kangaroo – The Furry Waves

To the Beach!

Kangaroo Beach, that is!

Welcome back, everyone! Today, we’re taking a look at, well, Kangaroo Beach.

Airing its first 26 episode season this past January in Australia, this preschool show follows four junior lifeguards in training as they assist their adult trainers in various beach rescues on Kangaroo Beach. They are…

Pounce: The enthusiastic kangaroo who is the de-facto leader of the group. Aspires to be like his hero Bondi, who happens to be one of their trainers.

Genma: An athletic ocean-loving platypus.

Neville: An inventor wombat, and probably the least outgoing of the group.

Frizzy: A dramatic koala with dreams of stardom.

And the trainers…

Bondi: Kangaroo Co-Chief lifeguard of the beach. Named after Bondi Beach in Australia.

Sandy: Another kangaroo who shares head lifeguard duties with Bondi.

Big Trev: An elderly koala who’s the chopper pilot and has served for half-a-century.

There’s a few other characters outside of these groups, of course, but these are the main ones.

This is a show that focuses on water safety, and actually consulted extensively with legendary Australian lifeguard Bruce ‘Hoppo’ Hopkins, of Bondi Rescue fame, along with Craig Riddington of Surf Educators Australia.

Alright, jumping with the biggest set today, these are from ‘Stay Calm and Snorkel’, wherein Genma, normally an enthusiastic oceaneer, learns snorkeling, and has a pretty surprising amount of trouble with it. It doesn’t exactly help that Frizzy is being a distracting presence.

Alright, I want you all to take a look at Bondi here…

Look at that chin! It’s like Jay Leno died and came back as a kangaroo. Kinda looks more like a lion than a kangaroo if one just looked at his face. Just not feeling it.

Buff as hell, though.

Here, Genma, who normally is at home in the water, is actually panicked by the snorkel, and Sandy basically decides to take the opportunity to teach everyone how to chill.

Genma later tries the snorkeling thing again, and, well, let’s just say it could’ve gone better…

Following this, they do a little bit of snorkeling together, and happy endings abound.

So, there are two more sets, much shorter ones. This one, from ‘Trash Pets’, is just a pair.

And finally, this is from ‘Neville’s Shark Drone’, and has Gherkinn, a river otter who is a fairly frequent subject of rescues.

Well, that’s all from this show for now, everyone. If there’s another season, I’m sure we’ll be back.

Until next time!

Swim Into the Holidays

Hello, everyone! Long time no see!

Yeah, took a bit more time off than I expected, but I kinda needed it. Hell, I still do. However, I decided that I should make at least one entry before the end of the year, lest y’all forget about this place, so here I am!

I don’t really have a unifying theme today, so we’ll treat this as a Random Day. Let’s go to the first set, shall we?

Just over a year ago, we took a look at Kangoo Juniors, but now, we’re taking a look at the adult versions that proceeded them. Specifically, this set is from ‘Les Kangoo Aux Jeux’, a special 20 episode series in 2000 where they basically complete in the Olympics against the villains from their mainline series.

This set is from ‘Panique sur la village’, and at the start of the episode, there’s a free diving competition. One of the villains, Janus goes first, and reaches the 120 mark. Napo goes next, but there’s suspicious doings….

With the cameramen in the water out of commission, Janus’ henchmen begin their work…

With Napo unable to free himself, he sends out a distress call with a transceiver he had in his pocket, presumably in case something like this happened.

Kevin, after saving the cameraman that got taken out, reaches an unconscious Napo, and tries to revive him, but it doesn’t look good at first…

… of course they’re not gonna let the leader snuff it, especially not like that. They take care of the henchs on the way back, and reach the surface. End scene.

This scene was fairly quick, but pretty action packed. Kevin’s gear wasn’t exactly eye popping, but it looks good for what it is; no glaring flaws from what I can see. The henchmen’s are a bit different though, which I appreciate.

Here’s the episode on YouTube.

Next up, we have Ranger Rick making another appearance. These are from November/December 2020’s issue.

Eh, still not a fan of this style, honestly, though I may have softened towards it just a bit.

OK, next up, we have a set from the animated version of Prezzemolo, and cartoon starring a dragon who travels with his friends to defeat an evil witch. He actually is the mascot of Gardaland, an Italian theme park. He’s had comic books as well.

This sets comes from the episode ‘Il ritorno di Aurora’. His friends Mousely and T-Gey join him here.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a video clip presently online of this.

Finally, ending today, we have a series from Maisy. This is based on the books by Lucy Cousins. These are from the ‘Dolphin’ episode.

Thanks to TheEvstar at DeviantArt for letting me know about this one.

Here’s the video. You know, her vocalizations make it sound like she’s struggling the entire time she’s down there…

Alright, that’s all for this time, everyone.

Please note that there will no longer be regular updates to this blog; I will post when the mood strikes me, basically. Could be a week, or months. If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to receive notifications of new posts.

Thanks for looking, and I’ll see you next time, whenever that is. Oh, and Happy Holidays!

Diving in Bushtown

Welcome back, everyone!

I hope everyone is doing alright in this time of uncertainty. This is going to be a challenging time, but we’ll get through it. Humans are pretty resilient, after all.

That said, do your part. Wash your hands, disinfect commonly touched surfaces, if you’re sick, stay home, etc. We’re all in this together.

OK, onto the subject of today’s post.

Today, we’ll be taking a look at an Australian cartoon, 1997’s Skippy: Adventures in Bushtown. A Yoram Gross, production, this starred an anthro version of the live action Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. In this version, he’s a park ranger, often in conflict with Bushtown’s mayor, Croco. The series lasted 26 episodes. Today, we’re looking at a pair of them.

