The series revolves around the eponymous magic key, which resides on a ribbon wrapped around the neck of Floppy, a dog belonging to Biff, Chip and Kipper Robinson. Once per Episode, Floppy “says” (well, says in his Inner Monologue) a sentence beginning with “I wish”, which triggers the key’s magic, causing it to whisk Floppy and anyone near him off to a fantastical world related to the circumstances that caused Floppy to make his wish, even if they aren’t very related to the contents of the wish itself.
Joining Biff, Chip, Kipper, and Floppy on their adventures are Gran, their grandmother, and their friends Wilf and Wilma Page, Anneena Patel, and Nadim Shah; who may or may not be present in any specific episode, or participate in that episode’s adventure.
Tropes In The Magic Key include:
- Alice Allusion: In one episode, Biff and Kipper travel to what is presumably Wonderland and meet the Queen Of Hearts, although no other parts of Wonderland are seen aside from her and her court.
- Alliterative Name: Danny The Drill, from the episode where Nadim and Biff go to Tool World. Interestingly, his name is actually never mentioned in the episode proper, and was only included in the episode’s tie-in novelization.
- All Trolls Are Different: In one episode, Biff, Wilf and Gran are captured by trolls, which are large, ugly humanoids with a taste for People Stew. Interestingly, what would be polite speech to a human is considered rude by trolls, and vice versa.
- Ambiguous Robots:
- In “Lug And The Space Storks”, the titular space storks appear mechanical at a glance but are (indirectly) shown to reproduce like living creatures. Lug himself also qualifies, as parts of his body appear to be made of metal, although in his case that could merely be some sort of space-age clothing.
- The Sound Monster from the episode of the same name is ambiguous in an unusual way, as it’s not clear whether the boombox-based being is a robot or a heavily anthropomorphized Animate Inanimate Object.
- Animated Adaptation: Of the Biff, Chip and Kipper books.
- Animate Inanimate Object:
- In “The Patchworker”, Anneena and Chip (and Floppy) find themselves in a world inhabited by sentient pins and sewing needles.
- Crayon World from “Fraser The Eraser” is inhabited by anthropomorphic crayons, as well as the titular eraser.
- The island visited in “The Sound Monster” is inhabited by humanoid batteries. The titular monster itself also counts, as its design is clearly based on a stereo.
- Nadim, Biff, and Floppy once visited Tool World, whose population consisted of living, human-sized tools. Unlike the show’s other examples, the tool people had no idea what humans were and thus assumed their visitors to be (very strange-looking) tools.
- Animorphism: In “The Rook King”, Wilma is transformed into a cat by the titular sorcerer’s magic.
- Anthropomorphic Food: A sentient banana, pineapple, and orange appear in “Underwater World”. It Makes Sense in Context, we swear.
- Art Course: Two separate non-video game examples.
- In “The Patchworker”, Anneena and Chip visit a world which is quite literally quilted together.
- In “Fraser The Eraser”, Kipper and Gran (and Floppy, of course), find themselves in Crayon World, which looks like a child’s drawing and was literally drawn into existence by Animate Inanimate Object crayons.
- Art Initiates Life: In “Fraser The Eraser”, the crayons of Crayon World have the power to draw anything (of their color) into existence.
- Author Powers: In “The Giant And The Knee Nibblers”, Wilf was transported into a story he’d just been telling, and ends up with a limited version of these- he can add new elements to the story by narrating, but cannot delete anything he’d already created (including elements he’d introduced before being transported there) or radically change the scenario. The only way for him to leave was to give the story (which he’d stopped telling in the middle) a satisfying ending.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: The trolls from “Troll Talk” have this approach to manners- what would be polite to a human is rude to a troll, and vice versa.
- Baby Morph Episode: In “The Fountain Of Youth”, Wilf drinks from the eponymous fountain and ends up reverting to a baby, with Floppy also turning into a puppy. Neither of them spends too much time in this state before being restored by the Fountain Of Age, however.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In every episode, Floppy would think a sentence beginning with “I wish…”, which would cause the key to activate, whisking Floppy (and whichever of the children were around him at the time) off to some magical land tangentially related to the wish. His thoughts immediately after the key activates always lampshade this.
- Becoming the Costume: In “The Rook King”, the titular sorcerer’s spell turns everyone into what they were dressed as for the costume party- Wilma becomes a cat, Floppy becomes a frog, and Kipper becomes a scarecrow. Chip, who wasn’t wearing a costume, is turned invisible.
- Bewitched Amphibians: In “The Rook King”, Floppy is turned into a frog as part of the Becoming the Costume spell the Rook King cast on him and the kids.
