THE SECRET OF THE JUICE
by Christopher E. Barat
Turn the clock back -- to Television Toonland, September, 1985.
The TV-animation industry is beginning to shrug off its mid-80's obsession with Saturday morning series tied to video games (Dungeons and Dragons, Pole Position, Saturday Supercade, Pac-Man) and is shifting its sluggish bulk towards the newest craze of "toy-based" shows, a genre that does not bode well for the immediate future of the TV-animation art form.
The Reagan administration's decision to deregulate the broadcasting industry has inspired some profit-hungry toy companies to develop animated series with the never-openly-expressed but always-suggested motive of selling toys to as many kids as possible. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe fell like a hungry jackal upon the untended pastures of syndicated TV last year, and it's inspired the creation of a slew of made-for-syndication toy-oriented series. Joining series like Mighty Orbots, Challenge of the Go-Bots, and Transformers this fall are GI Joe, Thundercats, and M.A.S.K., all seeking to entice kiddie spending under the guise of entertainment. Such popular transfer characters as Rambo, Hulk Hogan, and The Incredible Hulk hope to swell their coffers further with the debut of SatAM series starring their likenesses.
As for the non-"toy and game"-oriented series on the air, the theme of sociological "cooperation" and single-characteristic casting is weighing things down like a heavy hand. That clone-lover's delight, The Smurfs, has been on the air for 5 years and continues to draw both vilification and viewers. Jim Henson's Muppet Babies has garnered considerable critical praise for its appealing imagination, but anyone over the age of 7 or so is likely to develop dental caries through watching it. The Get Along Gang, Care Bears, Pandamonium, Snorks, and The Littles are nothing but pale copies of the "cooperation"-flogging theme that Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids pioneered and The Smurfs took to its logical extreme. Only The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, starring the timeless Peanuts characters, stands out as a really quality show, and it's suffering from poor ratings.
Clearly, something needs to be done. Someone needs to ride to the rescue and save the TV-animation industry from the profiteering mentality and the toleration of shoddy quality that is threatening to turn it into a laughingstock. And this fall, someone is riding -- beg pardon, bouncing -- to the rescue.
The Gummi Bears, courtesy of the brand-new Walt Disney Television Animation Group.
These "dashing
and daring, courageous and caring, faithful and friendly" multicolored bears,
inhabitants of a peaceful forest warren called Gummi Glen in the kingdom of Dunwyn,
representatives of a once-great "Great Gummi" culture forced into exile by the
jealousy of its human rivals, and regarded as "mythical" by the people of Dunwyn
because they haven't been seen in 500 years, suddenly decide to reenter the world with a
vengeance, thanks to the prodding of a humble young page named Cavin and his gift of a
magical Great Gummi medallion which helps the Gummis to at last unlock their most revered
treasure, the Great Book of Gummi, repository of their ancestors' magic and knowledge. The
Gununis reenter a fanciful medieval world filled with all sorts of heroes and villains:
noble knights, a benevolent monarch, wicked wizards, buccaneering highwayman trolls,
vulture-like Carpies, con-artist elves, and, above all, the evil Duke Igthorn of gloomy
Castle Drekmore, who seeks to conquer Dunwyn with his army of brutish ogres. Against
this bearded, sneering despot, the Gumrnis can pit only the friendship of two humans
(Cavin and the lovely young Princess Calla of Dunwyn), the spells and wisdom gleaned from
their Great Book, and the secret recipe for Gummiberry Juice, the magical brew that makes
Gummis bounce and gives humans and ogres super-strength. When the Gummis decide to
help Cavin thwart Iggy's attack on Dunwyn, Iggy discovers the existence of the Juice, and
swears to obtain the recipe from the Gummis somehow. Soon, the Gummis find themselves
beset on three fronts: secretly helping Dunwyn stave off Iggy's continuous assaults,
keeping the Juice recipe out of Iggy's hands, and simply getting used to the wide, wild
world that they've tried to shut out for so long. And always, they look forward to
the day when humans and Gunm-iis can once more live together in peace and they can be
reunited with their Great Gummi cousins across the sea.
