Histeria!

Histeria! is a 1998 American animated series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Warner Bros. Animation. Unlike other animated series produced by Warner Bros. in the 1990s, Histeria! stood out as the most explicit edutainment program in order to meet FCC requirements for educational/informational content for children.^[1][2]

Histeria! was featured on the Kids' WB from 1998 to 2000. Kids WB continued to air reruns until August 30, 2001. It was to be WB's most ambitious project since Animaniacs. Like the aforementioned, there were 65 episodes that were originally going to be made, but due to being $10 million over budget, only 52 episodes were completed before production of the series was being canceled in November 1998. More recently, the show was featured on In2TV, first from March to July 2006, and then returning in October of that year. In January 2009, all of the episodes were taken off the site. No DVD set has yet been announced.

Histeria! may have been influenced by 1978 French TV series Il était une fois l'homme (Once Upon a Time... Man). The French series featured the familiar series cast reappears as the contemporary figures of every historical time. Another possible influence is the 1988 miniseries This is America, Charlie Brown, which featured the cast of Peanuts interspersed within various events in American history.

Histeria! has since became a cult favorite, gaining a modest fandom; fan-creations can be found on the Internet and at fansites.

Summary

Like other animated series produced at the time by the Warner Bros. animation, Histeria! derived most of humor from its slapstick comedy and satire, with the distinction of combining historical figures and events. Episodes would commonly feature a large cast of children and typecast adults in comedic skits and song parodies, e.g. the cause of the of the American Civil War sung to the tune of the Brady bunch theme.

Characters

The hosts

• Father Time (Frank Welker) is the 'host' of Histeria, allowing the cast to 'travel' through time. He is dark skinned, has a long beard and is shown to get quite irritated by the Kid Chorus when they fail to get their facts right. This tends to irritate Loud Kiddington who often screams 'SHEESH,WHAT A GROUCH!' after he is out of sight.
• Big Fat Baby (Luke Ruegger) is the egg-shaped sidekick to Father Time, frequently accompanying him as he introduces the sketches. He is known for the foul odor he carries, caused by his constant defecation in his diaper, which is constantly stated to have been unchanged since ancient times.
• Miss Information (Laraine Newman) is an aptly named ditzy tour guide who leads a group of tourists through various moments in history, as if the world is her own personal museum. As her name suggests, she is constantly getting her facts wrong and sometimes coming up with some demented logic to justify her statement (for example, she believes the Washington Monument is not named after George Washington because it is not called the George Monument).
• The World's Oldest Woman, voiced by Tress MacNeille, is a very old woman who claims to remember when air was invented. She also claims to have dated every historical male in history. She seems to have a particular romantic interest in Bill Straitman.

