Delicious fruit they are, oh yeah!/Tasty and happy veggies, too.note
A cartoon from Spain that was made by D'Ocon Films Productions and aired from 1987 to 1989. It centered around a community of sentient fruits and vegetables called the Fruitties who live in what they think is an extinct volcano.
One day, however, the Fruitties' volcano does start to show signs of erupting, forcing the Fruitties to send three of their explorers to find them a new home. These three explorers are the show's main characters: Roly, a self-centered pineapple; Pak, a smart banana; and Thorny, a dim-witted cactus. These three run into Kumba, a human girl who got stranded on the Fruitties' island, and save her from some attacking tigers. Afterwards, Kumba joins Pak, Roly, and Thorny as a main character, and follows them to their new island home. The four characters then go on various adventures after moving to their new home.
The show ran for 91 episodes and was shown in several other European countries, including the UK and Ireland where it got dubbed in English.
This show provides very fruity examples of:
- A Dog Named "Dog": One of the background Fruitties is a thistle named Thistle.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": A cactus named Thorny.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: In "Voyage to Paris", Roly and a couple of other Fruitties traverse an unrealistically large sewer and encounter Monkus.
- Accidental Hero: The two boars, lots of times.
- Aesop Amnesia: The Fruitties successfully teach Thistle that his troublemaker tendencies aren't doing anyone any good in the episode "Prankster Thistle". Cue it not sticking with him anyway; for example, in the episode "Vocationing in the Canaries", which has a scene near the beginning where Thistle tries to hitch a ride with another Fruittie, who is going to Venice to sell ice cream.
- Alien Episode: The plot of "The Dickpea from Outer Space" involves a dickpea alien who lands on Earth and lets Roly use an orb he possesses that can create or change whatever the user wants it to. Naturally, Roly refuses to give the orb back and goes around causing whatever mischief he can with it.
- Aliens Speaking English: The dickpea alien from "The Dickpea from Outer Space" can speak English (or Spanish, or whatever language) with no problems whatsoever.
- Anthropomorphic Food: The Fruitties are mostly anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables, with a few exceptions such as Thorny the cactus.
- Bag of Holding: Pak's backpack is shown to be capable of holding just about anything he needs, including stuff that wouldn't normally fit in a backpack in real life, like boats. You name it, Pak's probably got it in his backpack.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Boss and his assistant, both anthropomorphic boars, do not wear shoes.
- Bears Are Bad News:
- In a recurring piece of Stock Footage that's used in the show's songs sometimes, Roly takes a picture of a young deer. The deer then runs away because of an approaching polar bear. Cue Roly running away and letting go of the picture he just caught of the deer, which the polar bear grabs for himself.
- In "An Ice Island", Roly accidentally wakes up and angers a polar bear. Thorny manages to fend it off by poking it with his thorns, though.
- Big Bad: Two of them, actually.
- Monkus, an evil scientist monkey who serves as the Fruitties' arch-nemesis.
- Boss, a boar who wants to eat the Fruitties. He is kinda hapless, though, and he is almost never taken seriously.
- Birthday Episode: "Thorny's Birthday" says right in its title that it's about Thorny's birthday. The episode itself is about Thorny making a birthday wish that he could spend a whole day in the desert with his friends, which comes true.
- Bizarrchitecture: Many houses in Fruittie Village are shaped like fruits, mushrooms, or similar plants.
- Butt Biter: In "Terror Mountain", Monkus's gorilla assistant Bruce throws him into a nearby pool of water to put out the flames on his head caused by Roly accidentally shooting a firework at him. An eel from the pool bites Monkus on his bottom; a few seconds later, Monkus floods the cave where the Fruitties are trapped with the same water, complete with the eels, one of which bites Roly in the behind. Thorny mistakes them for tails, says he wants one, and deliberately has an eel bite his behind, only for it to be poked by Thorny's thorns.
- Cactus Person: Thorny is a sapient, dim-witted cactus, and thus also one of several Fruitties who aren't a fruit or vegetable like most of the others.
- Cartoon Bomb: At least two of the cartoony round-shaped type of bombs appear in "Voyage to Paris". The only difference from other depictions of this kind of bomb is the color - the bombs shown here are dark red rather than black.
- Conjoined Eyes: The Fruitties' eyes alternate between this and being unconjoined.
- Cowardly Lion: Roly. He refuses to admit he's a coward, however, and constantly tries to convince the others he's brave.
- Description Cut: In "The Enigma of the Giants", Kumba asks where Roly has gone, and Pak says "I'm sure he's sleeping peacefully back at the boat." A few seconds later, it cuts to Roly, who is struggling at the feet of a giant butterfly who is carrying him.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In "Baby Wolf", Roly accidentally hits a pumpkin Fruittie with a snowball while in a snowball fight with the Chickpeas. Just for this, the pumpkin Fruittie tells the Chickpeas to hold Roly in place so he can show him what for.
