Ranger Rick (Ranger Rick's Nature Magazine before 1982) is a children's magazine published by the National Wildlife Federation since 1967. The magazine mainly features articles, stories, and activities about animals, the environment, and nature. Every issue contains a comic (a short story before 2000) called "Ranger Rick Adventures", starring the titular raccoon, his deputy Scarlett Fox and the reluctant Boomer Badger, among other animals of Deep Green Wood, exploring the world and protecting the environment from human exploitation. Originally published as a children's book entitled "The Adventures of Rick Raccoon" in 1959, many characters and plot lines have since been created in more than 50 years of publication.
In 2012, Your Big Backyard, a nature magazine directed to preschoolers also published by the NWF, was rebranded as Ranger Rick Jr. Like its sister series, each issue includes a short story, this time chronicling the adventures of Ricky Raccoon, a younger, separate raccoon from Ranger Rick, and his friends. In 2017, a new spinoff magazine was released for toddler readers, called Ranger Rick Cub. In 2018, the National Wildlife Federation acquired ZooBooks, rebranding it as Ranger Rick Zoobooks.
Tropes
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Ranger Rick wears nothing but a hat, and Scarlett Fox wears nothing but a scarf.
- Alliterative Name: Ranger Rick Raccoon, Boomer Badger, Ollie Otter, Sammy Squirrel, the list goes on... Overlaps with Species Surname.
- All Just a Dream: One 90s story featured Rick and the gang taking it upon themselves to try to get the latest issue of the magazine published on time. After an ink-splattering mishap ruins all of their work, Rick finally wakes up from the dream.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: In their appearances from the 80s to the 90s, Scarlett and Boomer were illustrated more realistically, running and sitting on all fours. They are nowadays portrayed as standing on two legs and being more cartoony, as with the rest of the cast.
- Art Evolution: The Ranger Rick stories began with a more realistic hand-painted Disneyesque art style by Lorin Thompson. In 1982, Alton Langford took over, making the characters look more cutesy. By the Turn of the Millennium, the stories were replaced by comics. The series was later remade using CGI, and the current design used since 2016 looks a more stylized design reminiscent of Thick-Line Animation.
- Bad Ol' Badger: Averted with Boomer Badger, who is a friendly Cowardly Lion who'll usually try to hide at the first hint of danger, but he will sometimes get aggressive if something threatens his friends.
- Beary Friendly: Cubby Bear was a cheerful black bear cub who was a regular character until he was inexplicably removed in 2009.
- Beary Funny: Cubby Bear often got in comic mishaps due to his curiosity.
- The Big Bad Wolf: Wally Wolf was a recurring antagonist during the early run of the stories who was always planning to eat Ranger Rick and friends. He was later phased out as the later stories tended to focus on environmental concerns.
- Bland-Name Product: One story from the mid-90s has Boomer Badger wanting to buy a Contendo 6000 for Christmas.
- The Bus Came Back: Odora Skunk returned in the February 2019 issue after being last seen in 2011.
- Character Overlap: Sammy Skunk from Wild Animal Baby Explorers is a character in the Ranger Rick Jr. magazine.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Scarlett Fox appeared as a one-time character in a 1983 story. She becomes a main character by 1984.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the earliest stories from 1967 to around the early 70s, Ranger Rick was the narrator and the stories were written in his point of view. It has since been changed to third-person.
- Fantastic Foxes: Scarlett Fox is intelligent, loyal, and reliable. No wonder why Ranger Rick himself chose her to be his deputy. She has her own section in the magazines where she answers reader-submitted questions about wildlife called "Ask Scarlett".
- Flanderization: Ranger Rick used to be a wise mentor figure with a few flaws here and there, but he has become a bland, smart protagonist without any known flaws. Scarlett Fox used to be a clever and loyal deputy who cannot stand those who disregard order, especially with Boomer, but now her personality is more or less the same as Rick's. And Boomer Badger used to be a lazy and clueless one who cared little about nature who eventually learns his lesson. He acts quite similar nowadays, but now he is obsessed with human technology and gadgets more than ever.
- Foil: Boomer's recklessness serves as this to the more serious Scarlett.
- Green Aesop: Many stories and comics are about conservation of nature and protecting the environment. Justified as the magazine is published by the National Wildlife Federation.
