Tooned In : The Raccoons Compendium (1980 – )

(Five years ago, I wrote a series of random musings on The Raccoons. For the specials segment, I had help from two other fellow fans. Quick and easy content while I’m on vacation…)

(Originally posted some time in 2021)

I’ve just restarted watching my DVDs of recordings of The Raccoons, which I received from a friend who got them from off-CBC rerun recordings. As we’ve talked here and there about the show, I am letting you all in on the fun too!

For the uninitiated, The Raccoons was a Canadian animated series that celebrated its 40th anniversary last year (one of the few things in 2020 that gave me joy). It started with a series of annual-to-semi-annual specials in the early ‘80s, followed by a series that ran from 1985-1992. Canadians and Americans alike got to see the show, with most people in the States probably knowing it from the specials being seen in syndication, and the series being seen up until 1993 on The Disney Channel.

There’s several tropes and wikis that can tell you more about the characters, and I’ll explain more as we go along, but basically, The Raccoons focuses on three roommate, well, Raccoons: Ralph and Melissa, a married couple, and their friend Bert, who is presumably adult but has the hyperactivity and adventurous nature of someone much younger. They live in the Evergreen Forest with their friends, a community of anthropomorphic animals that originally had their adventures framed by bits with the human characters who also lived there then disappeared as the series evolved. Their main antagonist is Cyril Sneer, a billionaire aardvark (no Hal Erickson, NOT a pink wolf who looks like an aardvark) who eventually becomes more like a frenemy of the bunch.

I am picking up within Season Three, and the show has pretty much settled into what it would be for most of its run.

Today’s episode….

PICTURE PERFECT!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlG7-nywo3g

And we start at a quite pleasant place for myself, as this is a Melissa-centric episode and she is my favorite character of the show. Starting out as a mostly-quiet housewife in the specials, the series made her more into an independent wife and career woman, being the photographer for the Evergreen Standard, the newspaper the Raccoons work on. Melissa comes into her own by the start of season two, when her voice actor becomes Susan Roman, who you may know as the DiC/Cloverway voice of Sailor Jupiter. She is also drawn quite feminine and in a down to earth way 😉

Anyway, her job as a photographer is the focus of this episode, as she photographs Snag, the bulldog/aardvark hybrid pet of Cyril Sneer, braving a fire to rescue Cedric (Cyril’s son and also friend of the Raccoons. Earlier on this made him more of a tweener character, when Cyril was more of a direct villain. More on that later). This gets the attention of a major magazine publisher, who wants Melissa to work for them and thus leave the Forest. This is complicated by her not really wanting to leave, yet everyone wanting her to make the career move. Meanwhile, Snag’s rescue gets the attention of a Hollywood director who wants to use him in his next TV project. Cyril of course sees big bucks in doing so, but Snag too is conflicted about leaving.

Highlights/obsessions….

Mr.Barnes, the director, is a lion who is vaguely drawn like Snagglepuss (or Cool Cat if you prefer, and why would you?). He is one of my other obsession-forming voice jobs of the episode. As he comes off as slightly camp and artsy.

Then there’s John Roykirk, the owl editor of the World Times, who speaks in an Edward G. Robinson voice. And I am not surprised that he was Len Carlson of course, because C.O.P.S.

Cyril’s recalling his grandfather being in vaudeville before TV ruined everything.

Hey! Sophia Tutu! (this was a character, a female aardvark who had a bigger role in the specials and earlier series, yet was on the cusp of being phased out. She was Cedric’s girlfriend and served to cement Cedric as being caught between the good vs. evil sides. She also played damsel in distress in the Lost Star special. And oh yeah, she’s a bit of a ditz. Her memorable lines including, “Cedric, this is bigger than chocolate pudding!” and “The king and queen are coming….but we can’t tell you that, it’s a secret!”

As such, this episode recycles a scene with Sophia and Melissa from an earlier episode, Going it Alone!. Odd moment of animation here : Melissa jumping on the suitcase to close it, then in the next frame she is just standing on the ground again talking.

Bert offers Melissa one of his “B” hockey jerseys as a going away present. (the only kind of clothing he ever wears, by the way)

Take a drink whenever Bert mentions peanut butter…”Peanut butter pancakes, or waffles?”

Melissa looking sad in the darkroom = my Drunk Melissa meme origin. As it looked like a BAR until closer inspection.

Melissa won’t follow Roykirk’s orders to take pictures…yet THIS WHOLE EPISODE’S PLOT WAS DRIVEN BY WHEN MELISSA STOPPED TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FIRE IN CEDRIC’S ROOM!