- Black Bead Eyes: The show’s human characters have these, although interestingly any fantastical beings that show up have a good chance of having more detailed eyes.
- Breathable Liquid: The water in “Underwater World” is breathable due to magic.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': In “HMS Sweet Tooth”, Biff opens the titular ship’s hold for all of five seconds; this is still somehow enough to alert all nearby pirates of the chocolate treasure (It Makes Sense in Context) the ship is carrying.
- Coconut Meets Cranium: A coconut hits Floppy on the head at the end of “HMS Sweet Tooth”
- Companion Cube: Kipper has a teddy bear (which he calls Teddy) that he carries around almost everywhere.
- Conveniently Interrupted Document: In “Cream Cake Mystery”, the sheet carrying the food robber’s rap (It Makes Sense in Context… sort of) is torn off before the last line, meaning that to predict what he would rob next the kids had to figure out something that would fit the rhyme scheme.
- Cool Old Lady: Gran, the grandmother of Biff, Chip, and Kipper. She’s One of the Kids, rides a motorcycle, and even got a pet snake in one episode.
- Couch Gag: In every episode, after accidentally activating the key’s magic, Floppy’s internal monologue would “say” something different to the effect of “I wish I hadn’t done that”.
- Crazy Cat Lady: Brenda Barking from “Floppy And The Puppies”, although she’s a fanatic for all pets, not just cats.
- Creepy Crows: The Rook King from the episode of the same name is an anthropomorphic rook (a kind of bird closely related to crows) with sorcerous powers who keeps normal (non-anthropomorphic) rooks around as his minions.
- Crystal Ball: The mystic Morbid from “Code Calling” uses one, despite how out of place it is in the episode’s Mayincatec setting.
- Down in the Dumps: In “Clutterland Band”, Nadim and Biff visit Clutterland, a small Traveling Landmass covered in garbage.
- Dressed to Plunder: The pirates seen in “HMS Sweet Tooth” are all wearing stereotypical pirate garb.
- Edutainment Show: The show was meant to teach British children about grammar, as well as a few other things (such as some loosely-defined “elements of storytelling”) one might find in an elementary school ELA class. This was mainly accomplished through the use of extra segments at the beginning and end of episodes which were usually only tangentially related to the episode’s plot.
- Elemental Plane: In “Dragon Land”, the worlds in the eponymous video game consist of the Land Of Mud, the Land Of Water, and the Land Of Ice, each one obviously themed around one element. (There’s also presumably a few other elemental worlds, as Wilma and Nadim skip a few levels on their way to beating the game.)
- Evil Poacher: Nora Lockemup from “Biff Of The Jungle” is intent on stuffing rare animals in cages and selling them to the highest bidder. She ends up having a change of heart after being forced to spend some time in a cage herself.
- Fairy Tale Episode: In “Master Hansel And Miss Gretel”, Anneena and Kipper are transported into the world of “Hansel And Gretel”, and have to Genre Savvy their way to a happy ending.
- Family Theme Naming: Wilf and Wilma’s names are both semi-rare variants on the name “Will”.
- Fantasy Keepsake: At the end of most episodes, the children will find that an item from their latest adventure has been brought back with them, usually having shrunk in the process (for instance, in “The Demon Drill” a ribbon that was long enough to stretch around an entire tool store becomes a ribbon that fits in Nadim’s pocket and barely makes it around one piece of paper). Anything obviously fantastical becomes a corresponding mundane object- a Magic Staff turns into a non-magical plastic toy staff, a giant golden artifact similarly becomes a gold-colored toy of an artifact, and an umbrella that was literally drawn into existence becomes a small piece of paper with a drawing of an umbrella on it.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The titular magic key can take the children to worlds filled with all sorts of different magical beings- they’ve seen trolls, dragons and knights, wizards and witches, and stranger things such as a world populated by sentient tools.
- Fantastic Racism: The different types of tools in Tool World generally do not like each other and refuse to work together. Somehow, they get over all their prejudice immediately once Nadim gives them a speech about teamwork (along with a little bit of incentive to work together).
- Fisher King: “Tumbleweed Desert” features Mickey Gringone (yes, that’s really his name), whose emotional state controls the environment- by the start of the episode, he’d fallen into a deep depression, and as a result the sun had stopped shining (mostly) and the desert has frozen over.
- Flying Car: Zandoodle from “Zandoodle And The Wheezlebang” invented the Wizmobile, a Magitek one.
- Flying Seafood Special: In “The Patchworker”, fish are seen flying down the roads as one of the signs that Patchwork Land hasn’t quite been put together right.
