Post by mrhoopoe on Jan 20, 2017 17:12:15 GMT
What would be the first thought that comes to your mind when I say, “Who left the juice in the caboose?” This question does not require an answer.
Welcome to my first-ever review, office ladies and laddies! Today I will be reviewing the 1999 direct-to-video cartoon Jumpstart Preschool: Who Left the Juice in the Caboose?. A lot of people recall its associated game, Jumpstart ABCs, quite fondly. What makes the video so much worse, though?
<insert title card here, I am frustrated that I cannot post picture attachments due to them being too big>
Major Problems:
• Concept sounds wrong (just look at the title)
• Merely an unnecessary advertisement
• Horrible 2D animation (3D animation is not too bad)
o Need I mention the animation errors?
• Dull, slow pace
• Useless filler (in a span of 22 minutes, plus 10 of pure advertising)
• Illogically planned progression
• Not engaging in the slightest (save the musical numbers)
The game, on the other hand, was engaging with activities like sledding down Tuna Mountain and finding letters in the pizza parlour. It was also structured in a much better way.
I think that the videos were supposed to promote the games, as these were all part of the major overhaul of Jumpstart’s design in the late 1990’s. They seem more like advertisements, though.
While there are some good things about the cartoon—decent character designs, good intentions, and catchy songs—there is so much wrong here that I cannot begin to comprehend how this could have ever worked. This is unlike any cartoon that I have ever seen—yes, even after watching Dora the Explorer. (That does not sound like much, but it is probably the most relatable cartoon to this.)
Why am I reviewing this? Bad edutainment gets on my nerves, and this cartoon is not available online anyway due to copyright reasons. I am surprised that few people ever discuss this (or the other direct-to-video cartoon, which I will review eventually). I like analysing the more obscure animations (who can point me to footage of the Spaghetti-O cartoon?) that are left alone by other reviewers.
Anyway, it is time to begin.
This cartoon starts with the title card as shown above and cuts to a train travelling down a railroad. A squirrel sitting on a post greets the engineer in the worst possible way:
“HI, FRANKIE!” yells the squirrel without moving his mouth. One recurring aspect worth noting is that they can lip-sync well but try to avoid it in a few instances (especially in the other cartoon).
The environment that we see creates foreshadowing for what we will be seeing later, including an advertisement for the #5 Deli, the ant marching band, the mother bird flying to her nest, and an aeroplane in the sky. We also see Frankie’s #5 doghouse. Considering that Frankie is anthropomorphic, I do not want to know about it.
We then cut to the train, which is going to the Jumpstart Schoolhouse. On the train are Frankie the Engineer, Kisha Koala (a pupil sitting with Frankie because artistic privileges), Pierre the Bear, Casey Cat, Eleanor Elephant, and Cecil Mouse. The latter four are eating muffins and drinking pink lemonade in the caboose of the train. Yes, this cartoon will be exploring a mystery in a train caboose. What else could the title have meant, anyway? Sometime later, a glass of juice spills with Eleanor as the sole witness. We then cut to this sign:
Must I ask what people will think if you installed that sign just anywhere?
Frankie starts singing but stops because nobody was “woo-wooing” along with him. When the children agree to doing it, we get the first of seven songs:
We then cut to Eleanor.
Eleanor: Hi! My name is Eleanor Elephant. What’s your name? (pauses for five seconds, waiting silently, and staring uncomfortably) Well, it’s very nice to meet you. Come on! Let’s go talk to Engineer Frankie!
After Engineer Frankie plays along with Eleanor in believing that someone is watching (the fourth-wall-breaking is worse than Dora the Explorer, and this came one year before it). She then notifies him of the incident, which leads him to reference the sign shown above with these lines.
Engineer Frankie: Someone didn’t follow the rules!
Eleanor: Yeah! Please keep our caboose clean.
Do I need to explain how wrong this sounds? I know that it sounds repetitive, but it can get very distracting very quickly at this age. I say “at this age” because I remember watching this years ago.