That, in an extremely large nutshell, is what Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears was all about during its six seasons on the air, the first four in NBC's Saturday morning lineup, the fifth paired with The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in ABC's SatAM lineup, and the sixth as part of WDTA's unprecedented two-hour syndicated block, The Disney Afternoon. Gummis was, in a sense, the "Great Gummi ancestor" of all the other Disney Afternoon shows. If it had failed to pull in an audience (as its fellow SatAM '85 Disney bow-in, Wuzzles, did), the high-octane machine of WDTA that has done so much to bring quality back to TV animation (and inspire quality in response in the competition) might never have kicked into top gear, and the "toy-selling" era of animated series might have done much more damage than it did.
On the surface, Gummis seems like a knockoff of The Smurfs, relying on a "gang" of characters who can be distinguished by powerful and complementary characteristics and usually tagging its plots with some sort of "moral" or "lesson" that is learned by one of the characters. Fans of such complex, meaty-charactered Disney TV series as DuckTales, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, and Darkwing Duck usually tend to be dismissive about Gummis, acknowledging the series' pioneer status but waving it off as "time-filling" fodder for the kiddies. But there is much more to Gummis than meets the eye. A mere "time-filler" series could not have weathered so many expected and unexpected changes during its six-year life: deaths and changes in the voice cast, turnovers in writers and directors, and many rivals on SatAM TV. In the end, the only thing that Gummis could not survive was a decision by WDTA itself, which chose to pull the series off SatAM and into syndication in 1990 and hastily pumped out enough new material to reach syndication's "magic number" of 65 half-hour episodes. For this reason, the final season's tales were generally inferior in quality to those that had gone before. Gummis was, in a sense, prematurely choked off by its own success.
What was the Secret of the Juice? How did this seemingly simple series last and thrive for so long, and ultimately serve to inspire the now-thriving Disney TV animation empire?
Let's start with the origin of the series, an event that's bound to become a cornerstone of the growing myth surrounding Disney CEO Michael Eisner, the man who brought life back to the somnolent "Sleeping Beauty" that the Disney company had become by the early 1980's.
On September 24, 1984, his first official day as Master of the Mouseworks, Eisner announced that he wanted a Disney presence on Saturday morning TV as soon as possible. On October 7, a brainstorming session was held at Eisner's Beverly Hills home to talk about ideas for possible series. The concept that ultimately became Wuzzles was thrown out and kicked around, and then, according to Joe Flower in Prince of the Magic Kingdom:
Eisner threw out an idea that had been rattling around in his head for a while. His seven-year-old had pulled him into a neighborhood store to buy some candy--but he did not want just any brand. He wanted "Gununi Bears". Eisner was captivated by his son's fascination with the little, chewy, translucent, colored candy bears. He began playing with ways to make the candies into a show featuring magical animals in medieval garb.1
Shades of a toy manufacturer's noodling over what animated toy-selling vehicle to come up with next -- only Eisner's interest lay not in selling candy but simply in the magic of the name "Gummi Bears". Ultimately, Eisner's only contact with the candy company that makes "Gummi Bears" was to pay for the use of the name (and the Gummis' only connection with the candy was the fact that they were colored differently). Where Disney was concerned, business dealings (even potentially lucrative ones) took a decided back seat to the indulgence of imagination. That spirit would remain throughout most of the life of the Gummis project.
Longtime Disney fans and old-line Disney animators reacted to the news that Disney was invading SatAM with their horror-stricken, characteristic "Walt would never have done that!" lament. After all, hadn't "Uncle Walt" once said that it would be "cheating" to put a half-hour animated series on TV every week? And wouldn't the sparsely-staffed Disney animation division have to assign the animation work to studios in other countries? What about the vaunted Disney quality?
The fledgling WDTA answered its critics by maintaining quality control (character design, storyboards, color keying, and voice- and soundtracks) in the hands of Disney people in Burbank, even as it farmed the animation jobs for Gummis and Wuzzles out to the giant TMS (Tokyo Movie Shinsha) studio in Japan. Though other American studios had long accepted substandard animation from overseas without blushing, Eisner insisted that the quality of the WDTA product would not be compromised: "We can't go on television and look like trash."2 Disney would not hide behind a phony name for Saturday morning, but would instead do the best it possibly could to maintain the integrity of the Disney name in the face of modem business realities.