- The Ditz: Thorny is shown on more than one occasion to not be particularly bright. Also, Boss' unnamed fat sidekick, though he is at least smart enough to point out the problems in Boss' plans.
- Dub Name Change:
- The Fruitties' original Spanish names are as follows: Roly is Gazpacho, Pak is Mochilo, and Thorny is Pincho.
- Thorny's name is changed to Spinotto in the Italian dub of the show.
- Dynamite Candle: In "The Floating Bottle", when the gang gets stuck in a dark cave, Thorny grabs a stick of TNT from Pak's backpack and lights it, thinking it's a candle. When he realizes what it really is, he throws it from his hand and it explodes, causing rubble from the ceiling to start falling on them and forcing them to run away.
- Earth Song: The end credits theme is about the beauty of the forest, with the chorus having the singers saying word-for-word that they "should take care of the forest".
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Since the Fruitties are at the bottom of the food chain, being anthropomorphic plants and all, they consume substances such as sand and mud.
- Enemy Mine: One episode features some lumberjacks cutting down the trees. The forest is so important to both the Fruitties and the boars they set their differences aside to protect it.
- Evil Genius: Monkus, being a Mad Scientist and all.
- Eye Pop: In "The Magical Lamp", Roly's eyes pop when he notices a ship coming close to shore and gets excited... and then he realizes it's Artichoke the pirate's ship.
- Eyes Always Shut: Mr. Yam from the episode "Voyage to Canada" is meant to resemble a stereotypical Eskimo, complete with eyes that are always closed.
- Fat and Skinny: Boss is skinny and his assistant is fat.
- Flowers of Romance: One episode about the Fruitties' village's flowers suddenly disappearing ends with Potato being revealed as the one who took them, his reason being he wants to impress his girlfriend with them. Unfortunately for him, she's allergic to flowers.
- Flying Saucer: The dickpea alien from "The Dickpea from Outer Space" owns a flying saucer.
- The Full Name Adventures: It is called The Adventures of the Fruitties once.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Pak takes delight in inventing various ambiguously useful devices. One of the recurring ones is an instant hot air balloon deployed from his backpack.
- Genie in a Bottle: Episode 17, "The Magical Lamp", is about Roly finding a genie in a magic lantern.
- Gratuitous English: Both the Spanish and English versions of the show's songs are sung by the same Spanish singers. However, it's obvious that the English versions weren't checked for proper grammar, pronunciation, etc., as grammatically incorrect lines can be found in them (for example, one of the lines in the song "Roly, the Champion" is literally "And to scare the vegetarans [sic], let us sing together song").
- Green Aesop: The end credits music is about the forest. Its refrain contains lyrics reminding viewers to take care of the forest.
- Ground-Shattering Landing: In "The Smart Little Duck", the baby duck ties a firework rocket to Roly and sets it off. Roly is carried into sky by the rocket and creates a hole in the ground when he lands.
- Hong Kong Dub: The characters' mouths do not match up to what they are saying at all, and some lines of dialogue actually have short pauses between words (such as in "The Dickpea from Outer Space" when the dickpea alien says "Listen, do you think the wild boar ... might have taken it?"). This happens even in the original Spanish dub of the show.
- I Don't Think That's Such a Good Idea: In "The Fruitties in America", when Thorny suggests that he can use rollerskates to get around in the store, Roly exclaims "That is not a good idea!" before tripping and bumping into Thorny, sending him darting uncontrollably through the store.
- It's All About Me: Pretty much describes Roly's personality. He is self-centered to the point that he even has his own song describing him as the best Fruittie, called "Roly, the Champion".
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Roly, without a doubt. He's very arrogant and often does some stupid stuff due to said arrogance, but is legitimately willing to help if the situation calls for it.
- Limited Animation: As is to be expected from the infamous D'Ocon Films, the production crew evidently didn't put much of their budget into making this show's animation decent, causing them to recycle clips of animation constantly.
- Love at First Sight: The episode "Voyage to Paris" has Kumba and Roly accidentally end up in Paris, where they meet a French boy named Jean who develops a crush on Kumba upon seeing her for the first time.
- Mad Scientist: Monkus is a mad scientist monkey.
- Magic Carpet: Roly and the genie fly around on a magic carpet in "The Magical Lamp".
- Maniac Monkeys: Monkus is a Mad Scientist monkey who serves as the Fruitties' primary archenemy.