And it looked like Melissa and the other characters were about to roll the log TOWARDS Cyril when Snag and the rest are rescuing him.

“I got fired from my first job! Isn’t that wonderful?” And similarly, Melissa cheerfully telling everyone that they were dicks for not thinking about what she wanted to do.

That’s all for this time. Until next time, remember…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEkSzcGIfW0

Today, I felt like addressing a few things that came to mind when I read the comments for my first BOD review. (thanks Scott, by the way, and everyone who liked the Picture Perfect! review)

First, how I came to be a fan of this show.

I first saw The Raccoons when one of our local stations (Out NBC affiliate, actually) carried Lost Star when it premiered in 1983. In the years to follow, the things I remembered the most from it were: 1) the puppy named Broo and 2) the guy (Cedric) who was friends with the good guys and the bad guys. And 3) the “chocolates” scene when Cyril sabotages Cedric and Sophia’s date.

Somehow the series went under my radar when it was first run and appeared on The Disney Channel. I am not entirely sure how I stumbled about the franchise again. I think I happened to see part of a rerun on TDC, yet what it was didn’t totally register with me yet. If anything I was more interested in the end theme, as we ALL are, I’m sure. It was either that, and/or reading a description of the series in TDC Magazine.

Whatever the reason, it was late 1991 or so when I made an effort to start capturing the show on VHS. The first time I did so happened to be when they reran Lost Star, which was when it all came back to me. I think the first full episode I saw was The Chips Are Down! (the allegory for drug addiction where Bert can’t stop buying potato chips). I’d set the VCR before going to school every day…by then, the show aired 11:30 afternoons on weekdays. It was, I believe, February 1992 or so when I recaptured Lost Star. (it was just after or same week when Undertaker turned face; that Superstars episode preceded the recording on the same tape) Somehow, I taped over my original LS recording from the first time. In fact, I think by that time, the last year or so that The Raccoons would be seen on The Disney Channel, LS was the only special they still reran. And not necessarily when they had to go back to the beginning of the series.

(I THINK they still showed Let’s Dance, the cheater special with music videos set to clips from the three other specials. But I never saw a TDC airing myself.)

And for a while, I believed that Lost Star was the first anything in the franchise. When one of our video stores went out of business, however, I discovered the real first two specials (Christmas Raccoons and Raccoons on Ice) as they were selling off a two-fer VHS of both. (Said store was an RKO Video, so you might say knowledge of the other two specials came….OUT OF NOWHERE)

The rest, as they say, is history.

Trivia snippets :

About 20+ years ago I wrote for an Unofficial Raccoons website headed by Jim Gilsinan. Mostly recapping the specials. An example of which made IMDB: my list of edits made from Lost Star when it was divided into two parts in some markets.

I actually emailed Kevin Gillis a little last year.

I have a signed 8 x 10 of my beloved Susan Roman.

Here’s what my Raccoons timeline is like (for the person who brought up the matter of continuity and the changes seen in the franchise)….

Christmas Raccoons (didn’t happen/did happen) : Principal characters introduced: Bert, Ralph, and Melissa Raccoon; Cyril and Cedric Sneer; Ranger Dan and Julie and Tommy; and Schaeffer the dog. Most of it was a dream, but at the end we see the Raccoons are real. So maybe after this special is over, Schaeffer does befriend them in real life too. Now, did reality play out like the dream did with the Sneers and Raccoons, or…?

Raccoons On Ice (Did happen) : Snag, Cyril’s bear henchmen, and Sophia Tutu debut here. Nothing suggests it was a dream, so this goes by the pattern many season one eps. went through: The humans have their own space, the animals the other. Schaeffer goes between the two worlds and the humans have little to no idea what goes on in the Raccoons’ community. The humans scenes are like bookends to the animals’ adventures.

Raccoons and the Lost Star (Didn’t happen) : Broo and the Pigs first appear in this. It’s all a fantasy starring Schaeffer’s friends as he dreams about them. The humans adopting Broo is just a coincidence. (I wonder what they thought when Broo one day disappeared to live with a bunch of Raccoons? And when Schaeffer takes up residence in the Evergreen Forest too, for that matter)

Let’s Dance! (????) : At first, I thought nothing suggests it’s a dream as strongly as the other examples. But…it’s a little farfetched that Bert went to NASA and commandeered a rocket ship.

And the series picks up at this point. Some episodes in Season One follow On Ice’s format, in one we actually see Tommy and Julie doing things outside of the beginning and end! Then, we never see the humans again. After realizing their forest was being overtaken by talking animals, they probably effin’ killed themselves. (Bert Raccoon is Trash.)

