Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Saturtainment: Catdog (1998)

Talk about a freak show!

Catdog sprang from the mind of creator-producer Peter Hannan, who thought a cat and a dog sharing the same body would get plenty of laughs. The fact that the show stayed in production for seven years might prove him right, because kids are so easy to amuse, but the premise didn't make much sense.

The problem? The cat and the dog each have their own basic instincts, which creates the predictable comic scenarios. In truth, to this critic's eyes, the whole idea of passing a dog and a cat as conjoined twins was better suited for Ripley's Believe It Or Not! than an animated cartoon.

Here's the intro:




Nickelodeon was able to get this show running for seven years, or six more than it had any right to.

Rating: C-.

4 comments:

Silverstar said...

Peter Hannan's initial drawings of CatDog envisioned the character(s) as The Amazing CatDog Man, a superhero with 2 heads, one of a cat and one of a dog. The final sausage-like quadruped body design with a head on either side is awfully reminiscent of a creature who ran past the screen in Bob Clampett's "Porky in Wackyland".

But yeah, CatDog was a one-joke idea that lasted a lot longer than it should have.

Steven Dolce said...

Kids today ain't got shit on how awesome Nick was back in the day.

Silverstar said...

Eh, 90's-'00's Nick had its' moments. Like all entertainment in many decade, Nick has its' fair share of diamonds and duds. All Nick shows are equally inferior to "Rocko's Modern Life", IMHO.

As for CatDog, of all the adjectives I'd use to describe that show, 'awesome' ain't one of them.

hobbyfan said...

Yeah, bizarre makes more sense.

I will see if I can get Porky in Wackyland up at some point, because that wasn't just a trip, that was a whole vacation from reality......