- Meaningful Name: Pak's name is meant to sound like the "pack" in the word "backpack", referring to his backpack. His original Spanish name, Mochilo, is only a single letter off from "mochila", the Spanish word for "backpack".
- Miles Gloriosus: Roly is constantly claiming he's very brave and has taken on many, many dangers (to the extent that he has his own song about all this!), but in reality he's quite a scaredy-cat. This doesn't stop him from legitimately trying to be brave on certain occasions, though.
- Mind-Control Music: In "The Mermaid's Singing", all the animals in the marshes try to avoid what they are convinced is the song of the mermaids because it will unwillingly attract them. It's actually one of Monkus's villainous schemes, predictably.
- Mushroom House: Some of the houses in Fruittie Village are big mushrooms.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: In "The Smart Little Duck", the baby duck bites the tail off of a crocodile and later creates a purse out of the scales of that same crocodile. Both times, the crocodile assumes either Roly or the boars did it and gets back at them for it.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In the episode "Vocationing in the Canaries", Kumba slips up her American accent by pronouncing "banana" as "ba-NAW-nah" (the British pronunciation of the word).
- Our Genies Are Different: The genie in the episode "The Magical Lamp" is a small orange cloud-like being with a red nose, as opposed to the usual depictions of genies which make them more humanoid in appearance.
- Percussive Maintenance: In "Terror Mountain", the monitor to the booby traps Monkus set up for the Fruitties stops working, and Monkus hits it a few times to try to get it to start working again. His strong gorilla minion hits it a few times as well, causing it to explode.
- Plant Person: Several Fruitties are anthropomorphic plants, such as Thorny the cactus for example.
- The Prankster: Thistle. There's an entire episode centered around the Fruitties teaching Thistle the error of his prankster ways by pranking him back.
- Pun: In "Prankster Thistle", we are shown how business is going at the barbershop. Afterwards, the narrator jokes that "As you can see, the barber has his work cut out." and giggles lightly.
- Recurring Riff: The melodies of the theme song and the end credits song, among a select few other specific tunes, are very, very commonly used as background music throughout the show.
- Removable Shell: One of the snails in "The Enigma of the Giants" has his shell broken as he is chasing a Fruittie. He does not suffer much of an ill effect from the shell being broken, remaining completely intact otherwise, implying he could potentially take off the shell at will if he ever wanted to.Snail: Now that's what I call rotten luck. I just had this body resprayed. No sense of decency, some folk.
- Sapient Eat Sapient: The sapient boars make lots of failed attempts to eat the sapient Fruitties.
- Sea Monster: One appears several times throughout "The Enigma of the Giants". Roly sees it and tries to bring it to the attention of the others, but it keeps disappearing before they can see it and they dismiss it as him imagining things.
- Second Episode Introduction: The show's two villains, Monkus and Boss, are both introduced in the second episode, "The Enigma of the Giants".
- The Smart Guy: Pak is shown to be the smartest of the main characters.
- The Smurfette Principle: Kumba is the only female of the main characters.
- Smug Snake: Monkus never learns not to underestimate his opponents.
- Sphere Eyes: Most of the Fruitties have spherical eyes that often overlap with each other. Due to the show being terrible about keeping the characters' appearances consistent, the eyes also alternate between being sphere eyes and Conjoined Eyes.
- Stock Footage: Abused in spades. Footage is constantly recycled, whether it be used in general throughout the series or from another episode.
- Token Human: Kumba is the sole human out of the four main characters.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: The theme song pitch-shifts from a C key to a D key.
- Villain Song: A pirate Fruittie named Artichoke had his own song, which said stuff about him being the meanest pirate out there, and that nobody could catch him. He's really not much of a villain, though.
- Voiceover Translation: The show's Russian dub is a voiceover translation of the English dub.
- Wheel o' Feet: In "The Smart Little Duck", the boars' legs are represented by circular shapes when they try to run away from the crocodile who is after them.
- Wingding Eyes: In "Voyage to Paris", Jean's eyes turn into hearts a few times as he's speaking to Kumba.
- Wise Beyond Her Years: Kumba is quite smart and learned for a 7-year-old kid.
- Word-O Name: Pak's name in the original Spanish version is Mochilo. The Spanish word for "backpack" is "mochila", with this name referring to how Pak always has a backpack with him.
- X-Ray Sparks: In "Terror Mountain", Monkus flips the switch to an electric floor that is part of his various booby traps for the Fruitties. A tied-up Kumba uses her feet to move a carpet, causing a shelf on the carpet to fall over and spill a potion on the switch, electrocuting Monkus and causing his skeleton to repeatedly flash into vision. Monkus's gorilla minion, Bruce, thinks he's doing a dance and grabs hold of him to join in, causing his skeleton to also flash into vision.
