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The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin: Tweeg The Vegetable
Reviewed: 06/18/2019
Would Rather Sit At Home Watching The Tele Than Daddy Pig.
Well; it's time to finally bring the beginning of the end of the Teddy Ruxpin: Storybook series and dive into the real meat of this show. So, now the gang is in the Land of Ying trying to repair their ship as the sorcercer of Ying is bent on capturing the babyfaces for their zoo. Meanwhile, LB is selling donuts door to door, leading to more quackery as Quellor don't care about Tweeg and Tweeg couldn't care at all if he wanted to anyway. Oh; and WeeGee wants more money and has an evil little rich brother to boot! YAY! Lots of plot threading! What could go wrong here?! How does this episode fare? So; let's rant on shall we...?
Episode opens with a shot of the raven bird guard on a perch looking on as I just realized that this anthro is completely out of place in this cartoon. So, he basically repeats the same promo as last time; but instead of staying to do sinister looks, the guard simply flies away stage right. Pan over to the Airship and the Octopede Ship as the Octopede Sailors are hammering on the ship and doing absolutely nothing to actually repair it since there is a giant gaping hole in the side of the hull. Grubby, Gimmick, Teddy and Zelza are on deck as they are exchanging notes on the situation. Teddy asks if they can help Captain Zelza in any way, and Captain Zelza decides to go down via the trapdoor to access the damage and then report back. Teddy and company comment on how creepy this place is and then Zelza pops from the trapdoor reporting that there is a huge hole in the hull and the billge pump is broken. Worse, the good news is that this is the only bad news. Zelza is so mistaken on that one as you'll see later on. Otherwise, not funny since she laughed off the good news. Grubby is confused as Gimmick wants to inspect the pump and Zelza claims that she was reading Gimmick's mind. Isn't that invasion of privacy?! Zelza then orders Grubby and Teddy to find some wood and Grubby's already paranoid of monsters being present, but Teddy don't care and wants to help; while doing the most awkward body language possible, that it makes Sunwoo Animation holds their heads in shame. Oh; and speaking of the out of place bird, he has flown to a giant evil theme park/zoo and swoops down towards a tower like castle and in the background we hear what appears to be the Wizard of WeeGee counting money. Now, again, if I was booking this: I would have called him Wizard Ying (and have a page called Mage Yang) so people would at first assume that the Wizard of WeeGee is behind this and tease a monster heel turn. Instead, they call him sorcercer and completely spoil their own surprise. So basically, the sorcercer has a similar face to WeeGee, but wears all red robes and a skull cap with white stars. Don't worry; you are about to really hate him very soon.
The bird anthro goes through the window and knocks all the coins away from the table. Considering that this is the land of Ying and the sorcercer is the ultimate monster of this group, I'll call him Ying from now on. I'm pretty sure it's his name anyway. Ying is mad about this interuption because he's counting money. The bird anthro responds by asking him if he's too busy to make more money and Ying is now interested as the bird (who is standing on the table) describes the victims he wants Ying to capture and Ying loves this and orders the bird to summon the henchmonsters. Bird sells it so much that he screams and gives Ying a headache. Ying asks why must he scream and the bird counters that it was under Ying's orders and Ying doesn't care about that. The bird retorts: Me neither. They are trying to be Tweeg and LB here and it doesn't work because there is no charm to these guys and Ying isn't a failure at life, unlike Tweeg. So, the henchmonsters (how fitting that the evil doods are all men with no gender pronouns being used) which are all yellow orcs with brown beards in army gear. They are known as the Fred Cubed in that they are all named Fred, and the bird anthro thinks this is unoriginal. Confusing is a much better term. I'm guessing this is a swipe at Ducktales with the nephews, but the nephews are easier to tell apart. The troll nephews in this series could be told apart because they looks even more unique than the nephews (although I confuse their names a lot in this show), so this doesn't work either. So Ying orders them to take the More Mobile and capture the babyfaces as I discover that the bird anthro is Ying's pet. And Ying treats his pet with more respect than Bubsy does with Arnold, and Bubsy is the #1 babyface of his show while Ying is probably the #3 monster heel of the show. And 1990's kids wonder why people of today mock and shun them?! And this is a 1980's show! How awful do you have to be to be worse than the 1980's?! HOW?! Scene change to MAVO Headquarters as we head to the front entrance and in comes Punch Drunk Tweeg bonking into the door and then falls on his back, dizzy. This is becoming sad now.
