Jungle Cubs

Jungle Cubs was an animated series produced by Disney for ABC in 1996. It was based on their 1967 feature film The Jungle Book, but set in the youth of the animal characters. The show was a hit, running for two seasons in syndication before moving its re-runs to the Disney Channel. The show was last seen on Toon Disney, but was taken off the schedule in 2001 and has not been seen since on the U.S. airwaves but probably will return to Toon Disney in late 2008 or early 2009. The show did air in the United Kingdom on Disney Cinemagic and in Latin America until removed in early 2006.

Premise
The stars of Disney's 1967 animated film The Jungle Book were regressed to cubs for this syndicated animated series. Disney's The Jungle Book's Jungle Cubs suggested that when they were younger, both the good and evil animals lived together in relative peace.

Each of the characters were given distinct characteristics which reflected their future personalities as seen in The Jungle Book; this creative idea further tied the show in with its film predecessor. Uptight a little mancub named Mowgli the jungle wolf-boy, panther Bagheera, free spirit bear Baloo, headstrong tiger Shere Khan, wild orangutan Prince Louie, neurotic elephant Hathi, and hypnotic snake Kaa all returned from the film, putting aside their differences to live and learn together. The show gave a female elephant named Winifred a prominent role; she was (Colonel) Hathi's wife in The Jungle Book.

The cubs brave a variety of jungle dangers, often matching wits with sneaky vultures Arthur and Cecil, the villainous tiger Raja and the wicked wolf pack Akela. Living up to new federal regulations for educational television, Jungle Cubs offer lessons on friendship, self-respect, and other healthy traits, crafted for an audience of young children.

In the second season of the show, many of the cubs become slightly older and more distanced from one another. (Many are also given different voice actors.) And, although they still remain good friends, they are getting more and more busy with their own lives and spending less time at their fort, the Cub House (Louie's future palace). Louie becomes wrapped up in being King of the Jungle and is no longer so close to Baloo, Bagheera becomes more serious and uptight than before, and Hathi begins spending more time with Winifred than with the other Cubs. The biggest change, however, is Shere Khan. He spends a lot of time hunting, as Bagheera and Kaa do, and as the series progresses, begins to become more annoyed with the other Cubs than before. He even attempts to overthrow Louie at one point, using Kaa (who didn't really get a choice in the matter) as a henchman. Kaa, as well as Baloo (with the exception of his friendship with Louie), doesn't really change much. He still remains sneaky and uses his hypnotism power.

Character biographies

 * Mowgli: A little mancub lives in this jungle.


 * Bagheera: He is a sensible and solemn panther who rarely gets into trouble. He has a preoccupation with being clean. Bagheera is affectionately known as Baggy and is the youngest in the group.


 * Baloo: A caring and happy go lucky bear. He likes to play with his friends and sometimes plays tricks on Bagheera in order to snap the latter out of his seriousness.


 * Louie: Baloo's best friend. He is very physically active, spending a great deal of his time in trees, and wants to become king of the jungle one day. Louie is an orangutan.


 * Shere Khan: A stuck up Bengal tiger. He often tries to lord over the other animals, but his confidence sometimes suffers when faced with actual problems.


 * Kaa: A young python who wants to hypnotize other animals, but his skills at hypnosis are currently erratic at best.


 * Hathi: An elephant who attempts to keep the pals in order but is known to stammer when under stress. Later, he develops a huge crush on Winifred, who is his wife in the The Jungle Book.


 * Arthur and Cecil: Two recurring vultures who are constantly hoping for one of the cubs to die so they can eat them; however, they also provide some comic relief and are never seen as a real threat.

Voice Actors

 * Charles Adler as Mowgli
 * Pamela Adlon as Baloo
 * Dee Bradley Baker as Bagheera
 * Jim Cummings as Kaa/Fred/Jed/Raja the Evil Tiger from the Goofy Cartoon: Tiger Trouble/WhiteHood
 * Elizabeth Daily as Bagheera/Duchess the baby jaguar/ crow
 * Stephen Furst as Hathi/ rooster
 * David Lander as Arthur the vulture/Tick Tock Ol' Mugger the Hungry Crocodile from the Peter Pan
 * Tress MacNeille as Mahra
 * Jason Marsden as Shere Khan/Prince Louie
 * Michael McKean as Cecil the vulture
 * Rob Paulsen as Akela
 * Kath Soucie as Winifred
 * Cree Summer as Shanti/Colonel Hathi's Son
 * Cheri Dennis as Aja
 * Bill Scott as Mango the peacock/Amos the rhino/fox/wolf
 * Bill Farmer as rhino/vulture/deer/turtle/Oag the hippo
 * Nancy Kulp as hippo/bull rhino/fisherman cow/human/deer

Born to be Wild
This DVD featured three episodes, interspaced with clips of the animals as adults, with Baloo narrating the stories to Mowgli, Bagheera, Kaa, Hahti, King Louie and Shere Kahn as he reminisces about their childhood.


 * A Night in the Wasteland - Young Shere Khan climbs into trouble at the top of Pinnacle Rock.
 * How the Panther Lost Its Roar - Bagheera loses his voice before finding his courage.
 * Red Dogs - A pack of dholes terrorize the jungle while Baloo, Kaa and Shere Kahn are missing.

Trivia

 * Another carryover from the film was a remix of the Oscar-nominated tune "The Bare Necessities," which served as Jungle Cubs' theme song, performed by the late Lou Rawls.
 * This series is among the shortest and most unknown shows in the Disney company.
 * According to this series, Louie wasn't self named King of the monkeys; throughout the series, he is referred as Prince Louie, and it is noted that he will be king one day.
 * The series has several episodes inspired by Rudyard Kipling's tales that never made it to the big screen, including "Red Dogs" and "The Treasure of the Middle Jungle." In the book, these were some of the adventures Mowgli lived while living in the jungle.
 * The series features many animals that are indeed found in Indian jungles but were never mentioned in the original movie or in Kipling's book, including the rhinoceros, the pangolin, the Four-horned Antelope and the striped hyena. Other animals, however, were misplaced, such as the Babirusa, which appears in "Benny and Clyde," the fish eagle from "A Night in the Wasteland," Oag the hippo, or the Asiatic Cheetah that appears in "Shere Bliss." The baboons, which seem to be based upon geladas, are also misplaced (however, geladas actually did live in India in prehistoric times).
 * The length of Kaa the python varies between (or even during) episodes, sometimes being very short, and sometimes exceedingly long.
 * In Kipling's book, Bagheera the panther was born in a menagerie. In Jungle Cubs, however, it seems that he was born in the wild.
 * As the series progressed, more "human like" items were shown, and the animals did more human things; for example, in "Hathi's Makeover" two wolf cubs are seeing playing some kind of chess game. In "Kasaba Ball," some signs with words written on them are seen, which were obviously not written by humans, and even, in this same episode, Shere Khan runs on his hindlegs, something no tiger could do.
 * The accents of many of the characters are different from their adult counterparts, most notably Bagheera and Shere Khan, who have a British accent as adults, yet North American accents as cubs.
 * The last episode, "Sleepless in the Jungle," features two elements from the Disney movie; the rock of the wolf council, and the song The Bare Necessities sung for the first time by Baloo and Louie.
 * Oddly, in the series, Baloo has blue fur instead of gray fur like in the films and books.