Both Gummis and Wuzzles went on the air in September of '85 (ironically, opposite each other) with the full backing and efforts of a large number of devoted people from the top down. But Wuzzles lasted just 13 episodes; Gummis lasted for six years. So there must be something more to the Secret of the Juice than mere corporate commitment.
Consider the Gummis of Gummi Glen themselves. Created at a time when the "pack" mentality roamed the airwaves, they bear the unmistakable mark of The Smurfs and similar shows in their strongly unitonal personalities, but they are high above the Smurfs, Care Bears, and Get Along Gangs on the evolutionary scale because of one simple fact: they can legitimately learn from life. As the series wore on and the Gummis became exposed to more and more of the outside world, their psychological complexity increased. Like the huge tree that guards the secret entrance to Gummi Glen, they kept shooting out more and more behavioral and interpersonal "roots", until the tiny society of Gummi Glen became a community of real individuals and not just empty shells wearing "labels".
Zummi Gummi, plum-blue, oldest of the clan and the extremely unoffical patriarch of Gummi Glen, holder of the Great Gummi medallion, resident wielder of the mystical language of Gummi magic ("Tum-um umin-uvis-uma-bum-le numow!"), and keeper of the secrets of the Great Book, seems at first glance to be a fussy, comically ineffective bungler. Prone to spoonerisms ("The ancients wrapped a tizard here! ... Er, trapped a wizard here!") and forgetfulness, somewhat timid and indecisive and deathly afraid of high places, he would hardly seem a match for such Gummi foes as Igthorn and the malevolent female sorceress Lady Bane. But beneath that jellylike exterior is a hardy soul founded on the rock of a commitment to preserve the secrets of Gummi lore and to use them only in the service of right. As he gradually learned more and more about the magical lore of the Great Book, Zununi's devotion to it would come to rival a Puritan's devotion to his Bible, and, in the struggle to keep the Book in Gummi hands, Zummi would prove capable of feats of astonishing courage.
If
Zummi is the titular leader of the Glen Gummis, then the real leader is Gruffi Gummi,
the scowling brown handybear and resident "conservative". This hardheaded,
serious, always- practical carpenter/plumber/jack of all trades continually stresses the
need to do things "the Gummi way" and reveres the Great Gummis much as the
Italians of the Renaissance devoted themselves to the example of the ancient Greeks. He is
always the last Gummi to accept someone else's initiative and any change in the state of
Gummi affairs. Like many folks who loudly proclaim one philosophy, however, he's extremely
vulnerable to blandishments from the other side, especially when they appeal directly to
his "squishy-soft" heart. Again and again during the series, Gruffi proclaimed
his opposition to something, only to backtrack and admit that he was mistaken. His
attitude towards humans (specifically, Cavin and Calla) matured believably, from a
sourpussed suspicion to a strong respect for their courage and (in the case of Calla) even
a bit of genuine love. At the same time, his toughness often proved an invaluable resource
upon which to draw during adventures.
Just as a nuclear reactor needs cadmium rods to prevent a meltdown, Gummi Glen needs a character who can prevent a hardhead like Gruffi from running roughshod over everyone. Enter Grammi Gummi, mother figure par excellence with a core of steel. The earth-toned Grammi serves as homemaker, maternal comforter, and keeper of the secret of Gummiberry Juice, but be warned: this is no June Cleaver in bear makeup. When someone (usually Gruffi) crosses swords with her, she can be as stubborn and tough as old tree roots. Grammi's practicality often helps the Gummis to keep problems in focus and can also help her concoct plans to resolve dilemmas. Grammi probably changed the least of any Glen Gummi over the course of the series, but she is the Gummi that the clan could least afford to do without -- gag as they might over her consistently inedible cooking.
Big,
blue Tummi Gummi is (no surprise) a food fancier. The simple-minded, slow-talking
Tummi never met a cake he didn't like and has been known to smell a meal cooking a mile
away. Another series might have been content to use Tummi as a gag source and nothing
else, and Gummis did revel in predictable stock "food" and
"eating" gags from time to time, but the series also gradually revealed that
Tummi's capable of much more than colossal feats of gastronomy. He also has peculiar
talents for building model boats (and real ones, too, if he so chooses), cooking up
ingenious approaches to solving problems (if given enough time to do so), and cutting
through absurd situations with a few lines of deadpan commentary. He serves as a link
between the older and younger Gummis, and though this role often puts him in a
psychological bind, Tummi's imperturbable nature helps him to keep everything but food in
perspective.