- Fountain of Youth: This is naturally featured in “The Fountain Of Youth”. Oddly, it’s not a good thing- even a tiny sip from it will cause the drinker to revert to being a baby, and the underground stream that feeds it has started seeping into the wells that a nearby village drinks from. Fortunately, its effects can be perfectly counteracted by water from the Fountain Of Age.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: In “Master Hansel And Miss Gretel”, the titular story ends up being fractured pretty badly, due mostly to the interference of Kipper, who keeps trying to be Genre Savvy but failing due to not remembering how the story goes.
- The Game Come to Life: In “Dragon Land”, the key transports Wilma and Nadim into the titular video game. Given what we get to see of the game’s gameplay (boring and pathetically easy, with players being able to skip to the end from the third level and potentially the first given that the method of skipping didn’t seem level-specific), it’s a mystery why anyone would actually play it.
- Gender-Blender Name: Just like in the books, one of the main characters is a girl named “Biff”.
- Giant Flyer: The space storks from “Lug And The Giant Storks” are decently larger than a human, but somehow still able to fly.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: The Queen Of Hearts, from the episode of the same name, is exactly as crazy and demanding as you’d expect, right down to handing out execution sentences like candy on Halloween (although as this is a childrens’ cartoon, none of those sentences actually get carried out).
- Humans by Any Other Name: In one episode, the children encounter a giant who refers to normal-sized humans as “Knee Nibblers”.
- Inconsistent Coloring: Among the tool people of Tool World are one male pair of pliers who switches from being entirely blue
◊ to having a blue bottom but a green top◊, depending on the shot. - Insubstantial Ingredients: About 50% of the ingredients the wizard Zandoodle uses in his spells consists of stuff like moonlight and ground stardust. (The other 50% consists of engine oil and screws).
- Intangible Theft: In “The Sound Monster”, the eponymous being is able to remove the sound an object produces (which takes the form of a floating ball of green light). Normally, they only borrow the sound for a few minutes before returning it, but by the time of the episode they’d started accidentally returning the wrong sounds, leading to the island where they live being filled with Sound Defects.
- Intrepid Fictioneer: The key has occasionally transported the children into fictional worlds- Anneena and Kipper ended up meeting Hansel and Gretel in one episode, and the kids have been transported into stories they’d just made up at least twice, in “The Giant And The Knee Nibblers” and “Underwater World”.
- Invisibility: Chip is turned invisible against his will in “The Rook King”- the children had been subjected to a Becoming the Costume spell, and apparently that was how the spell processed anyone who wasn’t wearing a costume.
- Living Toys: The Patchworker (from the episode of the same name) is an animate, person-sized cloth doll.
- Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Floppy will often say "I wish they/he/she would (find a way to solve their problem) before the key glows.
- Magic Staff: The Rook King wields a wooden staff whose head is shaped to resemble the head of a corvid, which he uses to curse the main children into Becoming the Costume. This appears to be the entire source of his powers- once the transformed children manage to take it from him, he’s not only unable to wield magic but unable to even command his minions properly.
- Magitek: Zandoodle from “Zandoodle And The Wheezlebang” is an “inventor wizard” who makes magical technology for a living.
- Mayincatec: Wilma and Wilf are transported to (a very inaccurate version of) ancient Mesoamerica in “Code Calling”.
- Me's a Crowd: In “The Anneena Academy”, Anneena finds herself in a strange dimension where everyone looks exactly like her. Wilf, who the key brought along for the ride, spends most of the episode trying to figure out which Anneena is the real one.
- Multiple Head Case: The Sound Monster (from the episode of the same name) is a two-headed being based on a stereo whose two heads each have separate personalities, names, and even genders- there’s the kind, female Tweeter and the belligerent male Woofer. It’s not clear how exactly control over their body is divided.
- Mystery Episode: “The Cream Cake Mystery”, in which Chip and Nadim have to catch a robber that targets bakeries while detective Jake Blake proves himself to be … less than helpful. The reason Jake Blake isn’t very helpful is that he’s actually the culprit.
- Nearly Normal Animal: Floppy the dog has an Inner Monologue which the viewers are privy to, but otherwise acts like a normal dog.
- Overly Long Name: One episode features a “space elf” named “Uppity Downity Hoppity Skippity Flippity Spinnity Jiggity Lug”, or just “Lug” for short.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Nadim and Biff manage to do this accidentally in the episode where they visit Tool World, courtesy of the tool people not knowing what humans are. The tools thinking Biff is a pair of pliers is at least vaguely excusable (the clothes she was wearing did match the color scheme of the actual plier-people, and it’s not like she resembled any other type of tool more), but them believing Nadim is a drill because he has an icon of one on his t-shirt is pure plot-mandated stupidity.