And that’s all for this time! Go to Dunkin’ now, as they seem to be closet Raccoons fans :

(Missing photo I am too tired to download and re-upload would be Dunkin’s “Come run with us” slogan…)

(though of course, I’d think the Raccoons would prefer Timmie’s)

Today we look down the tracks and await Braun Strowman…no wait, I only have four figures tops. (Oh geez, the Thunderdome days when Braun was reimagined as being an anthropomorphic train, complete with sound effects. And when he was released, he wanted a LOT for indy shows.) So instead, it’s….

THE EVERGREEN EXPRESS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLBEoiohYaY

NOTE: if these YouTube grabs seem different from what you remember, it’s because these are from the North American Raccoons DVD box sets, which included choice episodes from seasons 2 and 3. The cold open/previews are gone, replaced with another title screen where Len Carlson reprises his role as Bert Raccoon to give a verbal preview of the episode instead. He also talks over part of the end theme. Which, other than the sets NOT being complete nor leading to a complete series, were part of why I prefer original recordings.

This story starts with Bert and Cedric Sneer, whose metal detecting (Bert: “for pieces of eight! Or pieces of nine!”) leads them to an abandoned railroad, which they treat like a Blog of Doomer would by “[letting it play out] and see where it goes.” But more on that in a bit. Let’s take a moment to talk about…

BERT RACCOON, who is pretty much the signature character of the series. He’s not so much the patriarch of the group (that would be Ralph and Melissa, combined) as the one who tends to be the driving force behind the gang’s adventures due to his, well, adventurous attitude, as well as his hyperactive and sometimes juvenile nature. An old friend of Ralph and Melissa, he’s introduced as being a holiday houseguest of the couple in The Christmas Raccoons, yet somewhere that arrangement became permanent. Presumably all three Raccoons are around the same age range, despite Bert acting a lot younger. And The Great Raccoons Age Debate should be my next feature, after I tackled the canon/not canon specials issue last time. (With Tooned In, I COULD do that after all eventually…)

CEDRIC SNEER, as mentioned before, is the son of Cyril Sneer, the show’s antagonist-turned-antihero. It is mentioned that he has a college education, yet is Bert’s companion with activities suited for those much younger. Cedric starts out as a cowardly sidekick who eventually befriends the show’s heroes and dates Sophia Tutu, despite still cowering over his father and what he’ll do. The series version of Cedric is more levelheaded, coinciding with the fact that series Cyril is less likely to send him to the dungeon if he catches him hanging out with the Raccoons.

So, Bert and Cedric follow the rails and find the Evergreen 504, an abandoned train that turns out to be museum worthy. Meanwhile, Cyril is in debt to Mr. Knox, a deep-voiced crocodile businessman with a southern accent (not full-blown Cajun like Leatherhead from the Ninja Turtles). Because he owes him a million for financing a failed elevator shoes factory. If he doesn’t pay him back, Knox will get Sneer Mansion. Avoiding telling Cedric the bad news, Cyril hears about the discovery of the 504 and becomes interested in the possibility that (French-Canadian) bank robber Snake Eyes LaTour left his fortune on it.

Notes/obsession-forming scenes….

Run With Us doubles as the mid-show montage song this episode, playing as Bert fantasizes about being on the train and capturing LaTour. I am sure most of you know that the song also made a surprise appearance in Hobo With A Shotgun. (which led to my friends and I having an experience with a YouTuber who’d block anyone who disagreed that Kevin Gillis was “raping our childhoods” by allowing the song in an R-rated movie)

Likewise, we hear the Lost Star opening theme in the background as well. No surprise, as that special was the first appearance of most of the background music used for the series.

Another recurring Lost Star cue is heard when the train is discovered, and I call this the “sexy music” as it is basically a siren song that is first used when Sophia Tutu does a dive into a lake.

If Raccoons Abridged ever gets this far, I can see a Thomas joke be inserted about the 504.

P.S. Watch The Raccoons Abridged NOW! (Link deleted because I think they discontinued YouTube, or at least new videos there. Also, did they ever do any more TRA videos at all?)

P.P.S. : the YT videos where they run Thomas episodes when George Carlin narrates, and edit in his R-rated comedy bits are hilarious too. (Again link deleted just in case…look it up)

Melissa laughing at the pigs’ classified ads to make money…

Pig Three had a lot of good lines. I am thinking of his idea of turning the train’s steam dome into a flower pot. P3, by the way, has one of the most memorable voices of any cartoon character.

