Happy Tree Friends



Happy Tree Friends is a Flash cartoon series by Mondo Mini Shows, created by Kenn Navarro, Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo and Warren Graff. Since its debut the show has become a popular internet phenomenon and has won a cult following.

As indicated on the official site, the show is "not recommended for small children". Notwithstanding the cute appearance of its characters, the show is extremely violent, with every episode featuring blood, gore, and violent deaths.

While the violence of these deaths is comparable to that of The Itchy & Scratchy Show (the short cartoon featured on The Simpsons), the portrayal of death in Happy Tree Friends is more graphic and anatomically correct, depicting bloodshed and dismemberment in more vivid, exaggerated detail.

The show is nearly free of dialogue; however, when the characters do speak, their words are severely garbled. Though it is obvious what each character's reaction is, their words can barely be understood, the exceptions to this are Pop and Lumpy; they have garbled speech as well, but can actually be understood on most occasions. According to the website, the idea for Happy Tree Friends was conceived by Rhode Montijo when he drew a yellow rabbit, slightly resembling the character Cuddles, on a piece of paper and wrote "Resistance Is Futile" underneath it.

Beginning
While working on Mondo Mini Shows, Rhode Montijo drew on a little piece of scrap paper a character who would later become Shifty. He then drew a yellow rabbit that bore some resemblance to Cuddles on a piece of paper and wrote "Resistance Is Futile" underneath it. The drawing (of Cuddles) made several employees laugh. In 1999 Mondo gave Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo and Kenn Navarro a chance to do a short for them. They came up with a short named Banjo Frenzy which featured a dinosaur (an earlier version of Lumpy) killing three woodland animals (earlier versions of Cuddles, Giggles, and Toothy) with a banjo. From there Mondo gave them their own internet series, which they named Happy Tree Friends. They got new writers and animators to work on the show.

Success
Shortly after its internet debut in 2000, Happy Tree Friends became an unexpected success, getting over 15 million hits each month, and being shown in film festivals. In some countries, the episodes can be seen on television. They can be seen on the French, Dutch, German, Polish, Filipino, Brazilian, Lithuanian, Italian, British and Latin American MTV channels, the Greek Mad Music Channel, the Russian 2x2 channel, Canadian television channel Razer, American television channel G4, and on the Australian Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) network. On June 10, 2005, the shorts were shown during "Attack of the Show!". A series, Happy Tree Friends and Friends, began to air on August 29, 2005, as part of the late night Midnight Spank block, owned by G4. The series also features Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Retarded Animal Babies and Angry Kid. The series has been reformed into its own show, rather than as a part of a compilation as before. Happy Tree Friends has also gained a collection of Audibles and an "IMVironment" for Yahoo!'s instant messenger. It is featured on many websites on which flash cartoons can be watched, such as Newgrounds, YouTube, Atom Films, Purple Twinkie, Albino Black Sheep and the official Happy Tree Friends website. On select 2007 Ozzfests, some Happy Tree Friends episodes were shown on the big screen.

Encouraged by the show's success, its creators have released four DVDs (First Blood, Second Serving, Third Strike and Winter Break) containing the episodes shown on the website and others that have not been released. A collection consisting of the first three DVDs and five bonus episodes, Overkill, has also been released. Two episodes, Stealing the Spotlight and Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya!, are only available in the Happy Tree Friends: Winter Break DVD.

Happy Tree Friends is currently one of the most downloaded iTunes podcasts and over 1,000 fan-made videos have appeared on YouTube.

TV Series
Happy Tree Friends gained its own TV show in 2006. It was first shown at Comic-Con, 2006 and some of the segments were shown on the website a few weeks prior the show's premiere. The Happy Tree Friends TV series premiered on September 25, 2006 at midnight on G4. Each half hour episode of the TV series contains three 7 minute segments. So far 39 segments have been aired, making 13 full episodes for Season 1. Pictures of the first 6 episodes can be seen on G4's website. The Canadian channel Razer currently airs the show in syndication. The show is also broadcast on MTV in Europe and Latin America. It has also shown on Paramount Comedy 1 in the UK from May 11, 2007 for a short time and on MTV One in the UK from September 7, 2007. According to the writers a second season is planned, but it is unknown when or if it will air.



Show Characteristics
All of the show's main characters are anthropomorphic woodland creatures. Many of them show two front large buckteeth when they smile. All the Happy Tree Friends except for Lumpy and Sniffles have the same pink Care Bear or Care Bear Cousin heart-shaped noses. In early episodes, most characters played the roles of children doing childish games. However, as the series progressed the age concept was dropped, and now characters act variously like children, teenagers and adults in different episodes. The only characters who are unaffected by this concept are Pop and Cub, who always act like an adult and a child respectively.