Cubbi Gummi, youngest of the Gummis, is colored pink, which exactly
matches both his bouncy, exuberant youthfulness and his livewire personality. Cubbi dreams
of following in the footsteps of the legendary Great Gummi warriors and becoming a real
Gummi knight someday, and he's always ready to grab any opportunity to engage in wide-open
adventure--Whether it be "treasure" hunting, foiling ogres with his friend
Cavin, going on a quest, or dressing in mask and red cape and fighting crime as the
swashbuckling Crimson Avenger. In his eagerness, he often lands himself (and the other
Gummis) in trouble, but one of the advantages of his youthfulness is a refusal to think
about (or an inability to recognize) long odds against him, which helps him win out in the
end. Though he never quite calmed down as the series progressed, Cubbi did manage to learn
some valuable lessons about responsibility towards others. The Gummis writers
obviously realized that they had an ideal audience-identification figure in Cubbi,
starring him in more "heroic" and leading roles than any other Gummi.
At
first glance, bright yellow Sunni Gummi, Gummi Glen's resident adolescent trembling
on the edge of puberty, is the least interesting of all the Gummis. With her high-pitched,
"cute" voice, swept-up mass of yellow "hair", and perky disposition,
she resembles a Care Bear who entered the wrong show by mistake. During the series,
though, Sunni actually went through the most vivid psychological turmoil of any of the
Gummis, continually questioning her role in Glen society and wondering if life outside
might not hold better opportunities for her. Infatuated with the "glamorous"
life of her best friend, Princess Calla, and unfamiliar with the realities of human
society, Sunni continually wishes that her "drab" life could be gilded with the
glitz of royalty. In the process, she often fails to appreciate the important rituals and
traditions of Gummi life and culture (except when they can be used to impress Calla). It
would take many, many lessons in a number of episodes before Sunni would finally begin to
realize that escape to royal life is not the answer to her problems, and that she should
simply cherish and enjoy human companionship rather than letting it consume her. Sunni may
not have had as many "heroic" roles as Cubbi or Gruffi, but her psychological
struggles were just as meaningful as any trek or battle with an ogre.
All of the members of the "core" Gummi cast ultimately succeeded both as individuals and as a cooperative group. Continuous, "rolling" character-based themes, such as Grammi's battles of wills with Gruffi, the "sibling rivalry" tension between Sunni and Cubbi, and Gruffi's irritation at others' "un-Gummi-like" actions or idiosyncracies, were honed over time and complemented by "one-shot" character conflicts. These battles were almost always fun to watch. However, six characters, no matter how likable, need some serious help to make a concept last as long as Gummis did. So the Secret of the Juice is not yet resolved.
How about the human (and quasi-human) characters in the Gummis' world? Though Disney has historically had success with human characters in its feature films, its best-loved characters are nonhuman. With the exception of the fussy, fat Ranger character in the "Humphrey the Bear" shorts of the 50's, Disney had never used humans in regular, recurring roles in any animated forum prior to Gummis, so the series was a true departure from past practice. Disney also had to contend with the tendency in SatAM series to depict humans as weak characters upstaged by their nonhuman co-stars (e.g. the humans in Scooby Doo and its myriad clones), pop-up cardboard copies of real-life actors, or unrealistic "Toon" figures (e.g. the "humans" in the Pink Panther cartoons). In the major denizens of Drekmore and Dunwyn, Disney generally succeeded in overcoming these problems.
As the series' continuing source of villainy, the devious, deviltry-brewing Duke
Igthorn of Drekmore couldn't help but become something of a comical figure as his
best-laid plans to break down the walls of Castle Dunwyn and learn how to make Gummiberry
Juice went awry again and again. The Gummis writers fully realized this and began
to play him more and more for laughs as time went on, going for bizarre, Wile E.
Coyote-style gadget- based plots and buffoonish slapstick humor. Despite the gradual
decline of his menace, Iggy at his best (which mostly came during the first two seasons)
is a formidable opponent--alternately ingratiating and tyrannical, willing to do anything
to get what he wants, and even maintaining a kind of twisted grandeur. Even at his most
pathetic, he's still fun to watch.