So, Iggly is inside and he comes to the door acting like his usual mean self. He opens the door and finds Tweeg on the ground as he gets up in instinct. So, let's see if they explain how Tweeg got down from the Hard To Find City?! I betcha that they will not. Jump cut to the throne room with Quellor sitting on said throne. Iggly informs him that Tweeg is here and Quellor doesn't see him as a threat anymore, so he orders Iggly to sell him to the Ying Zoo. Now, if he had said that the second Tweeg zapped his brain into oatmeal (as Quellor said here), this would make sense at least. Nope, now Quellor wants to sell him. And I realize that they did this later, but we already know how the Hermit escaped from MAVO in Father Day, so do the same thing here and tease the build for the reunion and flashback for Burl Ruxpin early. It's not like this organization has any heat left at this point. Then when Tweeg escapes -- somehow -- he arrives at Elinore's house and then you can have him come back to MAVO and they try again. This would also up the cruelty factor. So, this was dumb and we scene change to the skies as Louie in his helicopter bicycle is filming Tweeg swayed on the swaying rope bridge of doom mocking him. What an ableist bigot Louie is?! Tweeg just leaves without falling at all as Louie has seen enough and just flies away to Ying. Iggly arrives at the door and yes, he's gone because you didn't throw him in the dungeon like you should have. What a lousy heel group MAVO is and Iggly is slipping like he's on thin ice at this point.?! Iggly searches for Tweeg outside as we return to Tweeg Tower as LB hops in as we see Buffy and all the male bounders sitting on a pile of donuts as the bounders ask what went on and LB claims that he was in jail. Which was true, but he doesn't mention anything else until one of the Bounders asks where Tweeg is. I should note that Buffy finds being in jail romantic for some reason. Maybe she was in jail at some point. Anyhow; Tweeg brain (LB used some words that were like Pig Latin to me, but he clearly meant brain all the same) is mush and the Bounders don't care because this is Tweeg they are talking about.
I skipped through most of this because it's basically exchanging more notes as LB states this is not good because they won't get paid anymore; but they have donuts made from buttermilk, so they have something to eat at least. Then they get inspired and start singing without music because we need to do a TEDDY RUXPIN SONG OF DOOM to waste time. The guise of this is that they are going to sell the donuts door-to-door; which goes completely against the heel mantra. No wonder LB and Teddy Ruxpin got along so well, LB is merely a sarcastic meanie who is too brutally honest. By the way, there's no way those donuts are safe to eat, as this is the poorest handling of food I have ever seen. Maybe that is the heel part of this whole thing: Poor hygenie and spreading of diseases through donuts. What a heel move? And peer pressure, gotta have lots of that, too. So, they are in the donuts and I cannot see this scheme working with all the donuts having Bounder cells on them. And you thought the feeces on #romainelettuce was bad? So the song ends and this was just an okay time of waste and nothing else. Scene change to somewhere in the land of Ying as Teddy and Grubby are pulling a cart. Grubby comments that they are having no luck finding wood and Teddy nicely scolds him because Zelza is counting on it. What?! Grubby basically told a factual statement. There was no indication that Grubby was even ready to give up. Boy, Teddy is paranoid sometimes as in the foreground, there is a grey skinned troll wearing lavander and purple clothes with a purple patch on his right arm practicing the fine art of not being seen (despite there being nothing to protect him, showing how dumb the babyfaces are), complete with sneak music in the background. The troll guy (with pink hair I might add, so even North American shows do anime hair as well) has a suitcase which he opens to show an inflatable house with a spurce tree as a roof and a barrier as he comes out wearing a blue hat. I don't know why he bothered with the hat, since Teddy and Grubby have never been to Ying and have never seen this guy before, so this sounds like overkill to me.