At the beginning of each episode, the characters are typically found in everyday situations. However, these situations always escalate into violence and the inevitable deaths of those involved and/or innocent bystanders, mostly because of very unfortunate, surprising accidents with otherwise harmless instruments. The show's character sometimes appear not to notice other character's deaths/injuries, despite clear indications (such as blood coming out of the latter's mouths), or they seem to quickly overcome their fellows' deaths. The only episodes where none of the characters died were "Nuttin' but the Tooth", "Out on a Limb", "Asbestos I Can Do", and possibly "House Warming". Other than those, every episode has had at least one death. Kenn Navarro has stated that, despite all of deaths in the show, no character is going to be killed directly by a gun as that would be "too easy".

The continuity of the series does not seem to be affected by the frequent deaths of the characters, as they always appear alive and well in episodes subsequent to those in which they were killed.

Each episode starts with introduction credits resembling a children's book, which portray the show's logo, the episode's name, which is usually a pun, and cast. Internet episodes have a typical duration of less than three minutes. Usually only a few of the characters are used in a single episode, but occasionally larger episodes have been released where most of the characters appear. TV episodes last about half an hour, having three segments of about seven minutes. Each episode ends with a moral that has some (or sometimes no) connection to the story.

Currently, new episodes are released once a month. An episode list can be seen on the official website, which contains a list of older episodes available on demand from the site. However, some of these episodes are only available for a limited time, as this list is exchanged with other episodes every other week.

Although most of the characters are mammalian there are few that are not. Those characters are Sneaky, The Super-Jellyfish, The Super-Spider and The Super-Robot. This leaves the possibility that more non mammalian characters will be featured in future episodes.

Fall Out Boy Music Video
Fall Out Boy's music video for "The Carpal Tunnel of Love" is an episode of Happy Tree Friends. Fall Out Boy is featured in the music video, appearing as cartoon bears, along with Cuddles, Giggles, Nutty, Toothy and the Mole. Lumpy causes the death of all the characters in the video, including himself. All of them die the same type of graphic, bloody deaths that are featured in the TV show.

Characters
There are 21 main characters in the Happy Tree Friends series, all of which have unique personalities and appearances, but there have been many 'minor' characters that have appeared on the show, some appearing many times and some have only been brought into one episode. Recently, the creators of Happy Tree Friends announced that there will be more than one character added to Happy Tree Friends in the near future. Only one of them is planned to be in the show permanently. In March 2010, there was a poll for a new character to be on the show. Viewers had the choice of voting for Lammy or Truffles.

Video game
A video game titled Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm was planned for release on April 14, 2008. It is being developed by Stainless Games and Sega for Arcade on the and the PC. Writer Ken Pontac currently posts a blog on the Happy Tree Friends website telling fans about the adventures of the staff making the game.

Controversies
right Many parents have expressed concern about the graphic content of Happy Tree Friends. One parent even complained about the show in a letter to the Washington Post when she saw her 6-year old son watching the show.

The warning "(CV CARTOON VIOLENCE Not recommended for small children or big babies)" is displayed in two places on the home page of the Happy Tree Friends website in very small type in the bottom left hand corner, and in larger, but subdued type on the right hand side under the bulletin board section. Neither the "About the Show" nor the FAQ page indicates that the show is not appropriate for young children. However, the episodes themselves contain the warning in large font before the cartoon begins.

In February 2008 Russian Media Culture Protection Department (Rossvyazohrankultura, a regulatory body for TV in Russia) issued warnings about Happy Tree Friends and The Adventures of Big Jeff, claiming that the shows "promote violence and brutality, harm the psychic health and moral development of children, attack the social morality; all of this being a violation of license agreement". The department warned the 2x2 TV Channel, which broadcasts the show, to remove it from air to avoid legal issue. The channel appealed to the evaluation ordered to Versia company (versia.org), which denied the accusations. left

Music and sound-effects
Sound Engineer Jim Lively
 * The music featured before, after, and during each and every episode of Happy Tree Friends is composed by Jim Lively, the sound engineer for Happy Tree Friends. Lively has been in the sound business since the age of 16, and plans to continue his career of "making sounds for a living," as described by Jim Lively himself. Jim Lively primarily works in sound design and dialog editing, although he continues to mix music.

Foley Artist Francis Carr
 * Foley artist Francis Carr joined the team later on in development. Usually working with sound engineer Jim Lively, he has been able to expand his career. Francis Carr is also noted for being the voice of Russell.

Awards

 * Annecy International Animated Film Festival
 * 2003: Best Animated Short Film Made for the Internet for the episode Eye Candy
 * 2007: Best Animated Series For Adults for the episode From Hero To Eternity


 * Ottawa International Animation Festival
 * 2004: Best Animated Short Made For The Internet for the episode Out On A Limb
 * 2005: Best Animated Short Made For The Internet for the episode Mole in the City
 * 2007: Best Television Series For Adults for the episode Double Whammy Part 2