- Pen Pals: “The Anneena Academy” opens with Anneena trying to write a letter to a school-assigned pen pal introducing herself. In writing it she struggles to think of anything special about herself to describe, kicking off the episode’s plot.
- Pun-Based Creature: In “The Sound Monster”, Woofer unleashes “sound bites”, which take the form of semitransparent floating orbs with giant mouths that seemingly move forward by chomping the air, to chase after the children.
- Rapid Aging: Water from the Fountain Of Age (seen in “The Fountain Of Youth”) causes this. If given to someone who previously drank from the Fountain Of Youth, it’ll restore them to the exact age they were before drinking from Youth; its effects on someone who hadn’t drunk from the Fountain Of Youth first are unknown.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Detective Jake Blake from “The Cream Cake Mystery” speaks in rhyme, as does the unseen robber. This is actually a hint that they’re one and the same.
- Rhyming Names: Jake Blake, who also speaks in rhyme.
- Robot Dog: Nadim attempts to assemble one in “Nadim’s Machine”, although he is initially unable to put it together properly due to not reading the instructions.
- School Play: In “Master Hansel And Miss Gretel”, Kipper’s class is putting on “Hansel And Gretel” as a play. When he has trouble rehearsing it, the magic key tries to help by sending him (along with Anneena) into the world of the story.
- Sentient Vehicle: The unnamed world Biff and Chip visit in “The Flying Circus” is inhabited by sentient airplanes.
- Silly Animal Sound: In “The Sound Monster”, due to the sounds of the world being all mixed up, Floppy finds himself meowing instead of barking.
- Sizeshifting: “Lug And The Giant Storks” features a magical pool of water which causes anything and anyone submerged in it to (temporarily) grow to giant size.
- Sound Defect: In “The Sound Monster”, due to the effect of the titular monster, most of the sounds on the island around it have been randomly swapped around, leading to such things as crying sounding like squeaky toys and fire trucks sounding like crunching chips.
- Space Episode: In “Lug And The Giant Storks”, Kipper and Wilma (and Floppy) find themselves on another planet, where they have to contend with giant Space Storks.
- Spexico: The Moochacha family from “Tumbleweed Desert” live and breathe this trope. They wear sombreros and their home is located in a very Mexican-style desert, yet castanets (which the show seems to think are South American for some reason) are among the musical instruments they play and they dance flamenco-style.
- Spot the Impostor: In “The Anneena Academy”, Wilf is forced to pick out the real Anneena from the inhabitants of a dimension where everyone resembles her.
- Sssssnake Talk: Slimy Simon, the talking snake from “Floppy And The Puppies”, lovessss to sssstretch out hissss “s”esssss.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero: One episode features an Evil Poacher named Nora Lockemup.
- Stewed Alive: The trolls in “Troll Talk” capture Biff, Wilf, and Gran with the intent of cooking them in a giant stewpot, although by the end of the episode they’ve been convinced to make vegetable stew instead.
- Stock Femur Bone: In “Code Calling”, the mystic Morbid throws a bunch of small femur-shaped bones to determine the future. Floppy the dog can’t resist stealing them.
- Talking Animal: Brenda Barking from “Floppy And The Puppies” is a Crazy Pet Lady whose pets can all inexplicably speak.
- Title Theme Tune: Every verse of the theme song ends with the phrase “the magic key”.
- Totally Radical: “The Cream Cake Mystery” connects poetry to rap for seemingly no reason other than to be “hip” to the show’s audience.
- Traveling Landmass: Clutterland is a floating garbage-covered island that is propelled through the sea by a bunch of people named either “Mary” or “Bob” rowing. (No, it doesn’t make any more sense in context.)
- Under the Sea: The episode “Underwater World” naturally takes place in a (magically-breathable) sea,.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: In “Nadim’s Machine”, a Corrupt Corporate Executive has turned his workers into robots to increase efficiency, and subjects Wilf and Floppy to the same fate. Fortunately, Nadim manages to figure out how to reverse the process and free them.
- Vicious Vac: In the episode “Zandoodle And The Wheezlebang”, a wizard (Zandoodle) attempts to give a vacuum cleaner some Magitek improvements but inadvertently turns it into a monster set on sucking up everything in sight.
- Visible Odor: In “HMS Sweet Tooth”, the delicious scent of chocolate is represented by streams of brown vapor wafting out of the titular ship’s cargo hold.
- A Weighty Aesop: In “HMS Sweet Tooth”, Biff’s inability to resist the allure of chocolate ends up getting her and her friends attacked by pirates (It Makes Sense in Context). By the end of the episode, she’s learned to be more moderate.