First up is ‘Underwater Treasure’, wherein Skippy ends up with a submarine made for him by Professor Angus McPouch, a pelican friend of his. However, Croco, when he hears of it, wants to use it to hunt for the lost treasure in the wreck of his pirate ancestor. Skippy convinces him briefly that the treasure is haunted, because the presumed location of the wreck is a birthing area for whales. However, Croco soon overcomes this, and gets ahold of the sub, setting the scene for these pics.

Yep, full face masks for Skippy and crew here. As for who everyone is, from left to right on the first pic, we have the professor mentioned above, then Skippy, and Matilda, his lady, and Bomba.

As for what that thing is that Skippy takes into the drink with him, you’ll see.

Here’s the rest of the series. That thing was a projector that Skippy used to advance his ‘haunted treasure’ trick on Croco and his goons. Never mind that the pirate depicted in said projection was Skippy in pirate garb, NOT a croc, as Croco’s ancestor was. God, the bad guys in this show are complete morons…

The episode is here (in German):

The second episode we’ll take a look at is ‘The End of the World’, wherein Croco is coerced by his battleaxe of a wife, Suka, to secure a massive pearl valued at $100,000.

So he send a pair of his goons to steal it, Bruiser, a boar, and Sirloin, a bull.

Those wetsuits aren’t real flattering, boys.

Time for a little night diving, and there the clam is. Pretty well protected, and even better than it looks, as we’ll soon find out.

Yes, they break the padlock… with snips. Riiiiggghht.

Mind you, they wish they hadn’t.

Here’s the rest… as you can see, they’re kinda lucky to be alive.

Here’s the episode:

Well, there you have it, everyone. That’s all I have from this series. As for what I’ll have in two weeks, who knows? See you then, and stay safe!

A Junior Basketball Team

Welcome back, folks! Today, I’m going to highlight a very recent addition to the collection. Just found this earlier this week, in fact.

Today, we’re going to take a look at 2003’s Kangoo Juniors, the kid version of Kangoo, a 1995 French cartoon starring a kangaroo basketball team that moonlights as crimefighters.

More specially, we’re taking a look at episode 68, ‘Un galion sous les mers’. This is basically your typical ‘treasure-hunt-in-a-sunken-ship’ episode.

First, though, a quick rundown of the five main roos in this series, and by extension, the original Kangoo.

From Left to Right, we have:

Napo: Wears red and with black-tipped ears, and is the leader. Sometimes clashes with authority, and can be somewhat authoritarian, but generally leads well.

Archie: Wears yellow, and is the team’s science guy. Usually, he’s the one who ends up resolving most issues the team faces. Apparently has a knack for drawing as well.

Nelson: Wears white, and is the tech ace. Good singer, and usually is the one to hold the more… impulsive members of the team back when necessary.

Junior: Wears blue, the smallest and youngest of the band, he’s still generally regarded as the most skillful at basketball. Also the team’s ‘butt monkey’.

Kevin: Wears black, the team’s primary fighter and muscle. Dreams of leading the team, he nonetheless is close with Napo. His temper and tendency to violence can be problematic, however.

And away we go.

No prizes for guess what they’re spying here.

I honestly have no idea if Archie touching his mask like that activates some hidden, unseen power in it, or just his way of focusing.

Now, enter the Kangoo’s rivals, a group of humans led by Didi, the one in the mohawk.

Oh, and a shark, because of course it is.

Well, this is a problem now, isn’t it?

I told you Junior was the butt monkey. Go out there and be bait, kid! Don’t worry, though…

That’s right, the rest of them show up and beat the hell out of the shark with sticks. That’s kinda badass, actually.

Nothing like a pathetic attempt at drowning your enemies to reach those goals, eh, chaps?

Now we can’t just let that pass, now can we?

And there we have it! If you want the check out the episodes released so far by TeamKids, you can check those out here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBqc73oQ4bMNaV7mIlsI83qZuLrBbJgJ_

See you all in two weeks!

Random Day 6

Welcome back, folks! It’s time for another random day, so let’s get started.

First of all, let’s step back into Ranger Rick for a second. It was one of the first major multi-day entries I did here, and it’s had a new entry since that time. From the April 2018 issue, we have River Surprise. Just going to show the whole three page story.

I still don’t care for this look, honestly. I get why some folks like it better than that cold looking CGI though.

Also, a title screen for a web game…

Next, we have some covers from YPS Mit Gimmick, a German publication that came with a toy, referred to as a ‘gimmick’ in each issue.

A quick rundown of the characters… the kangaroo with the zipper and the graph pattern that for some reason is always at right angles is Yps, the mouse is Kaspar, the yellow bird is Willy, and the frog is Patsch.

The dog and cat on a few of these are Pif and Hercule, whose French publication YPS was based off of, Pif Gadget. Those two will most definitely have their own post here at some point.

Below are some comics pages.

This next set is from Gazoon, a wordless cartoon which depicts the everyday life of a bunch of African safari animals. This is from the ‘SCUBA Diving Monster’ episode.

OK, to end off the post, how about an anime?

These last two sets are from Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger, a 1995 anime starring 12 animal characters representing the Chinese Zodiac. For more details on the show, visit it’s Wikipedia page.

Thanks goes to JimyNawtron of DeviantArt for pointing these out to me.

The first set is from the 25th episode, where Bakumaru (the leader, and a mouse) and Pochirō (the dog) end up pissing off a sea hag…