Cyril: Come on Knox! You wouldn’t throw me out of my own house, would you?

Mr Knox: Heavens, no! I’d wait six hours, then throw you out of my house!

Similarly, the exchange when Lady Baden-Baden says she wishes she had a garden like Cyril’s, and Knox basically says soon, she will.

Lady Baden-Baden is a socialite hen who is married to Mr. Knox. Well, birds are supposed to be evolved from dinosaurs. Oh, and she too is drawn with a healthy amount of curves on the top and bottom. Yes, this does happen time to time with certain Raccoons characters.

After burning the treasure (complete with burning money pun), Cyril can’t pay back Knox but Lady Baden-Baden lets him keep the mansion because friendship or something. So to make up the debt, Cyril and the pigs work on the 504, with Cyril taking tickets and not being as enthusiastic as Cameron Grimes is being a butler. (Ah yes, the Cameron Grimes/LA Knight/Ted DiBiase NXT arc…which kept Grimes over for most of his WWE stay despite them not doing much more with him. Good times.)

I forgot to mention the ads included with these videos!

This Morning with Avril Benoit (er, Richards?) and Michael Enright appear quite a bit. But my favorites so far are the Ezee Wrap ones with Sandra Schmirler, the curling champion. Cause they are on there every other commercial break, so I can’t help but be obsessed with them. I was bummed to learn she passed away long before I started watching these recordings.

Lots of Hockey Night in Canada too, and Muppet Treasure Island!

See you next time! Hope going back to actual reviews goes over a bit better with the readers.

The Raccoons specials!

Get comfy, we’ll be here for a bit.

So another detour in our review series, as I take a look at the specials that started it all. The Christmas Raccoons has been talked about here before, and I’ll mention it a little, but otherwise let me turn my attention to the other two, plus a word or two about the clip show special.

First up…

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ocer1

(huh, seems like the Raccoons specials have become scarce over on YouTube, so onto Dailymotion…)

(Or you can go to Crave or Pluto TV and stream the entire series, specials included)

The Raccoons On Ice was the second of the four Raccoons specials. It’s winter time again in the Evergreen Forest, and Julie, Tommy, and Schaeffer, their pet sheep dog, are enjoying themselves ice skating on Evergreen Lake. Actually, of the animals, Schaeffer was actually the main protagonist of these specials for the most part, with his adventures as he gets into the Raccoons’ antics, and…WAIT! They’re focusing on a character who’s not a raccoon in specials entitled “The Raccoons…”? I’M GOING TO WHATEVER MILITARY BASE OR TECH COLLEGE HAD AN ANCESTOR OF THE INTERNET IN THE EARLY 80S AND I WILL WRITE COMPLAINTS ABOUT HOW THEY RAPED MY CHILDHOOD. HOW DARE KEVIN SMITH, I MEAN, GILLIS PUSH THIS CANINE AGENDA ON ME! (His Masters of the Universe takes weren’t that bad, though. All hail Lord Tri-Klops, servant of the Motherboard!)

Ahem.

Also having a good time are Bert, Melissa, and Ralph, who like to play hockey (in a Canadian cartoon, who knew?) on the frozen lake . . . although Bert isn’t very good at it, despite his bragging. When the children come inside, Schaeffer joins the Raccoons. On the way, he runs into Cedric Sneer, who is practicing his hockey too. He also meets a new friend: the debuting Sophia Tutu, who is ice skating and who for the first and only time in the series is actually wearing a tutu as such.

Meanwhile, there is another individual who has plans for Evergreen Lake. Cyril Sneer, always hungry for cash, plans on building his “Cyril Dome” sports arena on it. And as I asked back then, what happens in the warmer seasons when the ice melts? When he interrupts the Raccoons’ game to announce his intentions, Bert is goaded into accepting a challenge to meet Cyril’s hockey team of Brutish Bears, the template for the bear henchmen we’d see in the later specials and the series. But who are nothing like the 1980 Russian Olympic team, not at all. So it’s Raccoons vs. Bears, winner takes the lake. But don’t let that make you think of the US/Russia Miracle game, please. Elsewhere Cedric meets Sophia after they “bump into” each other, and the Raccoons try and get Cedric to join their team. However, Cyril soon catches wind of his son’s defection, grounding him for a month plus no chocolate pudding for fraternizing with the enemy. But the Raccoons have a plan for the big game nonetheless.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7oj9mt

