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 on Saturday mornings before moving its re-runs to Disney Channel. The show was seen on Toon Disney until its removal in 2009. It was airing on US television again on March 23, 2012, when reruns of the series started airing daily on the Disney Jr. channel. The show was removed from the Disney Jr. Channel on September 3, 2013. The show also aired in the United Kingdom on Disney Cinemagic until it was removed in 2009.
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. Level-headed panther Bagheera, free-spirited 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 Hathi's wife Winifred a prominent role.
The cubs brave a variety of jungle dangers, often matching wits with sneaky vultures Arthur and Cecil, the villainous baboons Ned, Jed & Fred and Mahra, and the wicked wolf pack leader Cain. 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, all of the cubs become slightly older, many also given different voice actors, although they still remain good friends, they also become more distanced from one another and are getting more and more busy with their own lives and spending less time at their fort, the Cub House (Louie's future palace). 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 becomes less involved and more antagonistic 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, doesn't really change much. He still remains sneaky and uses his hypnotism power.
The opening also changes for the second season. It ultimately ends with the cubs rolling into a ball and slamming into a tree, after which the show logo crashes down from above. The first season opening is pictured above.
The Jungle Cubs: Born to Be Wild (a compilation of episodes with Jungle Book cutscenes) was released on VHS in May 1997 and DVD on September 8, 2003, but only outside the United States.
The entire series was released on digital in SD format in the United States in 2016 on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, and Google Play. However, as of now, it has yet to be released on Disney+.
Gallery[]
The Jungle Cub kids from left to right: Shere Khan, Kaa, Bagheera, Baloo, Hathi and Louie
Jungle Cubs on middle left corner
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.
Despite the show's relative obscurity, Jungle Cubs, like many short-lived TV shows, developed a cult fan following.
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, implying that Louie comes from royalty.
The series has several episodes inspired by Rudyard Kipling's tales that never made it on the 1967 animated film, 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 (native to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi), which appears in "Benny and Clyde", the frequently seen toucan and the sloth that appears in "The Five Bananas" (both native to the Neotropics). 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.
Jim Cummings, the voice of Kaa throughout both seasons of Jungle Cubs, reprised his role once again for the 2003 sequel The Jungle Book 2, making him the longest-running voice actor in The Jungle Book franchise, as well as the only actor to have been in both the TV series and the feature films (except for the original).
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, though he likely could have escaped captivity as a cub.
As the series progressed, more human 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 Hathi, Bagheera and Shere Khan, who have British accents 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.
In Season Two of the series, all of the cubs become slightly older, possibly into their early teens, and are physically different.
Baloo becomes slightly taller with darker bluish fur and speaks with a deeper, raspier voice.
Bagheera's fur becomes lighter and his voice becomes noticeably thinner as a result of getting a different voice actor.
Louie's crest disappears and his hair goes down. Also, as a result of a new voice actor, he is given a more feminine, yet recognizable voice similar to how he sounds as an adult.
Shere Khan becomes slightly taller with brighter fur.
Kaa's body is longer and his skin color is changed to a shinier green with magenta spots.