So yes, Teddy and Grubby arrive at the toll booth of doom and are instantly confused and Toll Troll is tone trolling at them to pay up if they want to pass. Grubby is confused because they don't owe him money, he's no Captain Zelza or anything. The Toll Troll explains that this is a troll booth and finally reveals the place as the land of Ying; Grubby has the Gruffi pose and blows him off for it. Teddy scolds him for that because we should respect other peoples customs. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I wish Kit was here so he could say: "Yeah, so you would respect the Air Pirate's custom of trying to rob people blind?" and watch the conversation die from there. Nuance is not Teddy's strong suit, and absolution can be a person's worst enemy. Still, Teddy wants to move on so he pays the one piece of copper and and the Toll Troll lets him pass. Okay, this is fine so far. I mean, I can see him making an honest living out of this. Grubby sees it as highway robbery. On one piece of copper? Grubby is such a freeloader. Teddy's more concerned with finding wood for the ship as they walk away. Color stylist is out to lunch again as usual on Teddy's feet. So, scene change as Hugo wants to sell the donuts to any sucker willing to buy them. Here's some advice: This is a Canadian show and donuts are tasty. Maybe it's not the donuts that are the problem, it's your snarky attitude towards other. Sometimes kindness does pay off. So, LB tells them to sell the donuts door to door and then go to the Wizard of WeeGee's place to count the money. This sounds like a bad place to do that. Why not at Tweeg Tower; which even MAVO doesn't care about anymore?! Unless Tweeg comes back to Tweeg Tower. Somehow. Scene change to a road as LB is towing the cart with Buffy beside him walking. Buffy and LB exchange pleasure thoughts for a while as nice bit of attention of detail to LB speaking like he's pulling the wagon. Most dubs would ignore this. LB wants to ask her something and he sounds kind of awkward about it, which is a sign that he has eyes for Buffy.
Buffy thinks LB is going to ask her foot in marriage and LB teases and teases and then asks if she could carry the cart because he needs a rest. HAHA! Nothing said awkward like LB asking nicely about doing something. Because they are heels; so asking nicely makes them awkward. That was awesome! And Buffy groans on cue in response. She is not impressed. So, we have Hairy (the Bounder with hair over the eyes) and I'm guessing Hugo pulling the cart into the Jungle Grunges village. I cannot tell most of the Bounders apart anyway. Thankfully, Hairy addresses him by name and apparently; it's Yugo, not Hugo judging by the audio. Apparently; if you are awkward, don't look at their eyes, look at their feet. Geez; someone has a stinky eye for feet for some reason. So, the first hut they go to is a female Grunge who has problems with her foot care; but zero problems with her diet as she is JAQ'ing off like crazy and the Bounders realize that she cannot meet her needs, because they have no idea what is in the donuts outside of buttermilk and walk away. This is not going to work and the Bounders should have known this. The female Grunge keeps going on about her diet and chases the Bounders and yelling at them. Scene change to the Wizard of WeeGee as he is in the fortune telling room, a little surprised by LB's offer: 1000 buttermilk donuts in exchange for information on Tweeg. Does that include a 1000 pieces of copper charge? Because if not; you are not making any money on this venture. Either way, WeeGee accept because he has a sweet tooth. So, the Wizard pushes on the brakes underneath him to summon an alarm in the back to cue Louie to release the footage on the projector and Louie sells it while the Wizard is chanting for Tweeg. You know, I'm certain magic users do not need a count down for fortune telling. I'm just saying WeeGee. Anyhow; the Mirror of Fortune on the wall shows footage of Tweeg near the bridge at MAVO Headquarters.
WeeGee wants the donuts and he gets them off-screen as LB says that he looks weird, which is odd since LB saw Tweeg zap himself and look weird in the previous arc. WeeGee eats a donut and likes it because they are buttermilk flavored; which is his favorite. It would also help your magical cause to not clearly show the end of the film reel during this sequence, Wee Gee. LB is happy with the results and leaves and then Louie shows up and proclaims that LB fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Except, LB wanted info on Tweeg and really didn't care for the money, so how is that swindling? Anyhow; after the Wizard offers him a donut, Louie has some extra footage to show him as he goes to the back. Louie turns on the projector and shows WeeGee footage of the Ying Zoo and Ying taking money from the monsters coming to the Ying Zoo. WeeGee is shocked and horrified to see this because we discover that the sorcercer Ying is WeeGee's little brother, who is evil as well. Louie claims that he's evil and rich. The projector is turned off as WeeGee proclaims that it's time to pack their bags because they are leaving for Ying to show up his evil little bother and rake in the big bucks. Spoiler Alert!: He fails at this venture and it sets up the next arc of him trying to get his money back. That ends the segment almost 12 1/2 minutes in. This is just there; and it's not good in this situation because none of the plots are really advancing or anything.
