The Wuzzles



Disney's Wuzzles is an American animated television series created for Saturday morning television, and was first broadcast on September 14, 1985 on CBS. An idea of Michael Eisner for his new Disney television animation studio, the Wuzzles are animal creatures composed of half of one animal and half of another. Only 13 episodes of Wuzzles were produced, making it one of the shortest running animated series produced by Disney. A second season was planned to be made, but the future episodes were never made due to the death of Bill Scott (the voice of Moosel). Scott's death, however, did not stop a second season of Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears (which also starred Bill Scott) which premiered the same day as Wuzzles. One season later, Wuzzles moved to ABC (which was eventually sold to Disney) for reruns, and disappeared from network television after that.

Premise
Wuzzles features a variety of short, rounded animal characters (each called a Wuzzle, which means to mix up). Each is a roughly even, and colorful, mix of two different animal species (as the theme song mentions, "...livin' with a split personality"), and all the characters sport wings on their backs, although only Bumblelion and Butterbear are seemingly capable of flight. All of the Wuzzles live on the Isle of Wuz. Double species are not limited to the Wuzzles themselves. From the appleberries they eat to the telephonograph in the home, or a luxury home called a castlescraper, nearly everything on Wuz is mixed together in the same way the Wuzzles are. The characters in the show were marketed extensively. The characters were featured in children's books, as poseable figures and plush toys (similar to Care Bears), and in a board game. Disney premiered two animated series on the same day, Wuzzles and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, but on different networks. The Wuzzles was on CBS, and Gummi Bears was on NBC. Although Gummi Bears was a successful series, Wuzzles was not, at least in the US. However, it does have a fan base today. It was a much bigger success in the United Kingdom where the pilot episode aired as a theatrical featurette. In the United Kingdom, Wuzzles and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears were originally screened on the same channel Independent Television|ITV in 1985/1986, therefore both series enjoyed high popularity, and Wuzzles was also repeated on the BBC in 1987. Reruns of the show were aired on both Disney Channel and Toon Disney. Lead vocal on the theme song for Wuzzles is performed by songwriter Stephen Geyer.