Then, Two years later, on the heels of the end of the Star Wars trilogy, the one everyone agrees on, came the similarly-space-age The Raccoons And The Lost Star. Which was also the first time I myself ever saw The Raccoons, as I mentioned in the past. Broo, the puppy, and the three Pigs who serve as Cyril’s yes men and later comic relief, debut here. As do the character designs seen in the series as well as most of the show’s background music. People seeing this on TV either got it in one hour, or two parts. If you got the latter, you missed out on a lot ( http://www.gilsinan.com/specials/lschanges )

While we again start with Dan the Forest Ranger (voiced this time by [Redacted by remastered streaming versions! In the new copy, Kevin Gillis does the voice…]) , Tommy, Julie, and Schaeffer in the Evergreen Forest, when the humans are diverted by a car horn that “might be a surprise,” this special takes a different turn. Schaeffer is awoken by a loud sound that leads him to a strange glowing plane, where he ends up on a flight out of the forest…..and out of the Earth itself.

Now on a completely new planet, with very familiar looking bodies of land…[that form a Cyril Sneer silhouette]…

…Schaeffer finds himself in a hollowed-out mountain fortress of machines, rocketry, and numerous Bear Soldiers. Three Pig Generals meet the plane’s pilot to receive reconnaissance data for their “Imperial Commander;” of course, Cyril Sneer. However, when they find that Schaeffer stowed away on the flight, their plans are temporarily interrupted as they give chase. Schaeffer escapes for the moment, and we then soon learn the purpose of Cyril’s mission. Seems that he had calculated the falling of one perfect star that would power all of his weaponry, yet his generals failed to retrieve it because of some unseen bungling. Since then, Cyril is determined to find the star so he may launch an invasion against Earth. To that end he has captured almost all of the animals populating their planet to see if any of them have the lost star.

In the meantime, Schaeffer has escaped into the jungle and meets up with a familiar face in Sophia Tutu, only this Sophia acts like she just met him. A new friend he does meet is Sophia’s puppy, Broo, who looks very much like Schaeffer, except for a certain “starry thing” hanging across his neck. Schaeffer tells Sophia of his dilemma, and she suggests that her boyfriend and his “influential father” could help. (Little does she know that “influential” Cyril is telling Cedric to dump her as there’ll be no room for her when they conquer Earth) Schaeffer, Sophia, and Broo are suddenly swept up by a net trap set by the Raccoons, the only animals to evade capture. When Schaeffer and Sophia plead their innocence, the animals realize that they all share a common threat from Cyril and become fast friends …although Schaeffer feels as if he knew the Raccoons from somewhere too. They then agree to come up with a plan to free the captured animals and to keep Cyril from taking over the Earth. Well, at least Ralph, Melissa, Schaeffer, and Sophia agree. Bert, on the other hand, would rather perform a daring sneak attack as “Bert Raccoon, Karate Ace” or “Bert Raccoon, Dueling Ace!”

The heroes manage to raid Cyril’s hideout on numerous occasions, but it seems that no matter how many times they try, Cyril quickly recaptures the animals. But the trouble is only starting. When Cedric notices that his girlfriend Sophia is among the intruders, Cyril demands to know more. It is then that he discovers that Broo is the one who has the lost star, and is determined to capture the Raccoons and their friends once and for all, starting with Sophia after his army sabotages her date with Cedric. Schaeffer, Broo, and the Raccoons suffer the same fate soon after, being put under maximum security after Cyril claims the star for his own. However, Broo manages to get away and obtain plans to the war room from Cedric, who presumably wants to make up for Sophia’s capture. All that’s left now is to find the star and set the animals free. Can little Broo do such a monumental task on his own? And if so, will the Raccoons and their friends find their way out of Cyril’s mountain hideout? And how will Schaeffer ever get back to Earth?

Now we come to the cheater episode : The Raccoons: Let’s Dance! Which is basically a series of music videos made up of clips from the three specials, set to the songs heard in them. That’s right, each special had two musical guests, who provided the music and voiced, respectively, Ranger Dan and Melissa Raccoon. Artists included: Rupert Holmes, Leo Sayer, Rita Coolidge, the [now non existent] John Schneider, and Dottie West. Sidenote: because of belonging to a separate record label at the time, Schneider was left out of the versions of the Lost Star music included on the Let’s Dance! album, and his lyrics were redone by a guy named Frank Floyd. (Which may or may not also be why they can’t use his music in streaming, which doesn’t even use the Floyd version of one song and totally replaces another which was not featured on said album. I don’t know, I’ve tried asking on official Raccoons socials and they’ve kept mum. Given how Schneider is nowadays, it’s just possible that they wanted to distance their brand from him…)