After the commercial break; we go back to Teddy and Grubby collecting wood while Toll Troll is practicing the fine art of not being seen. At least Teddy and Grubby are somehow finding wood. I would like to say that it's bait for the Moor Mobile to capture the two, but it's not. I wish it was the Toll Troll; just to make the setup even more obvious that he's trolling them. Grubby and Teddy then notice the troll booth again and this time Teddy states that he didn't see it a minute ago, so even he's thinking that this guy might be a swindler. However; the troll guy does outsmart them as he asks for a reciept for that payment a little while ago and Teddy doesn't have it. HAHA! Good point there, Troll Guy. Oh, and all them troll looks alike and the big nose is a part of it in which Grubby calls him a lying troll. Teddy is not impressed by this and getting angry since he was never given a reciept, so it's his word against Troll Guy owning the booth. Troll Guy wins as Teddy has to pay another piece of copper and of course, the troll guy doesn't give reciepts and bails into the troll booth house, but lifts the barrier up. And finally, the Moor Mobile of Death shows up; which looks like a giant medal ark with a meat grinder on the front bumper. Grubby has had enough of this place, and Teddy agrees with him. They bail stage right and it's the SCOOBY DOO CHASE SEQUENCE THE YING EDITION~! Fred is driving the thing as the front cockpit shows one of the Freds and the bird anthro (who is still nameless at this point, and speaks more than Fred did at this point) looking on as Teddy and Grubby hide in the bushes as the Moor Mobile drives away without further incident. The bird anthro is not impressed with this; but decides to go to the beach and capture the others; and then drive back for them later. The Moor Mobile goes out of sight as Teddy and Grubby pop up from the bushes as Grubby wants to get out of here as quickly as they can. Teddy agrees; but we then scene change and it's time for more Toll Booth Trolling~! Grubby asks if Teddy is going to pay the troll again and even Teddy's not falling for it this time. Teddy asks for the lantern and Grubby is confused.
Teddy then brings out the crystal belt and Grubby finally gets this Krackpotkin Plan. Scene change to the booth as he sees the wood cart and comes down demanding his payment; but then panics because Teddy and Grubby cannot be seen. Teddy and Grubby go around the booth (because this troll was dumb enough to pick a path wider than the barrier) and then walk away taunting the troll on the way out. The booth troll runs into his house, we hear the Anything popping sound effect and then jump cut to the troll running away stage claiming that his mother was right about the road owning him. This is exactly how the running gag should've ended, although I would have loved it more if there was better animation during this instead of a jump cut. Scene change back to MAVO Headquarters as LB hops to the door with a donut on his horn and kicks the front door. Iggly comes out and is his usual grouchy self. LB does the hard sell on the donuts, Iggly no sells because he's on a diet. At least he doesn't JAQ off. LB wants to sell some to Quellor and Iggly gives him Regulation 43-B, Subparagraph 13, Part B: Don't bug Quellor~! LB calls him a party pooper as Miss Maggotheart arrives and bonks into LB, causing him to lose his donuts and out falls a golden bracelet from her overstuffed purse. Maggotheart and LB blow off each other in response as we discover that Ying is in fact a MAVO member and the stuff is his payment. And judging by what is in the purse, no wonder MAVO is still afloat at this point! Ying is the only one who hasn't been buried at this point. Maggotheart and Iggly walk in and head to the throne room; but of course Iggly forgets to shut the door and LB just waltzes inside without incident. Everyone in MAVO has totally given up at this point as we head to the throne room with Maggotheart addressing Quellor. In comes LB doing his hard sell on the donuts, although I did giggle when he said that they are the ones grandma used to burn. So, Elinore is a terrible cook as well. Somehow, I'm surprised by that revelation. Quellor demands answers to this outrage as Iggly told LB to scream and LB blows him off because he's making a dishonest living. Yeah, I'll bet!