A character as overbearing as Iggy naturally needs someone to kick around, and that's where his ever-faithful, ever-present pea-green ogre lackey, lieutenant, and "endtable", Toadwort, comes in. Toadie's a familiar figure to Disney fans, the comical villainous sidekick who dilutes the major villain's evil (though this would prove to be less of a chore for Toadie as time went on due to Iggy's buffoonization). He's the smartest member of Iggy's ogre army, which is a little like being the center on a pygmy basketball team. A professional boot-licker, he braves rages by his "Dukie", tosses into (and over) walls and out of windows, catapults, and grabbings by the ears to stay close to the seat of (relative) power. Toadie's inventiveness is shown by the many improbable titles with which he addresses Iggy and his not-inconsiderable talent for (often inadvertently) suggesting plans of action to take against Dunwyn and the Gummis. His often-shaky grasp of his individuality is reflected in his continual references to himself in the third person ("But frostbitten Toadie can't feel his toes anymore!"). Despite his service to Iggy, there's a small smidgen of likableness in this always-ready-to-please, stumbling shrimp. On two separate occasions during the series, Toadie was actually allowed to help a Gummi and thwart Iggy in the process.
The good King Gregor of Dunwyn, the object of Iggy's hatred, is generally little more than a well-meaning cipher, a necessary symbol of the justice and wisdom that the Gummis reentered the world to fight for. Similarly, Sir Tuxford, Gregor's righthand man and Dunwyn's chief knight, a virtuous but aging and somewhat clumsy fighting man of the "By jove! I say! What?" school, is usually used as a minor "authority/pursuit" figure and recognizable representative of Castle Dunwyn's court society, and Tuxie's obnoxious squire Unwin is nothing more than a stock lout. Such flat statements can certainly not be made about Gregor's daughter, the high-spirited, blond-braided Princess Calla. Though she did not get to meet the Gummis until about halfway through the first season, Calla was immediately accepted as "one" of the Gummis and became as close to them as Cavin. Far from being the conventional, stereotyped "helpless" and "delicate" princess who gets bruised by a pea and such, Calla has more than her share of opportunities to display leadership skills, physical and moral courage, and devotion to her Gummi friends (especially Sunni), and she never fails to succeed in these settings. Her healthy aristocratic ego sometimes needs a little reining in, but she also isn't averse to taking a running leap into some straw or disguising herself as a peasant to be like "everyday people". On occasion, Calla displays the same kind of resentment of her position in society as Sunni, but her sense of duty and her love for her father combine to lead her back to her true calling. Much like Princess Leia of the Star Wars movies, Calla is a princess for modem times, and a hugely successful one.
Young Cavin,
first to earn the friendship of the Gununis, has been left for last in this list, and he
should be used to that by now. Baited and laughed at by Unwin for his puny stature and
"childish" belief in Gummis, regarded as a lowly member of society, and (so he
thinks) unnoticed by his "crush-object" Calla, Cavin must continually prove
himself to others. Though he's not as well-drawn or well-developed a character as Calla,
nor as tempting a figure for kids to identify with as Cubbi, Cavin doggedly perseveres in
his dream to become a knight of Dunwyn throughout the series and shows ample physical and
moral courage and fortitude whenever he gets the chance. Bereft of character quirks, he is
simply an unprepossessing, goodhearted kid who, by sheer accident, is entrusted with a
powerful secret, and who never betrays or dishonors his trust. If he is a cipher, he's an
extremely strong one.
Given a cast like the above set of Gummis and humans, any series would have more than enough themes and material to carry it through several seasons. But once the well-worn themes of a series begin to pall on viewers (as the Iggy-tries-to-conquer-Dunwyn theme certainly did in Gummis), creative "rigor mortis" begins to set in and the steam goes out of the endeavor. Despite the "Iggy problem", Gummis never flagged in its mission of holding the viewer's interest, not even during the breakneck "grind-'em-out" phase of the final season. What additional ingredients contributed to the Secret of the Juice?
