Welcome to Camp Candy!
Camp Candy is a 1989-1992 cartoon starring John Candy as himself. He runs a summer camp and has to constantly protect it from the evil developer Rex DeForest.
Tropes present in this series include:
- Adoption Diss: Vanessa thinks she was adopted and runs away.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Molly is attracted to John, but John is attracted to Miss Sweetingham.
- Animation Bump: True to any DIC cartoon, the intro sequence sports way more fluid animation than most of the series itself.
- Ant Assault: One episode involves an invasion of ants that are very destructive and immune to all known pesticides.
- The Big Rotten Apple: When John attends a convention in New York City, a thief immediately takes all his money. Things go downhill from there.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: A baby bigfoot gets separated from his mother and kidnapped by DeForest to be used as a tourist attraction.
- Camp Cook: Decades of living alone has made Hiram an expert at outdoor cooking.
- Captivity Harmonica: When John spends a night in jail, his cellmate plays the harmonica.
- The Catfish: One episode has Molly’s nephew Toby visit to catch a local fish called Old Mossback. He eventually succeeds, but throws him back into the water after Robin takes a photo.
- Caustic Critic: A summer camp critic who hates everything visits Camp Candy. When he gives camps bad reviews, they go out of business.
- Conspicuous Consumption: When Chester wins the lottery, he buys an amphibious yacht.
- Deliberately Monochrome: In an episode that makes fun of old detective movies, John is black and white.
- Didn't Think This Through: Molly tries to fix the camp's money problems by turning it into a health spa, despite not knowing anything about health spas. All the guests quickly demand their money back.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: John Candy sung the Camp Candy theme song (in a duet with Harry Nilsson no less).
- Eating Contest: When the parents visit the camp, one of the competitions is a pie-eating contest.
- Fountain of Youth: Chester accidentally finds it and becomes a kid again, but the effects are only temporary. Rex DeForest sees it as a chance for Chester to destroy the camp from the inside.
- Friend to All Living Things: Robin
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main cast of campers includes three boys and three girls.
- Hypochondria: Iggy is so convinced there's something wrong that he visits the infirmary more than anyone else. His parents are much worse.
- Iron Butt Monkey: John
- It's All My Fault: In "Dear Mom and Dad", everyone does something foolish when it comes to fire safety. When the mess hall burns down, everybody takes all the blame and plans on leaving. As it turns out, the mess hall was destroyed by a meteor.
- Laugh Track: In this case, the justification is that John is telling stories to campers and that the laughter is coming from them.
- Like Father, Like Son: Most of the kids have the same personalities as their parents.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: Camp Candy has several employees, but John the camp owner and Molly the nurse do everything in most episodes.
- Mean Boss: Rex constantly treats his sidekick Chester like garbage.
- More Hypnotizable Than He Thinks: When Molly tries to cure Robin of her fear of animals using hypnosis, she demonstrates on John first. He says he can't be hypnotized, but she succeeds in a matter of seconds.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The villain is a property developer named Rex DeForest, as in "wrecks the forest".
- Never Bareheaded: Nurse Molly always wears her nurse's cap, even when she's not wearing her uniform.
- Noah's Story Arc: One episode has Robin and Alex building an ark to save local animals from a flood.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: In the season three episode "When It Rains...It Snows", John mentions the season one episode "Christmas in July" and refers to it as last year. Even though this show takes place over two summers, the kids don't appear any older in the third season than in the first season.
- Not So Extinct: Binky finds a bird that was believed to be extinct.
- Parental Substitute: When Vanessa's parents can't show up for parents' day, John takes the place of her father.
- Patchwork Map: The camp is located in a temperate forest, but one episode has the main characters getting lost on a hiking trip and ending up in a tropical rainforest on the other side of the mountain.
- Prospector: Hiram's a gold prospector who's been looking for gold for 57 years.
- Saving the Orphanage: John and the kids have to constantly save the camp from Rex DeForest.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Robin can talk to squirrels.
- Stock Ness Monster: The kids make a lake monster called The Katchatoree Creature so Robin can win a journalist award.
- The Storyteller: Every episode starts with John doing something with current campers and then telling them a story about a previous year.
- Summer Campy: Pretty much the entire point of this show.
- Telethon: John and the kids have a telethon to prevent Rex from buying some nearby land.
- Token Minority: Robin is the only Afro-American camper
- Tomboy: Alex has a huge enjoyment of camping and sports.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Molly turns the camp into a health spa, none of the guests notice that all the employees are children.
- Very Special Episode: One episode involves Molly’s nephew Toby, who has leukemia. Another episode involves a deaf girl who communicates in sign language.
- Yet Another Christmas Carol: In the Christmas in July episode, Vanessa is the Scrooge.