So, LB hops up the stair and decides to give one of the donuts for free to Quellor. LB flings the golden bracelet into Quellor's hand and Quellor looks at it. He demands to know what this is and LB gets the LIGHTBULB OF BLOODY CLAIRTY and proclaims that he would be boiled in oil. Don't...give...Quellor...any...ideas! Oh wait, that would get his heat back! Please...give...Quellor...this...idea! The guise of this is; LB explains to Quellor that Tweeg was working on the formula to turn buttermilk into gold, and apparently, it worked! The quackery finally "worked"! This is enough for Quellor to order Iggly to send out a search party to find Tweeg and bring him back to MAVO so he can restore his memories and get the formula from him. Boy; he is going to be so disappointed when he finally gives Tweeg his memory back, mark my words! So we head back to the Airship with Gimmick sawing wood with a wood saw. We then hear grinding gears which causes Gimmick to cross-examine his wooden saw in confusion. Then Gimmick looks forward and here comes the Moor Mobile as we discover that the meatgrinder portion help aid in allowing it to swim on top of the water. Okay, good to know. Gimmick is impressed by this and wants the blueprints as the Moor Mobile stops at the bridge of the Airship and the door opens. Out comes Fred Cubed and the bird guard anthro as the bird anthro tells him to cut the chatter and calls Gimmick a skinhead. Wait; so he is accusing Gimmick of being a Nazi? WHAT?! Either the writers are tone deaf, or have contempt for irony, or even both?! Gimmick point to Fred Cubed as the others, and the bird anthro blows him off and asks for the creature with him and Gimmick has no clue what he is talking about and is clearly acting like he never saw them because he was working too hard. Oh come on, Newton! You cannot be THAT dense. It also doesn't help that the bird anthro is demonizing the Octopedes as spieciments; but the bird and Fred Cubed are heels anyway, so it makes sense.
Gimmick is confused; so the bird anthro has had enough of this nonsense and orders them to seize Gimmick and everyone in the area. So, yeah; it was done to kill time as we scene change back to the area as Teddy and Grubby return to beach and everyone and everything is gone, except for the Subwater Boat. Why they didn't seize the Subwater Boat is a mystery to me. Teddy notices the Moor Mobile tracks and wants to see where they went; but instead they go into the Subwater Boat in the next scene because the river is the only hope of finding the trail again. Jump cut to inside the Subwater Boat as Teddy is steering the ship as Grubby is paranoid and wishes he stayed with Zina instead, which Teddy points out would have been a foolish mistake in hindsight. Grubby gets even more worried because there might be a chance they cannot rescue them. Spoiler Alert: They would not rescue them actually. More on that later. Teddy tells him not to worry because they have a belt full of trick, namely the crystal belt. Grubby feels that they are going to need every one of them, as they were apparently teasing here that the fifth crystal would finally be shown and it would have been great; but it never happened until the next arc. The Subwater Boat rides northeast to end the episode at 19:12. This was mostly okay, although the plot threads are too twisted that it's hurting everyone involved in them. It also took way long for the main plot to advance in any meaningful way. ** 3/4 (55%).
THE REVIEW LINE
Well; whomever wrote this episode deserves a thanks for keeping the multiple plot threads as straight as can be despite their being messy in spots. I was hoping for them to explain how Tweeg got out of the Hard To Find City and I accept now that Tweeg fell and didn't die from falling off. Teddy and Gimmick's character sort of get derailed in the process (and people said Grubby's character got derailed in Octopede Sailors), LB's motives were mixed up between making money and finding Tweeg. I still like the quackery part near the end of this episode with the "golden donut" angle. WeeGee's angle is sort of stupid and pointless to me since we don't need more characters and it is basically there to give Ying an excuse to be distracted and since he's a MAVO member, this is the absolute last thing the heel group needs. The best part of this episode was the Troll Booth angle because it's a simple angle to do and this writing crew paid it off as it should have been paid off. It could have been better, but in this episode, I'll take it. Overall; this was barely past average and they tried way too much here. So next up is the setup for the Ying Zoo and the "rescue", which also means we have to watch WeeGee VS. Ying. Absolutely NEGATIVE BUYS~! So...
Thumbs in the middle for this episode and I'll see you all next time.