- Lazy Bum: Boomer Badger prefers to sleep or play games than taking care of the environment. Many stories has Boomer learning his lesson, only for him to forget it by the next story.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": Odora Skunk. She is affectionately nicknamed "Odie" by friends.
- Wise Old Owl from the older issues certainly qualifies.
- Long-Runners: The magazine's first issue was in January 1967, and is currently running for more than 55 years.
- The Owl-Knowing One: Wise Old Owl, Deep Green Wood's resident knowledgeable one during the 60's and 70's.
- Playful Otter: Ollie Otter (and his replacement Reggie Otter) love fun and splashing in the water. He used to host the activity pages for a brief time in the 60s.
- Rascally Raccoon: Downplayed by Ranger Rick himself, who was quick and cunning in older stories. Downplayed even more in recent issues, as he is portrayed as a generic Nice Guy.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: This magazine, of all places, used this trope off and on:
- Uncomfortably applied in one issue. There was a short story in which Rick and his gang help an Ocelot in Texas and are menaced by an alligator, who was explicitly described as a villain. This was jarring considering it was the only time an animal filled the antagonistic role; usually Humans Are Bastards (they staunchly used the Humans Are Misguided subtrope). Even worse? The very next issue Rick and co. head to Florida to help... alligators.
- The magazine also had a series of nonfiction books about animals and of those, one of the most beloved is The Unhuggables. It did all it could to discredit this trope (though it's telling that snakes get their own chapter to themselves) as well as Carnivores Are Mean and (as you could probably guess from the so-close-to-being-the-TropeNamer-title) What Measure Is a Non-Cute?.
- Recap Episode: The June 1994 story involves Ranger Rick and the gang recalling the events of previous issues, and the aftermaths of their efforts.
- Retcon: In the January 2017 comic retelling Ranger Rick's origin story, when he first entered Deep Green Wood, Boomer Badger and Scarlett Fox were already residents. In the original stories, Ranger Rick already lived there, while Boomer and Scarlett joined the gang during The '80s.
- Role Called: Ranger Rick.
- Smelly Skunk: Odora Skunk, right down to her name.
- Species Surname: Almost all of the residents of Deep Green Wood follow this naming convention.
- Token Human: Ranger Tom was a human park ranger whom Ranger Rick often asks for advice. He was a supporting character from 1967 to the early 1980s. It is understandable as to why he was removed, as later stories tended to portray Deep Green Wood as a Mouse World of sorts.
- Under the Mistletoe: The December 1990 issue has the characters meeting and interviewing Alton Langford (the illustrator of the time). As a gift to Ranger Rick, he draws this
. - What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: One issue had a short story (later adapted into a comic in 2023) that pointed this trope out rather directly. The animals of Deep Green Wood propose holding a support group for all severely endangered animals. Everyone is all for it, except for Boomer Badger, who was extremely unsympathetic to the plights of the less cute and cuddly animals like the Komodo Dragon. That night, Boomer has a nightmare in which badgers had been put on the world's cut list and would go extinct unless Boomer alone could plead their case, and he realized his hypocrisy."I matter because I'm here!"
- There was also a Ranger Rick book entitled The Unhuggables, and it was all about the animals unfairly affected by this trope, so good on National Wildlife Federation.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In one story from the 1990's, Scarlett was shown to have a fear of leeches. When questioned about it, she said that everyone had something they couldn't stand, and for her, leeches were it.
- Yet Another Christmas Carol: The magazine had a story, later adapted into a comic, that took an unusual spin on this trope. The story opens with Rick deciding to give up on being an environmental activist since nothing he and his friends do seems to make any difference and going home to sulk; he falls asleep reading the Trope Namer and has an Opinion-Changing Dream that works in the following stages. Stage 1: a pristinely white ghost shows him a forest with lush vegetation, crystal clear water and various animals, including the long-extinct Passenger Pigeon; the ghost is then named as "The Ghost of the Clean, Green Past". Stage 2: a ghost who's pure black and wearing chains made of assorted kinds of trash shows him the same area in present day, now utterly ruined by human waste and carelessness; Rick bitterly calls him "The Ghost of the Polluted Present" and restates that it's pointless to try to change things. And then Stage 3 kicks in with a ghost who, while not as pristine as the first, is a soft white with hints of green and shows Rick the area cleaned up by human action; Rick realizes that this ghost represents the Hopeful Future and awakens revitalized in his environmental protection actions.