As usual, we start with Ranger Dan (here voiced by Kevin Gillis himself!) and his kids, but when it’s time for them to go away, we’re left with Schaeffer and Broo wishing they could be with their friends dancing. Sure enough, Bert comes having commandeered a NASA rocket and takes them to a dance party with the rest of the characters, including the Pigs and bears who are dressed like punk rockers. To create some kind of conflict, there’s a subplot where Cyril Sneer can’t get a good night’s sleep because of all the partying, and he resorts to cutting the power line at one point, only to be thwarted with Bert who had an extension cord in his rocket ship all along. That’s about all there is to Let’s Dance!, really.

Now, it’s time for…HIGHLIGHTS AND MEMES/OBSESSIVE SCENES….

(I’ll include The Christmas Raccoons in this.)

• Speaking of which, three minutes into TCR….you can’t unsee the scary moaning Old Man Winter face hidden amongst the icicles and caverns.
• Nor can you unsee from the climax to Lost Star... a (scarier) hidden Cyril in the explosion.
• Anything involving Cedric Sneer in these specials (voiced by Fred Little, yep, Rich’s brother). This incarnation of the character, as noted before, is completely whinier and wimpier than he’d be in the series. Specific examples:

“Why not leave a FEW trees, so that people can…remember what they look like?” (Cyril [mocking] : “REMEMBER WHAT THEY LOOOOK LIIIIIKE!”)

“He might even use the dungeon! He’s always wanted to, but no one EVER comes HEEEEEEERE!”

“I’ve already been grounded for a month, AND NO CHOCOLATE PUUUUUUUDDING!”

Cedric sniffling and whining after Sophia takes back his picture of her (see Sophia quotes below)

“When he [Pop] gets mad, AAAAANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!”

His attempt at being melodramatic when Sophia and the Raccoons are captured: “OhSophia. I’m SOOOOOOOOORRY! I didn’t KNOOOOOOOW this would happen!”

“Pop, time to leave for Earth yet?” (followed by Cyril screaming and obvious sounds of Cedric being strangled)

• Likewise, anything involving Sophia Tutu. Specific examples:

The scene in The Raccoons on Ice, where Sophia is obviously trying to SEDUCE Cedric into playing in the hockey game. “Please, Cedric, sweetie?” And before then, “I love a man in uniform!”

“Cedric, this is bigger than chocolate pudding!”

“Cedric Sneer, your heart is as cold and hard as a hockey puck!” (melodramatically takes her photo away from his dresser)

“I found it on the ground, sparkling, almost like a star!”

“Which way to the dungeon?”

“I’ll never be able to look at a chocolate again!”

“You’re a beastly, horrible…BEAST!”

“You leave Broo alone, you…bullies!” (Related meme: this line is delivered when a super dramatic, over the top music stinger plays in the background, one never heard before or again in The Raccoons franchise, despite Lost Star music being frequently used on the series)

• Hal Erickson, author of Animated TV Specials, is a whole sub-meme :

Describing Ralph as “The Ralph Nader of Raccoonland”

The mondegreen “The Raccoon Dominion” (which was not only used by Hal Erickson, but also the New York Times review of the original airing back in 1980!)

I did, however, mis-credit the “Sneers = pink wolves” thing to him. This was in another animation encyclopedia.

• Lost Star Melissa (Dottie West) is a meme machine too :

“What are kids?”

“The pleasure is NOT mutual!”

More Dottie than her Melissa performance, but that her song “Lions and Tigers” has a lyric about Bain de Soleil, a SUNBLOCK? Can anybody explain this to me?

And the crowning meme: her Southern accent leads to it sounding like she’s warning Bert that Cyril “could have lixer guns!”

By the way, I think I came up with a simplified guide to comparing Melissas: special Melissa = housewife. Series Melissa = independent career woman.

• • Finding it weird that they had Rich Little, and only used him as the narrator (in a rare example of hearing his actual voice!).

• Christmas Raccoons

Bert is a total stoner/deadbeat.

The Saturday Night Fever Travolta raccoon poster

Any time the fighting dustcloud appears….it’s very prevalent in The Christmas Raccoons.

Also, Melissa’s out-of-character, wild take face when she sees Schaeffer. Possibly the zaniest any of the non-Pig characters ever got in anything. (Except for maybe Ralph’s Bogart impression in The Sky’s the Limit!, where he has huge upper teeth as he says “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”)

The credits tics of The Raccoons. TCR and On Ice both have the “…and many more” when they can’t fit in more names. More famous is the use of “…and” to continue long strings of credits, which carried over into the series.