The Kid Chorus

• Loud Kiddington is a young boy so named for the extremely loud volume in which he talks. He often performs "dramatic reenactments" of loud moments in history, such as the Big Bang and the creation of dynamite; with each of this, the viewer is told to turn up the TV volume "for maximum effect." Sometimes, he also keeps watch of something by almost silently muttering "I see it, I see it..." when it is in sight and then switching to screaming "DON'T SEE IT! DON'T SEE IT!" when he loses sight of it. He is voiced by Tom Ruegger's son, Cody Ruegger, and the character's personality is based on Cody because he "has the tendency to be the loudest kid on Earth".^[3]
• Charity Bazaar (Laraine Newman) is the female lead of the Histeria! Kid Chorus, and her main personality trait is that she is usually depicted as being very depressed, as shown by her catch phrase, "I'm not happy." She is willing to take a stand for animal rights, can be easily tempted with promises of being given cookies, and hates doing math homework.
• Froggo (Nathan Ruegger) is a short blonde-haired boy in the Kid Chorus with a low, frog-like voice, hence his name. He often asks historical figures for two seemingly useless items that he can actually make an invention out of, though he does not always receive the requested items. He is also shown to have a large appetite, but dislikes turnips, and in "Americana", it is shown that he is a big fan of Batman.
• Aka Pella (Cree Summer) is an African American member of the Kid Chorus who uses sassy lingo, often delivering comedically timed insults to whoever she is currently hanging out with. Unlike most of the other girls in the Kid Chorus, she is a tomboy and tends to be able to be a voice of reason to the group.
• Pepper Mills (Tress MacNeille) is a hyperactive teenager driven to adoration for any and all celebrities. She constantly gets historical figures to give her autographs, and is then shocked to learn they are not the pop cultural celebrities she has mistaken them for. She also occasionally hosts an interview show titled Pepper's Pep Rally. She seems to be incredibly fast and will pop up and scream until the person she is pestering agrees to give an autograph.
• Toast (Tress MacNeille) is a clueless teenager whose name comes from the idea that his brain is fried like toast. His name is also due to the fact that his skin is perpetually sunburnt. He hosts a talk show titled Ask Me If I Care, in which he invites historical celebrities to tell him what they are famous for, only for him to eventually eject them into the sky (sometimes even into space), because he never does care about what they are telling him. He also once mentions having a rock band, which he names Nasty Head Wound, and also mentions that he has an uncle named Melba.
• Cho-Cho (Tress MacNeille) is a little Chinese girl who is more devious than she looks. Always accompanied by Lucky Bob, she likes to follow people around, refusing to leave them alone until they buy what she is selling. Her dialogue is almost always accompanied by "Chopsticks" as the background music.
• Lucky Bob (Jeff Bennett) is a boy with a very noticeable overbite. He tends to speak with a dim-witted drawl. He usually only speaks when agreeing with something another character has said (regardless of whatever they said), using Ed McMahon catchphrases such as "You are correct, sir," "Yes now," and "Hi-yo!"
• Pule Houser (Frank Welker) is an overweight kid in the show's cast who tends to take abuse and is prone to pitching fits.
• Susanna Susquahanna (Tress MacNeille, later by Lauren Tom) is a little Native American girl with beady eyes and a large gap in her front teeth that gave her a gigantic, Sylvester-like lisp.
• Kip Ling, Chipper the Crooked Mouth Boy, and the Bow-Haired Girl are three additional Kid Chorus members who usually only show up in the songs or in crowd shots. They do not seem to have any distinguishing characteristics like the rest of the group.

Others

• Bill Straitman (Tom Kenny) is the straight man to the rest of the characters.
• Mr. Smartypants (Rob Paulsen) is a shy genius who wears exceedingly large pants and spouts various tidbits of knowledge. In a piece of irony, he harbors romantic feelings for Miss Information.
• Chit Chatterson (Billy West) is an eccentric commercial salesman.
• Fetch (Frank Welker) is Loud's aptly named dog, who loves chasing tennis balls and frequently asks the historical figures if they want to play catch with him. He appears to be of the same breed of dog as Hunter from Road Rovers.
• Lydia Karaoke (Nora Dunn) is an employee for The WB who has been assigned as network censor for the show, and given the show's nature, this can be quite a hassle for her. Often, she interrupts the sketches to complain that what is about to be or has just been shown is inappropriate for children's television.
• Sammy Melman (Rob Paulsen) is a spoof of the smarmy and desperate television executives.
• Molly Pitcher constantly offers refreshments in the form of water.

Most of the real-life historical figures in Histeria were portrayed as caricatures of real-life celebrities from the modern era. The intent was to make analogies to contemporary individuals in terms of personalities and attitudes. These include appearances of Napoleon voiced by Jeff Bennett, Attila the Hun, Benjamin Franklin voiced by Billy West. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, both voiced by Maurice LaMarche. Nostradamus, voiced by Paul Rugg, later by Tom Kenny often predicts the future for the cast and predicts the next segment.