Eleanor then confirms that “it’s up to us to figure [it] out…” and adds “Come on! You can help me! Let’s play!” Why is she treating this like a game? I know that this is for children, but it is so outlandishly jarring that I do not see how it could work if everyone sat down to watch together. Parents ought to watch these, too.
Eleanor then asks Frankie for the passenger list and, because there is nothing wrong with giving a four-year-old the only source that keeps track of the train passengers, has it given to her—all in a polite manner.
Inside the 19th century schoolhouse (in 1999—I should really stop questioning the logic of Jumpstart), Eleanor reads off the names of each passenger and uses rhymes with them (“Kisha Koala: Oooh la la la; she’s an artiste.”) Afterwards, she slowly counts that there are five passengers on the list. We then get two filler segments.
The first one takes place at the #5 Deli, a section of the Number 5 Big Store. Here, Cecil the Mouse, the #5 customer, orders five slices of 5-cent cheese—at 5:00. Is this the morning or afternoon? Considering how the other cartoon worked (it is technically a sequel), I will just assume that is it 17:00 and that time is going backwards.
After the Deli Bear cuts the five slices and counts them, this happens:
Deli Bear: Knock, knock.
Cecil: Who’s there?
Deli Bear: Piece of cheese.
Cecil: Piece of cheese…who?!
Deli Bear: Five pieces of cheese. There you go! Have a nice day!
I know that they are trying to emphasise the definition of the number five, but this is just sad. Also, after Cecil leaves, the Deli Bear rings the bell on the counter for the next customer—number 6. Does that customer ever come? The people writing this really should have reconsidered writing this segment because all it does is create confusion about the Jumpstart world. (At this point, I should mention that when Cecil leaves, they loop his walking animation—and it is painfully obvious. Look, I do not have a problem with looping animation outside things like fighting scenes—just so long as the animators know to hide it by connecting the animations together in a swift manner. Here, they…do not do that. Also, this is a major recurring problem that gets distracting throughout the runtime.
The second filler segment begins with a rabbit ringing the school bell and the other pupils sitting around him. Eleanor announces, elsewhere from where she was just sitting, that class was in session. (A less recurring but still distracting problem is that the characters will sometimes look in the wrong direction from where they are supposed to be looking—thankfully this never happens when the other characters are in the shot.) I am calling this a filler segment because it adds nothing to the story (the rabbit has no role here whatsoever) and everyone is back to the same point in the segment before the deli part.
The rabbit introduces himself as Hopsalot (and no, I do not at all think that he inspired the role of Mrs. Rabbit in Peppa Pig despite his numerous occupations, especially since CJ Frog and Edison the Firefly had more of them). After saying that he is a teacher, he encourages the pupils to think of words that start with the letter T.
Eleanor: Tub! Tub begins with T.
Casey: Toes!
Kisha: Tiger! [Go online and search both Kisha Koala and Kisha Tiger.]
Pierre: Hmm…Tyrannosaurus Rex!
Me: Tyrant! And that is what all of you are! Tyrants! [Sorry. This has more to do with the other cartoon.]
Hopsalot then starts reminiscing about a trip, leading to this song:
It sounds good, but Eleanor’s final statement about trunks seemed to ruin it.
Eleanor then begins to approach the mystery. She claims that she was not the culprit and crosses her name off the list. Fine, then…what is her proof? How do we know that she is innocent? How do we know that she is not a hypocritical Marxist taking everyone around her under her power of a rising matriarchal society? We do not…but we cannot stop her, the new Napoleon Bonaparte, anyway.
We then meet Casey in the play kitchen. Remember this.
Eleanor: Hi, Casey! What’cha doin’?
They could be a bit relevant with their dialogue—and they use this line when approaching each suspect. She then accepts Casey’s opportunity to play with him but chooses to find an appropriate outfit in her dress-up trunk. Cue this song:
By the way, there is only one scene outside any song where Eleanor wears her pirate dress and not just the pirate hat. This is the most evident animation error in the cartoon, though it is not as detrimental as the one in the other cartoon. When Casey asks why she is a pirate, she sings the same song again... Why? If I want to hear the Dress-Up song again, then I could just rewind the video and listen to it. If I was writing this, then…well, I would rewrite it completely. If all that I could do was fix this segment, then I would have removed the first time that the song was performed and leave the second time since it works well.
