Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

Show:		5.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		5.0
Extras:		5.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Warren Batchelder • Vonnie Batson
Writer(s):	Cynthia Friedlob, John Semper
Starring:	Patricia Parris • Rob Paulsen • Michael Laskin • Barbara Goodson
Genre:	Adventure • Animation • Children & Family
Release Date:	January 12, 2010

List Price:	DVD - $15.49
Amazon:

As the original Fraggle Rock came to a close, somebody somewhere was busy making sure one of the strangest parts of Jim Henson’s legacy lived on. The thought wasn’t a bad one. After all, Muppet Babies had successfully bridged the gap between the Muppets everyone loved and the cartoon medium. The door had been opened. With that standard set, why shouldn’t Fraggle Rock expect the same amount of success? After all, this time they were keeping the same characters without changing them to baby-versions. You can understand why they thought they had a guaranteed success on their hand, until you watch the second episode of Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series, and a singing junkpile becomes the source of Fraggle advice. It’s just really weird.

Compared to the mainstream Muppet lineage of Kermit, Ms. Piggy and Gonzo, Fraggle Rock was always somewhat off. The large egg-nosed puppets lived in a cavern that was also accessible from the hole in a human’s wall. To further complicate things, the society in Fraggle Rock was divided between a group of puppets constantly building, the Doozers, and a larger group, known as the Fraggles. Amongst the Fraggles, a few stand out as the main characters. Red, Boober, Gobo, Wembley and Mokey run about the place getting into assorted adventures and eluding capture by the Gorgs. If all of that sounded like nonsense to you, please recall that this is one of the odder universes created by Jim Henson.

If you can consider this a plus to the whole cartoonified Fraggle concept, the transition to a drawn medium from that of puppets means that the potential for wilder adventures grows monumentally. Another similar shift comes in the form of the series’ message. The original puppet version was very environmentally conscious and, well, to be blunt, would fall in line perfectly with the free love ideals of hippies. The cartoon version clearly has a different agenda. No longer expecting to reach an adult audience, at least not beyond the parents who sat their kids down in front of this show, the morals of each episode never stray any further beyond the typical kiddie fare with gems like “Believe in yourself”, “Everyone is special and unique”, etc.

If you’re wondering why you never heard of the animated series despite having been a fan of the puppet version of Fraggle Rock, don’t worry, no one can doubt your fanhood. Running in a span of four months with only 13 episodes, the show never really got the press or attention everything spawned by the mind of Jim Henson deserves. Despite running with Fraggle Rock’s odd premise, the writing often features a few finely tuned jokes and some clever wordplay. For a child, it has all the creative spark necessary to get them pretending their Gobo as they run through the caves of Fraggle Rock ruining the hard work of the Doozers as they attempt to save Red from some wild misadventure she’s found herself in.

For this reviewer, the format of the show was quite a nostalgic piece. Remember way back when in that time when children’s shows, despite being only 18-20 minutes long would divide each episode between two different stories? Fraggle Rock does that. The result is 26 (13 episodes x 2 parts) fast-paced segments of fun. If your child is hooked on some Asian animation series about collecting monsters or using cards to battle, consider giving them a lesson in the old ways of after school cartoonery. Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series might not be the most obvious candidate for that, but considering the source of their world, your child will ultimately benefit from witnessing Jim Henson’s creativity firsthand.

DVD Bonus Features

Sadly, the extras on the disc might lead you to conclude Lionsgate is convinced the only potential consumers are nostalgic parents. A brief making-of featurette offers a little bit of history behind Fraggle Rock’s conversion from felt to paper and character galleries and storyboard sequences bolster the set’s back-end inaccessibility to a younger generation. Would it have been too hard to make a library of the cartoon’s musical sequences?