As first conceived, the universe of Gummis was simple--the Great Gummi culture, like the classical cultures of antiquity, was dead and gone, and the Glen Gummis were the only remaining Gummis left; Iggy was the only regular menace; the supporting cast beyond the Gummis was thin. Unlike most series, Gummis did not stop at this adequate but unspectacular level. Like a stone dropped into the pond that floats above the bear-head skylight of Gummi Glen's "dining room", the themes and characters of the first few seasons caused "ripples" in the shape of new themes and characters, as the scope and complexity of the series kept increasing.
The most significant decision along these lines came at the end of the first (1985-86) season. With the basic themes and relationships firmly established, the underlying tone of the series was deepened by the revelation in the episode "Light Makes Right" that the Great Gummis still existed in exile "across the sea". No longer simply survivors, the Glen Gummis were heirs to the important task of signaling the Great Gummis when it was safe to return and live in peace with humans once again. With this revelation, the Great Gummis ceased to be ghosts and became a constant, though offstage, presence, a reminder of the glorious past, like the legendary Lost Dauphin of France. It also injected a note of pathos into the Gummis' heroism in Dunwyn -- they wished to return to their own kind, but recognized where their true duties lay.
After "Light Makes Right"'s open admission that other Gummis existed, it became legit for Gummis to introduce new Gummi characters, and they came one by one. The first new Gummi regular, Gusto Gummi, the wild-acting, "spontaneous", nickname-spouting Gummi artist saved from a sinking island in season two's "My Gummi Lies Over the Ocean", introduced a note of wildness and anarchic unpredictability into the Gummis' lifestyle and became a continual (though friendly) philosophical rival of Gruffi's (or, as Gusto might put it, "Gruffamundo's").3 Bulky Gummi "airman" Chummi Gummi took a one-shot bow in season two's "Up, Up and Away", and the Great Gummis themselves were briefly seen in the thirdseason epic "The Knights of Gummadoon", a parody of "Brigadoon" in which the Glen Gummis found a glorious Great Gummi city of wizards and knights that appears only once every century.
As the third and fourth seasons progressed, some of Gummis' major themes clearly began to wind down a bit, and the series responded in season five (1989-90, the lone ABC season) with a creative mini-explosion and the introduction of a passel of new characters and ideas. "The Road to Ursalia" introduced the legendary Great Gummi capital of Ursalia (now inhabited only by Sir Thornberry, a graying, goofy, forgetful old Gummi knight) and a brand-new human menace, Lady Bane, a beautiful, egotistical, and ruthless sorceress who seeks not to conquer kingdoms but to wield Gummi magic with the help of the Great Book. Lady Bane represented a new kind of challenge for the Gummis, threatening as she did the entire fabric of their existence and not simply the recipe for their Juice. "Return to Ursalia" saw the debut of the first group of new "regular" Gummis since the Glen Gummis themselves: the Barbic Bears, a band of half-savage, human-hating semi-barbarians who had a very different view of the Gummi-human relationship and the ways in which Gummis should behave towards each other.
The
momentum generated in season five allowed Gummis to ride through season six, but
during the final season, with production time at a premium, the ride was often a coast.
"One-shot" and minor characters from previous seasons -- Sir Victor, the
impeccably virtuous "White Knight" (and Iggy's "white sheep" brother);
King Jean-Claude and Princess Marie, French-accented foreign royals who gave
the familiar "royal" cast of King Gregor and Calla a more exotic, international
flavor; the trio of comical highwayman trolls, Nip, Tuck, and Clutch; and the
hideous Carpies -- were reused, with fair-to-middling results. The fifth-season
additions were used quite well at times, but the overarching need to put out many episodes
in a hurry tended to blight their development somewhat.
The final proof that the series took the depth that it had developed over time seriously came in the culminating tale, the two-part "King Igthorn", which boldly tried to bring the series to a definitive, satisfying ending. The effectiveness of "King Igthorn" was limited by the too-rapid pace of its narrative and the witless decision to run it at a time when six new episodes remained to be aired, but the tale will remain one of the most impressive conclusions to an animated series ever seen.