Casey then offers Eleanor a piece of pizza…made in the play kitchen. I…should stop wondering about these logic loopholes. Eleanor gladly accepts, claiming that “
irates love pizza!” When Casey asks for clarification, we get this song:
Eleanor then eats a slice of pizza…in a badly animated manner…and hypnotises non-existent children into agreeing that pizza is good. She then gets thirsty immediately afterwards…should I ask what is in the pizza? When Casey offers her juice, Eleanor then asks if he left the juice in the caboose. Casey declines, and Eleanor slowly asks, “Well, if I didn’t leave the juice in the caboose, and Casey Cat didn’t leave the juice in the caboose, then… (with all others mentioned) who left the juice—woo woo—in the caboose?” This will happen in the exact same way for the rest of the cartoon—and it becomes grating. Also, it is essentially pointless since both the trailer and the song revealed who did not do it.
Let me make the next two encounters concise. Pierre the Bear is watching a bird’s nest…from fifteen feet away…and notices bird eggs and knows exactly what will happen. Eleanor and Casey, no longer wearing their dress-up clothes, join him in singing the Ten Baby Birds Song. No footage was available online, so know that the story of ten birds that hatch from eggs, eat worms, and fly away in the span of one to two minutes. When Eleanor sees Pierre drinking juice, you know what happens.
We then meet Kisha Koala, who is painting but claims to be learning her letters. After stating that A is for “airplane,” we get this song:
Of course, Eleanor just so happens to be looking at “J is for juice,” and you all know what comes next.
They then notice that Cecil the Mouse is not in front of his house as he was before. Suddenly, they see that somebody has entered the caboose and decide to look. When they arrive, they see Cecil with cleaning supplies and ask the big question.
Kisha: Cecil the Mouse…
Casey: Could it be you?
Pierre: Did you spill your juice…
Eleanor: And leave it in the caboose?
Eleanor’s expression gives me the impression that this could have been an anal sex PSA.
Cecil confesses that he did it but quickly adds that he had left to clean the mess (when Eleanor introduced him he was rolling a cylinder in front of his house, and we now know that they were paper towels). He then adds that his middle name is Responsibility (because edutainment reasons), and we get our final musical number, which is actually taken from the cartoon itself:
The Preschool Gang, intrigued, decide to “be responsible, too” and help him. Only the Lord possibly knows what they would do if Cecil did something like take drugs or rob a bank and the Preschool Gang were given the choice to be responsible.
Finally, we meet the Woo-Woo Dancers (live-action): Jen (voice of Eleanor as stated by her except during most songs—remember this for when I review the sequel), Dylan, McKenna, and Madeleine. They slowly talk about the dance to “Who Left the Juice in the Caboose?” and give a similar lecture as to how it works (as in tugging on the train whistle). However, they sing along (though the only thing that the editors left that contained their actual voices and not just the actual song was whenever they said woo-woo) and mimic the animated dance—which I refuse to show you.
After Eleanor bids us farewell, we get an advertisement for its sequel (which I will probably review when I collect my style entirely) and the games Jumpstart ABCs and Jumpstart Phonics. We then end with the credits.
Sorry that this review is messy. I probably would do better in a video but cannot decide how to do it. I probably will redo it or even replace it in an audio or video format when I manage to collect myself. It is indeed worse than it sounds.
Also, I really like the Jumpstart franchise. These videos, though, are downright awful. Despite blending 2D and 3D animation, the animation comes off as choppy and painfully lazy. They also are not engaging, since the characters are doing everything and not the viewer. This is what makes the games better. If anything, it taught the executives to never make cartoons again (despite the success of the music) much to the dismay of people wanting a Jumpstart show.
Please tell me what needs to be improved because I feel that my review was only subpar. Also, can I make a video in Windows Movie Maker and publish it here directly without going to video sharing websites? I refuse to make an account for any of those websites.
