YMMV / Fantastic Max

• Accidental Aesop: "Cowboy Max" seems to generally suggest that you shouldn't underestimate someone just because they're old, and, conversely, that you're never too old to do what you love. Hoot Gypsum was fired from the rodeo due to being too old, yet he still proves to be extremely skilled and passionate despite his age. He even proves instrumental in saving the day thanks to his skills, but no one ever directly comments on how he managed this despite being an old man.
• Funny Moments:
  • In "All in a Babe's Work", Max tells AB that Magic has just told him, in Baby Talk, that he wants to go on a space adventure with him.
  AB: You got all of that from "goo goo?"
  Max: Yep!
  AB: *Aside Glance* ...What an economical language.
  • In "Journey to the Center of My Sister," Zoey's heart is treated like an exclusive club. The bouncer starts falling over himself to let AB inside: "We've never seen an AB before! Most of our guests are Os!"
  • In "Cowboy Max," the gang are riding space ponies. Or at least, Max and FX are. AB, on the other hand...
  AB: [galloping along on his hands and knees while the pony sits on top of him] I THINK I DID SOMETHING WRONG!
• Genius Bonus: "Movie Star Max" features Max dancing in front of a newspaper with faux-Japanese characters on it—a reference that would fly over the heads of people not versed in movie props.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This wouldn't be the last time that Nancy Cartwright would voice the Cowardly Sidekick best friend of an adventurous one-year-old baby in a blue shirt and a diaper.
  • In the episode "Movie Star Max" one of the films has Max play a Captain Ersatz of Indiana Jones named Montana Max.
• Retroactive Recognition: Zoe's voice actress Elisabeth Harnois would go onto do both Ki and Morgan Brody.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Mother Goose herself in "Cooking Mother's Goose" comes off as quite unsympathetic in her relationship with the Boogieman. Her reasoning for locking him up is that she feels like his music "doesn't fit in" with her fairytale land, and that the storybook denizens just can't help dancing to it and forget their roles whenever he plays it. The first seems to just be her blatantly disliking the Boogieman for being different. And while the second would make sense if the Boogieman had Magic Music that he was using irresponsibly, there's no indication he has any special powers related to making people dance—they seem to just choose to dance to his music, including Mother Goose herself, making it seem like they're blaming him for their inability to control themselves. Yet Max ends up agreeing with her that the Boogieman can't be left to run around the storybook world, so that "other kids can enjoy nursery rhymes," and even though the person causing most of the chaos is really XS. The Boogieman himself is clearly supposed to be at least a little sympathetic, given that he's shown to have a Friendless Background, and he gets a happy ending moving to Twinkle, Twinkle, where the dance-loving Twinklarians will absolutely appreciate his groove. But while Mother Goose is supposed to be his Reasonable Authority Figure counterpart, she ends up coming off as a bit of a fuddy-duddy.
  • Max himself at the end of "The Baby Who Fell to Earth." Zoey proves herself competent and helpful by working together with AB and FX to save Max, saves the day with her video game skills, and she's actively excited to learn that there's a whole universe out there that Max explores and is eager to be a part of it and join him on his adventures. Yet Max hypnotizes her into thinking it was All Just a Dream anyway, for absolutely no given reason. It's done to preserve the status quo, of course, but it ends up making Max look self-centered for not wanting to share with his sister, even though she both proved herself up to it and it gave her a reason to genuinely be friends with him.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The "(Ha, HA!) Space Gypsies!" from "All in a Babe's Work" would never be given a pass in the 21st century. Even if they do end up being ultimately friendly, they still play into a lot of harmful stereotypes, such as being unrepentant thieves who take children and raise them to be like them, not to mention their spaceship being a literal flying caravan.
  • "Stitches in Time" features a time-traveling Max briefly meeting the now extremely controversial Christopher Columbus, and also features some extremely stereotypical depictions of Native Americans. It sticks out especially since the other Time Travel shenanigans in the episode involve the Trojan War (about which so little is known that the show just plays with its mythological depiction) and an imaginary medieval wizard named Pumpernickel, i.e. imaginary history instead of real history.
• Values Resonance: The same "All in a Babe's Work," however, has the leader of the day-care center be a man heavily implied to be ex-military, who calls all the kids "little soldiers." Instead of a mean Drill Sergeant Nasty, however, he's shown to be a kind man who genuinely loves caring for kids, when, more than 30 years later, it's still considered unusual for a man to be in early childcare.

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