Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
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Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is an American animated television series created by Craig McCracken for Cartoon Network Studios. It ran from 2004 to 2009.
Plot
The series is set in a universe in which childhood imaginary friends coexist with humans. In the show's universe, imaginary friends take physical form and become real as soon as children think them up. Once children outgrow them, friends are relocated to the titular orphanage, where they stay until other children adopt them. The home is run by the elderly Madame Foster, its lovable, kind founder; her imaginary friend Mr. Herriman, the strict rule-abider, and business manager; and her granddaughter Frankie, who handles day-to-day operations.
In the series' premiere episode, a young boy named Mac is pressured by his mother to abandon his imaginary friend Bloo, since she believes that he is too old to keep him. Bloo sees an advertisement on television about Foster's Home, and tells Mac, who takes him there, only to find out the home is an orphanage, and if Bloo were to reside there, he would be available to be adopted by another child. Mac then bargains with Frankie, Herriman and Madame Foster, and they agree to guard Bloo from adoption, so long as Mac continues to visit the center daily. During the series, Mac visits the home everyday after school. The show focuses on the escapades experienced by the mischievous Bloo, Mac, and the array of eccentric, colorful characters inhabiting Foster's, and the obstacles with which they are challenged.
Why It's Got a Very Active Imagination
- The show has an amazingly clever concept of Imaginary Friends co-existing with humans and going to an orphanage when their children have outgrown them, which is highly creative for an animated series and is an example of the amazing writing from Craig McCracken and his talented team of artists who worked on the show itself, making Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends one of the most unique and original cartoons from the 2000s and is the reason why it remains beloved today.
- Great flash animation that has a nice, bouncy vibe that perfectly matches the imaginative and childhood-related premise of the show itself, thanks to Boulder Media
- Creative and cute character designs for the imaginary friends. Coco has her body made up of the final things her creator was exposed to after his plane crashed on a deserted island. Eduardo is an enormous purple minotaur. Wilt had extremely long legs that leave him standing at a towering height. And Bloo, while having the least inventive design of the friends, being little more than a simple blue dome cylinder with eyes, is still a decent one, as sometimes simplicity can be it's own art form.
- Catchy theme song. In fact, the music in general is actually solid and fits the whimsical tone of the entire show overall.
- Memorable and likable characters such as Mac, Bloo (seasons 1-2), Wilt, Eduardo, Coco, Frankie, Mr. Herriman, Madame Foster, Goo, Jackie Khones, Uncle Pockets, and Cheese.
- Mac is a likable kid with a cool imaginary friend.
- It pays homage to some films, such as in their episode titles. The episode, "Store Wars", for example is a homage to Star Wars.
- Great voice acting by the talents of Candi Milo (Nora Wakeman from My Life as a Teenage Robot, Janet from The Boondocks, the titular character of Dexter's Laboratory from seasons 3 and 4) and Dona from Final Fantasy X-2), Phil LaMarr (The titular character of Samurai Jack and Judge Blackman from Family Guy), Grey DeLisle (Daphne from Scooby-Doo 2002-onwards and Kitty Katswell from T.U.F.F. Puppy) Tom Kenny (The titular character of SpongeBob SquarePants), Tara Strong (Harley Quinn from Batman Arkham series and Raven from Teen Titans) and Sean Marquette, who did an awesome portrayal as a young 8-year-old boy that was highly convincing.
- Numerous funny scenes, such as the "It's Hot In Topeka" scene in the episode "Squeeze The Day", the moving cacti toys scene in "Store Wars" and the "I. FOUND. A. CARROT!!!!" scene in the episode "The Big Cheese".
- There are lots of great and memorable episodes/specials, such as:
- Store Wars
- World Wide Wabbit
- Bloooo (which positively concluded season 1)
- Dinner Is Swerved
- Partying Is Such Sweet Soiree (which gave season 2 a good first impression)
- Bloo's Brothers
- Frankie My Dear
- Mac Daddy
- The Sweet Stench Of Success
- Bloo Done It
- Cuckoo for Coco Cards (which whipped off season 3 with a bang)
- Go Goo Go
- Schlock Star
- Squeeze the Day
- Emancipation Complication
- Cheese a Go-Go (a great way to premiere season 5)
- Goodbye to Bloo (a decent way to end the show)
- Nightmare on Wilson Way (the Halloween episode)
- A Lost Claus (the Christmas special)
- It started off great with the first TV movie, "House of Bloo's", which is one of the best examples of how to start a series. As it perfectly establishes the world it takes place in, the characters that live in it, and the premise of the show itself.
- The 48 minute special, "Good Wilt Hunting", is very good, as it goes into detail about Wilt's tragic backstory.
- The second TV movie, "Destination: Imagination", is also great as it involves the gang encountering a mentally-unstable imaginary friend who refuses to let Frankie leave the pocket dimension that he created.
- "Goodbye to Bloo" was a decent way to send off the series.
Bad Qualities
- It will most likely get pretty mean-spirited, annoying, dumb, hypocritical, and nonsensical at times.
- As the series went on, Bloo turned into such an insensitive and obnoxious jerk, that the majority of the fans of the show heavily disliked, or even hated him.
- Some other imaginary friend characters are also unlikable worse that Bloo (Season 3-6), such as: Duchess, Bendy (the most infamous), Goofball McGee and Mr. Herriman.
- There are also some unlikable human characters like Mac's older brother, Terrence and Jamze Withazee.
- Cheese and Goo can be annoying sometimes.
- It has its fair share of bad episodes like:
- "Adoptcalypse Now"
- "Where There's a Wilt, There's a Way" (A Wilt torture episode)
- "Everyone Knows It's Bendy"
- "Bye Bye Nerdy"
- "Imposter's Home For Um.... Make 'Em Up Pals" (A Frankie torture episode and the most infamous episode of all)
- "Foster's Goes to Europe"
- "Duchess of Wails" (another infamous episode)
- "I Only Have Surprise for You" (A Mac torture episode)
- "Crime After Crime"
- "The Big Cheese"
- "Say It Isn’t Sew"
- "Beat With a Schtick" (A Bloo torture episode)
Trivia
- This was the first Cartoon Network show that premiered right after Cartoon Network changed it's channel logo as well as the City Era which came after the Powerhouse Era.
- In the movie, “Destination: Imagination”, one of Bloo's lines are "You peeved him off, that's what's happening." However, Vitac, the closed captioning company who provided said movie's subtitles, thought that the line was "You "pissed" him off, that's what's happening."
- In Japan, this show was considered a Cartoon Cartoon.