The Mr. Men Show coming to Cartoon Network
I’m a sucker for a good book coming to life. Do you remember the Mr. Men and Little Miss books by Roger Hargreaves? They were really in their prime popularity here in the U.S. when I was in middle school or so. Each little square book only cost a dollar, and although my friends and I were probably a little old for them, we all collected them much the way that we persisted in accumulating Hello Kitty items (because they were cool, you know). The drawings were fun and the stories hilarious.
If you don’t know the series, each eponymous Mr. or Miss has a life tale based on their particular characteristic. Mr. Bump, for example, is always running into things. Obviously. Little Miss Bossy is, um, my daughter. Er. I mean, well, she’s bossy. You get the idea.
What made fun little books sounds like a natural property for a cartoon series, and now Chorion Ltd. has announced that Cartoon Network will be the U.S. home of The Mr. Men Show in 2008:
With a blend of side-splitting, fast-paced physical humor and verbal wit, The Mr. Men Show is the first animated program to bring sketch comedy to young children.
Twenty-five Mr. Men and Little Miss characters will be featured in the new series. To complement the new animation style, some of the characters are being refreshed and some completely re-worked — but all will remain true to the essence of the original Mr. Men and Little Miss creations.
Brought to life by talented writer-producers Kate Boutilier and Eryk Casemiro, the series is being animated in Los Angeles by Renegade Animation. Boutilier and Casemiro have achieved worldwide success with animated properties such as “Rugrats”, “The Wild Thornberrys” and “Rugrats in Paris”. Renegade has delivered three seasons of “Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi” to Cartoon Network US.
“Fast-paced physical humor?” So, they’ll be slipping on banana peels at high speeds?
I was actually so excited about this news, I went poking around online and discovered that the Mr. Men and Little Miss crew already has a interactive website where you can reacquaint yourself with all your favorite characters (oh! Mr. Daydream! He was my favorite!). There’s also all sorts of fun for the kids on there, from printables to games they can play. (You do need to register for full site access, but registration is free.) At the very least, you can amuse yourself there for a while until the debut of the show next year.
[Edited to add: Great minds think alike! The same day I posted this, Animation Insider wrote a piece about it as well.]
February 12th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I’m angry. I had ALL the old books when I was a kid and now that they are putting them on tv for my children, they have changed some of their names, changed the way they look, and have characters that were never part of Mr. Men when they were brought out to us as children. I wish for once, someone would show these things in the way they were first designed. It’s like trying to watch “anime” Transformers…which also looks really retarded now. Stop trying to better Mr. Men and leave them the way they were designed!
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I’m thrilled that they have put the Mr. Men on tv for my kids to see. I loved them as a kid and now I can pass that love on to my kids. SOME of the characters have changed but most are the SAME. They might have been altered but they are the same. I wish people would quite complaining about small things, it was 25 years ago, get over it, grow up and move on.