category award.^[15][16]

[edit] Merchandise

On November 1, 2007, an online game based on the series, The Great Kookamunga Challenge, was launched. Hosted on the Teletoon web site and created by Zinc Roe Design, the game was an online race in which players explored the Kookamunga National Park in search of 115 "checkpoints." At each checkpoint, they could earn points by playing games, answering trivia questions about the series, or completing group activities. The first players who completed the entire challenge won real-world prizes, including a digital camera and items from National Geographic Kids. The game ran for six weeks.^[17][18]

The first season of Iggy Arbuckle was released on DVD in 2007.^[19]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Iggy Arbuckle at the Internet Movie Database
• Official Oasis International site for Iggy Arbuckle animated series
• Official Teletoon website for Iggy Arbuckle animated series
• Official Jetix website for Iggy Arbuckle animated series
• kids.nationalgeographic.com