• Raccoons On Ice

Unlike Lost Star and Let’s Dance, this one got to start with a REALLY CHEAP Embassy Home Video logo, just the name of the company in early 80s chyron not unlike the first few seasons of Wheel of Fortune’s category readout.

“Missed…by a forest mile!” (hot take, Rita Coolidge Melissa is probably the closest we get to the series version, as she is a cross between the Dottie West version of Lost Star and the series 1, Linda Feige Melissa)

Rich snarking “…he misses” at Cedric’s hocket pratfall. And his out of nowhere switch to present tense: “And why shouldn’t Bert be scared? They’re all scared. But they can’t turn back now.” etc.

Cedric not being able to pronounce “hot chocolate” when he’s lovestruck

“Look here, Sofa Girl!” “Sophia, Pop!” “Sofa, couch, davenport, no matter!” (Which one of us originally quasi-mondegreened as Cyril incorrectly addressing her again by the name “Sofa Couch Davenport”, like first name Sofa, middle name Couch, last name Davenport. Like Mister, that dot/period, T.)

“You suppose any of us have fairy godmothers?”

How someone on one of the old Yahoo groups dedicated to the show compared “you just got a little carried away” to later episodes of the series where Bert was chewed out by Ralph and Melissa for much less (I think Promises, Promises was mentioned, and Bert being “the goat” in that episode – cue Snoopy going BAAAAAAAAA and visibly startling Linus)

And another, perhaps the quintessential, Bertism in this special: “But we’re the good guys! So that means we’re SUPPOSED to win!” So is Bert self-aware? It makes me think, though…TROI = total wrestling booking. Stakes and stipulations? Check. “Suspended” player returns under a mask? Check. Amped up family drama/dissension? Check.

The bears all beating their shoes on the table like Nikita Khrushchev (because, you know, they’re supposed to be the Soviets in this miracle on ice).

“You dumb jocks! You couldn’t even frighten Goldilocks!”

Ferlin Fielddigger, Danny Gallivan voicing him, and several other Hockey Night in Canada references no American will get (Dick Ermine is another one)

“I could get used to this” …Bert trading shirts with Cedric. STRIPPING IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, no less.

Disappearing/reappearing Canadian accents in The Raccoons in general. The various voice overs go back and forth between calling them “Ruh-coons” and “RA-ccoons” for instance.

Another obsession: the music stinger that plays when Cedric is the masked player and keeps scoring against the Bears.

“My son?! My EX-SON Cedric Sneer?!” (Which is recycled in the first episode of the series, along with…THE DUNGEON.)

The time countdown in the corner, because it uses the generic “eggcrate” game show score display. (think: the original Fast Money countdown in Family Feud, for instance)

Actually, although the “proper” Raccoons BGM debuts next special, you can hear prototype versions here and there. The Cedric’s bedroom scene uses what sounds like the “rescuing Sophia” music from Lost Star. The “wah-wah” music when Bert is embarrassed starts to appear as well. And Lost Star itself (the Raccoons opening theme) dawns in the climactic scene when the Raccoons win the game. The song “You Can Do It” is repurposed from “Yes You Can,” another Kevin Gillis show. Also of note is On Ice’s liberal use of saxophone, to a degree not heard before or after.

On Ice could easily fit in Season One in particular. Unlike the other specials, we know it’s not all a dream and the humans just happen to be there as bookends without any relevance to the story. Also, Cedric acts more like his series counterpart, aside from the obvious bits.

• Raccoons and Lost Star

The evolution of the specials is kind of nuts when you stop and think about it. TCR – an environmental Christmas special. TROI – an environmental Hockey Day special. TLS – A COUNTER-EARTH PARAMILITARY IS GOING TO INVADE THE EARTH (WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS!) And by the way….NOT ALL OF THE RACCOONS WAS AN ENVIRONMENTAL SERIES. Barring these specials and a handful of episodes.

LS = textbook “The Movie” plot. Think the Hey Arnold movie (either of them, but in this case I’m thinking of the first), or the Phineas and Ferb movies (especially, again, the first, where we actually have a parallel dimension where the goofy ineffectual villain’s counterpart is a similarly raging mad fascist dictator who conquered his world and now wants to conquer OURS), or the Jetsons movie, and of course Transformers and G.I. Joe.

The space biplane-cum-rocketship this time brings to mind Atkinson Film-Arts doing the B-17 zombie segment in Heavy Metal. AND it has the same colors as Bert’s jersey (FORESHADOWING!)