So Gummis had a set of strong, increasingly complex themes and a capable, ever-expanding cast. It's no surprise that a series with positives like these prospered for such a long period of time. But many animated TV series have had memorable characters and keenly honed themes and failed to have the reverberating impact on their creators that Gummis did on WDTA. The Flintstones and The Jetsons were two of Hanna-Barbera's greatest series, but 10 years after they were made, HB was grinding out witless pap like The Tom and Jerry Show and Clue Club. Filmation scored a pair of hits right out of the box with its Superman and Batman series in the 60's, but eventually went out of business entirely. DePatie-Freleng was never able to come close to duplicating the success of The Pink Panther and was ultimately reduced to slapping together worse and worse variations on the Panther theme. Why was the relationship between Gummis and WDTA so different? A look at some of the "real people" behind the scenes will provide the final clue to the Secret of the Juice.
From the start, Gummis served as a "training ground" for many of the writers, story editors, directors, and other personnel who would go on to great success in other WDTA projects. Key people like writers Jymn Magon, Bruce Talkington, Mark Zaslove, and Len Uhley, and directors Alan Zaslove and David Block, all did their first significant Disney TV work for Gummis. Through this experience, they learned how to manage the tricky balancing act that Michael Eisner had charged them with perfecting -- how to do an effective TV series without compromising the Disney trademark of quality.
Though Gummis' look and animation was uniformly outstanding during the first five seasons (before slipping somewhat in the final season due to the need to farm out production to more, and more untested, foreign studios), it is in the area of writing that the series was most successful and influential. Challenged to do their best work at all times, the writers who worked on the series produced scripts that were generally miles above the usual time-filling stuff seen on SatAM. Certain writers, like Mark Zaslove, succeeded best with "softer", more character-oriented stories, and Zaslove would take the lesson with him to the Emmy Award-winning New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Others, like Len Uhley, developed a facility for inducing belly laughs that would stand them in very good stead in comparatively "looser" series like DuckTales and Darkwing Duck. Still others, like Bruce Talkington, proved capable of great flexibility in their approach and would find a home in just about every Disney TV series.
Overcoming the concerns of persnickety doomsayers, the animators at TMS and elsewhere showed that WDTA could do animation that was a "cut above" while still remaining within a budget. What could be termed the basic WDTA "style"-strong, rounded character designs, smooth movement, attention to background detail, and not-infrequent fancy staging--was first developed and honed on Gummis. Armed with this "style" as a solid base, the animators and character-design people who worked on other series could improvise and push the envelope without getting completely away from their artistic "roots".
The voice-artist cast of Gummis, a blend of venerable professionals (Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Winchell, Lorenzo Music, Michael Rye) and comparative unknowns (Corey Burton, Will Ryan, Brian and Jim Cummings, Katie Leigh, Noelle North, and all five different "Cavins"), was the first to take full advantage of the atypical WDTA recording situation in which the entire cast was habitually called together to do voicetracks at the same time. The series' push for excellence (especially in season one) was cited by Will Ryan as an important factor in the development of a strong sense of camaraderie among the cast members:
"The goal was to be better than anything else on Saturday morning. The enthusiasm that Art Vitello [producer], Jymn Magon [story editor] and the actors felt about each other was just a joy to experience. If someone wasn't in an episode, people would say, 'How come June [Forayl's not in this one? Well, that's terrible. Write her in."4
These feelings helped the cast to weather the sudden deaths of Scott (the first Toadie, Gruffi, and Tuxie) and Roger C. Carmel (Tuxie #2) and the departure of Winchell, and to recruit capable new members who were able to carry on and give these characters faithful but "individual" interpretations. Special awards for achievement would have to go to Corey Burton (who succeeded so well in inheriting Gruffi and Toadie from Bill Scott), Michael Rye (whose Iggy may have been the best single voice of the series), and Noelle North (who had the unenviable job of handling two of the series' most active and important characters, Cubbi and Calla), but, in truth, everyone involved in the voicing did a fine job. The tradition of strong voicing in WDTA series most certainly had its roots in Gummis.
Considering all the above hints, what, then, was the Secret of the Juice? Simply this: that a basic concept can be made to work beautifully if one is wining to develop and modify it over time rather than simply manufacture stock plots, that "simplistic" characters do not have to perpetually represent one trait or gimmick but instead can be helped to grow, and that a series can go beyond merely entertaining us and can actually touch our hearts if the people responsible care enough about the characters to treat them with the love and respect they deserve.
The Secret of the Juice is: QUALITY PAYS.
