Dragon Tales
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| Dragon Tales | ||||||||||||||||||||
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 Dragon Tales, Dragon Tales
It's almost time for Dragon Tales Come along and take my hand Let's all go to Dragon Land | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Dragon Tales is a Canadian–American animated preschool fantasy adventure children's television series on PBS Kids. The series ran September 6, 1999 to October 15, 2002. After its 3-year hiatus, it returned for one more season, which aired from February 21 to November 25, 2005.
Plot
Emmy and Max discover a magical place called Dragon Land where they meet dragons Ord in blue, Cassie in pink, Zak in green, Wheezie in purple, and the wise Quetzal in yellow. The kids and dragons face challenges together. Each episode features Dragon Tunes, perfect for kids at home to sing along.
Why It Makes You Go To Dragon Land
- Very creative. The idea of a magic dragon scale that transports children to a magical world called Dragon Land is very interesting.
- Speaking of Dragon Land, the entire world is very beautiful, creative and well-drawn.
- Wonderful, appealing, and fluid animation done by many animation studios including Rough Draft Studios, Big Star Enterprise, Dong Woo Animation, Saerom Animation and Sunwoo Entertainment (only on the episode "Tails You Lose/Calling Dr. Zak").
- Many likable characters, like siblings Max and Emmy and the dragons, Ord (blue), Cassie (pink), Zack (green), Wheezie (purple), and Quetzal (yellow).
- It manages to teach children about going through various challenges and solving problems, such as teamwork, sharing, facing your fears, anger management and standing up to a bully.
- Top-notch voice acting.
- Catchy theme song.
- Catchy, jazzy, and nostalgic songs from the Dragon Tunes skit.
Bad Qualities
- Ord, despite being big and strong, can be such a coward at times.
- Zak and Wheezie tend to argue too much.
- Enrique, while likable, was an unnecessary addition in the third season, and he possibly might have contributed to the show's end.
- A few bad episodes such as:
- No Hitter (despite having a good lesson)
- Emmy's Dreamhouse
- Do Not Pass Gnome
- Wild Time
- Teasing Is Not Pleasing (depending on your view)
- The Grudge Won't Budge
- Flip Flop
- Sometimes the endings can be rushed, like the ending of "Staying Within The Lines" for example, because the ending skips to Dragon Land being colorful again and Emmy and Max returning home after that.
Trivia
- Ron Rodecker, the co-creator of this show, died on January 25, 2021.
- The series aired re-runs on PBS and Universal Kids (formerly PBS Kids Sprout) until 2010.
- Andrea Libman, voice actress of Emmy was also Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
- Ever since the show was taken off the air and had all traces of it scrubbed from the PBS Kids website in 2010, Sesame Workshop has wanted to forget doing the show, owing to music licensing and copyright issues with Sony. There is little to no mention of it anywhere on the organization's website and it doesn't even have an official page.
- While Ord has been confirmed to be an adult and Cassie has been confirmed to be a child, Zak and Wheezie have vague ages. They seem childlike most of the time, but at other times they seem more like adults. They live by themselves in what is called a "knucker hole", yet they lack jobs and often lack the common sense an adult would possess. Lastly, the dragon twins rely on Ord, Cassie, Emmy and Max for many things instead of doing those things for themselves.
- Of the 155 segments, only around 78 of them were released on DVD; even fewer were released on VHS. As there was never a complete series release, likely due to Sony's involvement, people who shell out for every official VHS tape or DVD will still be missing quite a bit of the show.
- January 2013 saw a release for the show on Netflix, but the show didn't follow when they went global in 2016, not to mention Netflix cutting out all of the songs (leaving fans to purchase the VHS tapes, DVDs and soundtracks). To add salt to the wound, the show was pulled from Netflix in March 2017.
- In early August 2022, two seasons of the program were unexpectedly made available for streaming on Amazon Prime via a one-year contract (presumably with either PBS, Sony or Sesame Workshop). Some of the episodes even included Dragon Tunes segments and the second episode, despite being listed as "To Kingdom Come/Goodbye Little Caterpoozle", was actually a 70-minute copy of Adventures in Dragon Land (2000). In late August of that year, the third season was added as well. However, the series is no longer available as of late September 2023; it's unlikely that it'll ever come back on the website due to PBS no longer having the broadcasting rights.
- As of 2023, almost all of the episodes can be watched on YouTube for free.
- The show originally ended on October 8, 2002 because the executive producer Nina Elias Bamberger died the next month. It was put on a 3-year hiatus until the show got revived for one more season in 2005.
- In 2001, a special entitled Parent Tales from Dragon Tales was aired on PBS; it involved counselors helping five families by using footage from the show. It never aired again and no footage has surfaced on the internet, making this special officially lost media.
- There were multiple dubs of the show, including a Japanese dub. It only aired on cable channel Cartoon Network, which was not as popular as it was in North America due to most Japanese people getting TV over-the-air, from 2001 to circa 2002. It never got any Japanese home releases and the only information circulating around the Internet concerning this dub are its premiere date and some of the voice actors who worked on it.
- Only the first season of the show aired in the UK, as Nick Jr. screwed over the series before seasons 2 and 3 could air in that country.
- A 2002 promo for the show that aired on Nickelodeon in the United Kingdom calls Emmy "Ellie", Zak "Zakie", Wheezie "Lizzie" and Ord "Org".
- In 2001 and 2005, two music albums that contained every single song from the series were release. The catch is that they're long out of print, and due to the snafu with Sony's licensing, will probably never go back into print ever again. The first album is on Apple Music, YouTube and Spotify, but good luck trying to find the second anywhere.
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