What does Fred Little’s Pig voice sound like? It’s hard to tell, as the pigs usually speak in unison, and the Nick Nichols Pig is the only one who usually speaks on his own (with a higher pitch than the one he’d use in the series, save for the cold open where he has a raspier version of his series voice). The Pig groupspeak is obsession-forming as well. (“The data [pronounced “dotta”], the data! OINK!”)

The tunnel animation. Think it is used in the Run With Us music video?

The faux-Russian writing on the missiles. (Faux-CYRILlic, if you will? No, I don’t think that was intentional as to why they had Russian writing, but now watch something like the Raccoons Wiki say it as if it were. :))

“DEACTIVATE THAT DOG!” “Crunch the dog! Crunch the dog!” and “We can CRUNCH the dog LATERRRRR!” Wait…odd pronunciations? Over the top threats? THE PIGS AND CYRIL LIVE IN MATT HARDY’S BROKEN UNIVERSE!!!!

And speaking of pronunciations….Ralph has perhaps the most Canadian line in the history of the series: “I’m SORRY aboot the trap, but we’re just aboot the only animals left!”

On a related topic of possibly local jargon, what’s “crab little scrawl”? (Sophia describing Cedric’s handwriting)

“My boyfriend is from the mountain, but he’d never get mixed up in anything—BAAAAAAAAAAAD!”

Sad to say, but Melissa doesn’t really add much to this special. Yes, it breaks my heart to admit this, but dare I say it….SOPHIA is more relevant! Melissa is just there, it seems, to round out the trio and add dialogue to the program. But don’t feel too bad, we need only wait one more special and two seasons of the series before she of course becomes truly awesome.

Schaeffer speaking for the audience: “This is all very confusing!”

Cyril speaking for the audience (about Sophia): “You’re even stupider than I imagined!”

How long were Sophia and Cedric going out for? It couldn’t have been that long, because she obviously NEVER BOTHERED TO ASK WHAT HIS LAST NAME WAS. Hence the shock of finding out who his dad was. And the Sneers kind of have some mental block in Schaeffer’s dreams. As he readily recognizes the Raccoons and Sophia, yet draws blanks when thinking of either Sneer’s name. Which could have helped because he could have been all like, “Cedric…..Cedric! …WAIT A MINUTE! SOPHIA! STOOOOOP!”

“Those meddlesome Ruhcoons! I should have known!” And just calling them the “meddlesome raccoons” in general.

If you got the two-part version, you get another appearance by Kevin Gillis introducing the teaser to the second part at the end.

Here’s something I noticed about people commenting on LS uploads on YT: they think they are watching the edited version as they’re expecting it to be 1) an even one hour or 2) a movie.

Coincidence or not? Return of the Jedi came out in 1983. In Lost Star, also from ‘83, Sophia shouts (looking at the camera), “IT’S A TRAP!”

There’s a scene where Bert is in the background (I want to say this is when they’ve been jailed) and he has a vacant stare/stoner face like whatever uppers he’s usually on have finally begun to wear off.

The usage of zip-pan animation, for a transition scene and to a lesser extent when they show the Raccoons’ line of responses in front of Cyril.

When Cyril begins his machines you can hear the start-up sound to arcade Defender.

“They’ll never get through that tunnel alive!” “Imperial Commander, they’re in the TUNNEL!”

Cyril’s rockets just minorly inconvenience the pigs and company, so how effective could they have really been?

“When you wish upon a star…..” “…please don’t sue us, Disney!”

My notion that the music of LS is a crossroads between the earlier specials’ songs (which were more easy-listening type love songs/something you’d hear on Care Bears) and the series’ songs (more 80s style pop/rock). Calling You(tragically UnPersoned in the remaster…) and Lions and Tigers lean more towards series style. One More Night(see: Calling You) and kind of Shining is more like the earlier specials. Friends too maybe. Fallin’, Fallin’ is somewhere in between.

We’ve talked before about what’s canon and what isn’t, and why certain details in these specials suggest that it WASN’T all a dream. Gillis does similar in the end of his feature, The Nutcracker Prince.

Whew! (premiering September on Buzzr ;-)) (And disappearing when they decide to only play it safe with mini blocks of the most popular shows…) That was a lot of content! So which special did I like the best? While I now recognize that On Ice fit the tone of the series the best I still have to go with Lost Star. It was my first, after all, and is where the show starts to sound and look like what we’d get with the series. Plus it’s lots of trippy fun.