Three Delivery (2008) is a Canadian-American animated series that appeared on Nicktoons Network and YTV, and was produced as a joint collaboration with Animation Collective and FatKat Studios. It ran for a single season of 26 episodes.
It centers on the staff of the Chinese restaurant Wu's Garden: Calvin Wu, his mother Mei Hua (who is mostly referred to as Nana), Calvin's son Barney, and the three delivery kids Sue, Sid and Tobey, who have more to do than deliver takeout around Chinatown. Years ago, Kong Li unleashed the powers of a magical cookbook. The pages — which contain magical recipes — were scattered all over Chinatown. A spell was placed on the area by Mei Hua to keep the worst effects confined to Chinatown and to protect the rest of the world. Nana and the Three Delivery trio are in a race to get the magical recipe pages before Kong Li does, and endangers the world.
The title of the show is a clever pun on the facts that the trio delivers takeout to Muggles and magic cookbook pages to Nana, and that their cook, Barney, is overly excited about the fact that Wu's Restaurant has free delivery.
Tropes:
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Sid's birthday features a Fountain of Youth cake recipe, young!Nana being tricked into helping Kong Li and all three delivery kids nearly being killed by Kong Li.
- Affectionate Nickname: Sid calls Sue "mae mae", which seems to mean "sister" or "little sister" in context, while she calls him "bro".
- Alternate Universe: Sid's wish causes one.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Sue crushes on Barney. Barney crushes on Tiffany Cho. Tobey crushes on some girls who simply uses him as entertainment.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Tobey. When he's in animal form, it tends to be worse.
- Audible Blink: Mostly in reaction to the weird/bizarre things Tobey says and does.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Most prominent in Sue and Sid's relationship with Tobey. They both find him incredibly annoying but they take him being threatened very poorly. A prime example is in episode 4: when Monkey-Tobey shows up, Sue assumes that he's responsible for hurting the real Tobey and is ready to beat him up until Sid figures out the truth.
- Badass Bookworm: Sue, who studies when they're not fighting or working, and applies what she learns.
- Badass Normal: The trio. They have no special powers; they're just trained in martial arts.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Sid discovers this after drinking a recipe-powered smoothie.
- Big Brother Instinct: Though the main trio all seem to be the same age, they're fiercely protective of each other and get worried when they can't contact each other.
- Brother–Sister Team: Sue and Sid are siblings.
- The Big Guy: Mr. Wu, although calling him, Nana and the trio a Five-Man Band would be stretching things.
- Big Eater: Again, Mr. Wu.
- Chekhov's Gun
- Conveniently an Orphan: All three.
- Cool Old Lady; Nana, who trained Sid, Sue, and Tobey to fight evil.
- Crazy-Prepared: Nana has given the kids bikes outfitted with things they may need in the course of their cookbook quest.
- Cymbal-Banging Monkey: Who uses magic fortune cookies that cause transformations.
- Deflector Shields / Containment Field: There's a magic force field around Chinatown protecting the world from what happens inside it.
- The Ditz: Tobey is the one with a blond streak, both figuratively and literally.
- Establishing Shot: Wu's Garden in particular.
- Every Episode Ending: Each episode ends with Nana and the trio winding down for a bit in the garden behind the restaurant. They put the recipe back in the cookbook, then return for one more quick gag before the credits.
- Evil Laugh: Kong Li does this when he has the chance.
- Face Doodling: Tobey does this with duck sauce to a sleeping Sue and Sid in episode 15.
- Forced Transformation: Some of the recipes, like the fortune cookie one in episode 4 and some of Nana's own home-brewed cookies, transform people into animals.
- Friendly Local Chinatown: Well, friendly until the weird magic stuff starts happening.
- Goofy Print Underwear
- Gratuitous Chinese: Chinese phrases crop up infrequently, even when there's an English equivalent.
- Great Big Book of Everything: The cookbook of spells.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The three delivery kids end up looping Friday the 13th. Trying to fix it doesn't go well for most of the episode.
- Happily Adopted: All three delivery kids by Nana. None of them have fond memories of the orphanage she found them in and they all absolutely adore her. In the Alternate Universe above, Sue
sounds about ready to cry when Nana doesn't recognize her. - Idiosyncratic Wipes: The scene transitions feature Chinese characters and one of the three doing martial arts poses.
- It's All My Fault: When Sue's magic tutor in "The Tutor" turns out to be Kong Li, who captures Sid and plans to feed him to a crab demon, Sue claims this. Arguably she's right, though she does manage to fix things.
- Lethal Chef: Calvin. Though arguably, anybody who gets a recipe from the magical cookbook could be so.
- Le Parkour
- Luke, I Am Your Father: the final episode reveals that the villian Kong Li, believes Tobi to be his son. Even carrying a picture of him as a child he says he took. Tobi has no memory of this
- Martial Arts and Crafts
- Muggles: Barney [and possibly his father] are unaware of Nana's mission with the three delivery kids.
- Never Mess with Granny: Mei Hua is a sweet old lady who has significant martial arts prowess, and is quite capable of using it when the situation calls for it.
- Opening Narration: Describing the show's premise; Nana and Kong Li are former mage classmates. The latter turned to evil, and the former trained the titular trio to fight him and protect Chinatown and the world.
- Orphanage of Fear: Maybe not fear exactly but the orphanage where the three delivery kids lived before being adopted by Nana was definitely not pleasant and Sid still describes a birthday where everything goes wrong and a Fountain of Youth cake is unleashed on several Chinatown residents as great because it's not being celebrated at the orphanage.
- Our Dragons Are Different: As might be expected for a show that takes place in Chinatown, the dragons are of the Chinese variety.
- Parental Abandonment: Sue, Sid and Tobey are all orphans.
- Disappeared Dad: Nana is Calvin's mother, but there's no sign of his father. Given that his mother is a Cool Old Lady, it's probably a safe assumption he has died.
- Missing Mom: Calvin is Barney's dad, but there's no sign of his mother.
- Precious Puppies: Most of the dogs on the show, including Dog-Tobey.
- Prophecies Are Always Right: Nana raised Sid, Sue and Tobey in response to one.
- Reset Button: Finding the recipe of the episode and brewing the antidote generally acts as a partial one but the Alternate Universe above had to be wished back to normal.
- Roofhopping
- Superpower Silly Putty: Tobey's an animal, take a shot.
- Unusual Euphemism: "We're gonna be shrimp toast!"/"You're gonna be shrimp toast!"
- You Watch Too Much X: Inverted in episode 3. When a monster ends up running scared from Sid, he expresses surprise and remarks that the monster needs to read more comic books.