Episodes

Season 1 (1998-1999)

Season 2 (1999-2000)

Cameos and cultural references

An integral part of the program was its use of popular culture to demonstrate historical events. Among the numerous pop culture references the show used during its run:

• The Looney Tunes characters made occasional cameos
• In "The Wild West", Father Time is shown watching Animaniacs on TV. Also, in "Really Oldies But Goodies", the kids sing to the Animaniacs theme tune when introducing Alexander the Great, and the Pinky and the Brain theme music can be heard during an offscreen mummification, specifically at the point mentioning the removal of the brain.
• An episode spoofs the Justice League with Franklin D. Roosevelt as Batman and Truman—played by Loud Kiddington—as Robin. Eleanor Roosevelt appeared as Wonder Woman, Winston Churchill as Superman, and Joseph Stalin appears as Blanka.
• Superman makes cameo appearances in "The Inventors Hall of Fame - Part 1" and "When Time Collides!"
• The Siege of Yorktown is covered like the Super Bowl, including commentary by John Madden.
• Washington's crossing of the Delaware River is told as a poem to the tune of The Night Before Christmas.
• In the episode "The Russian Revolution", Pepper Mills confused Lenin with famous singer and Beatle John Lennon, and made a joke about Beatle Ringo Starr. Additionally, Karl Marx is portrayed as a lampoon of Groucho Marx.
• A song about William Howard Taft is sung to the tune of the Theme from Shaft.
• A musical number about Theodore Roosevelt and his anti-trust campaign was sung to the theme of Ghostbusters. Roosevelt was depicted as a 'Trust-Buster'—complete with tan flight suit and proton pack—busting various analogies for trusts, including giant piggy banks and J. P. Morgan.
• The show's theme music is the march, Manhattan Beach, by John Philip Sousa.
• Occasionally, the show's theme song is replaced by a parody of the theme song to another television show. Among those are the intros to Saturday Night Live, The Addams Family, The Simpsons and Mister Ed.
• Loud Kiddington once spoofed Green Eggs and Ham with George H. W. Bush who famously announced he did not like broccoli. In this sketch, Loud chases Bush with a plate a broccoli while trying to convince him to eat it.
• In "The Renaissance" episode, Leonardo da Vinci spoofs the 1960s Batman series under the alias "Renaissance Man".
• At the end of a sketch debating their existence, King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, and Sir Galahad opt to retreat, shouting out "Run away!" like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A sketch based on the Boston Tea Party borrows wholesale from the Cheese Shop sketch from an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• In "The Russian Revolution", Charlie Chaplin makes a brief cameo appearance in the black and white film example as his signature character The Tramp. However, he is holding a bumbershoot instead of a cane.
• In a bit about Lewis and Clark, Clark Kent makes an appearance as Clark (but sounds like Dean Martin), and the character of Lewis is modeled after comedian Jerry Lewis. In the same episode, the film Deliverance is also parodied.
• In "The American Revolution of Abe Lincoln," Abraham Lincoln spoofs the show Seinfeld called Abe-Feld with Allan Pinkerton as Cosmo Kramer, George B. McClellan as George Costanza, and Jefferson Davis as Newman.
• In "Hooray for Presidents", the song about Bill Clinton and how he became president was to the theme of The Beverly Hillbillies. In the same episode, there was a sketch about the Lincoln Bedroom that had several celebrity cameos from Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Bill Cosby, Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, Christopher Walken, Clint Eastwood, Ted Turner, and Bill Clinton.
• The episode "General Sherman's Campsite" is a parody of Pee-wee's Playhouse.
• Larry King Live was spoofed as Barry Ding Live, complete with appearances by Kato Kaelin.
• Julius Caesar is depicted as Frank Sinatra, accompanied by Dean Martin as Mark Antony and Sammy Davis, Jr. as Gaius Cassius Longinus.
• Christopher Walken reappears in another episode, where physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla is depicted as Johnny Smith, Walken's character from The Dead Zone.
• One of the Civil War episodes pitted Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and General Sherman against Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson on a gameshow parody of Family Feud to find out the reason behind the civil war.

See also

• Tiny Toon Adventures
• Animaniacs
• Freakazoid!
• Toonsylvania
• Once Upon a Time... Man

References

External links

• Histeria! at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Histeria! at the Internet Movie Database
• Histeria! at TV.com
• Encyclopedia Histeria!
• Histeria! at Animated Lust
• Histeria! Episodes which were directed by Mike Milo