The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican Wiki
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- The voice of truth

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican is a swell, debatably godlike animated American television series, created in its entirety by American animation producer and 20th-century prophet Sam Singer. Known for its daring artistic decisions and meticulous execution, The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican quickly became a beloved and enormously influential opus for Singer, paving the way stylistically for a bevy of future animators and producers.


The series stars the titicular character Paddy the Pelican ,and his adventures involving grand theft and cannibalism... sort of. The theme song for each episode consists of poorly-recorded introductory narration overlaid by some guy trying to mimic the squawking of an actual pelican but actually sounding closer to a demented clown on laughing gas (or, for the artistically-enlightened, a glorious choir of angels).

Description[]

The length of each cartoon is pretty short, being only a few minutes long. Despite this, there tends to be enough material to form an almost incomprehensible but still servicable story. The look, however, is absolutely beautiful. Despite having no color whatsoever, constantly looped animations and rambling dialogue, the show has a certain demented charm that can only be appreciated by animation buffs or severely disturbed individuals. Or both.

It is worthy of noting that the drawings themselves are not half bad, good even. Another noteworthy detail is the music. All the music (save for the opening) is provided by an organ, giving the cartoons an even more surrealistic quality.

History[]

The shown first debuted on a local children's television show in Chicago in the 1950s. At this point, the show featured Paddy, although he was portrayed as a puppet at the time, and thus unrecognizable from the cultural titan he ultimately became. By eventually converting from live puppetry to animation, however, the show would bloom into the brilliance that is known and loved by all. Despite the show's genius methods of animation techniques and astounding voicework (all done by one man, mind you - clearly Singer was no mere mortal), there is no actual proof that this incarnation of Paddy was ever shown in syndication, even though it was scheduled to be shown on the ABC network in 1951.

While 65 episodes were allegedly ordered, only six were ever churned out, or known to exist. This makes the availability of these cartoons exceedingly rare and their unparalleled mastery of the medium all the more precious.

Episodes[]

As mentioned before, the episodes are as rare as the most precious gems, though in retrospect, maybe even more so; after all, geological processes churning out worthless translucent rocks are dime-a-dozen compared to situations where every principle of filmmaking and animation is hewed to mastery. Therefore, six shorts are known.

Critical reception[]

As indicated above, the series was a monumental critical success upon its release. Roger Ebert's evil twin, speaking in 1954, gave the show "three thumbs up", a phrase purportedly later plagiarized and adapted by his more (or less?) critically-astute sibling. William Shakespeare, resurrected by the wonders of nuclear science (what else would you expect in the 1950s, magic?) specifically to comment on the show, declared that 'thou hast formed from the gauzy masses of reality a masterpiece of blinding clarity, of precision as the swift-biting sword heweth through the tyrant of ignorance', adding 'you done good, guys, King Lear can't compare to this stuff'. Mark Twain was also resurrected but declined to comment.

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