Plot: The Squirrels prepare for Christmas with Duggee.
Breakdown: I had never heard of Hey Duggee until I stumbled upon this Christmas special. It looks like a very cute and entertaining preschool show.
However, being a preschool show, that means there’s not really much to talk about here.
This show’s cast is made up of anthropomorphic animals. Duggee is a big dog who speaks exclusively in ‘Woofs’ though he can be understood by the other characters. He leads a Boy/Girl Scout-ish like club of kids called the Squirrels, who actually aren’t squirrels, they’re all manner of animals.
They’re decorating the clubhouse from top to bottom. All their decorating bothers the actual cat, Enid. Yeah, this is one of those shows where you have actual animals acting as animals, but also the cast is humanoid animals. Enid runs off, so the kids and Duggee try to find her in the snow to give her a gift to make her feel better. In the process, they find her as well as some of their other animal friends, including an absolutely massive bird who holds up a star? I got major Gumball vibes from that moment.
In the end, all the kids earn their Tinsel Badge.
As a first episode (technically), I think this does okay. You can kinda get a read on the different personalities of the kids and their relationship with Duggee as well as the general vibe of the show. They’re constantly speaking with the narrator, who is basically a character himself. The kids adore Duggee. And there is some cute humor and moments throughout a tight seven-minute story.
The art is incredibly simplistic. Sometimes, a character would pop up, and I’d wonder what the heck it was. They put what I assume was a sweater on a green triangle and I only knew it was a frog because they had it ribbit after that. There was also a chicken peeping (hehe) in the window, and I was confused for a minute as to what it was because it was basically a yellow triangle with an orange oval on its face with a red thing on its head.
That doesn’t mean the art is bad at all. I just think they go overboard with the simplicity sometimes….which is a weird statement.
This special is fine, and if I was a little kid when this came out, I’d almost certainly watch it.
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