Jay Jay the Jet Plane
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| ♥ | This article is dedicated to Mary Kay Bergman (June 5, 1961 - November 11, 1999). She will always take us on a magical flight of her very own. |
| Jay Jay the Jet Plane | ||||||||||||||||||||
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 🎵 The sun is rising high up over Tarrytown,
Friends taking off and friends touching down. And that's where you'll find, That creepy human faced plane... JaY JAy... Jay Jay the Jet Plane! ThatS mE1! 🎵 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Jay Jay the Jet Plane is an American live-action/CGI-animated musical children's television series created by David and Deborah Michel. It has aired on The Learning Channel, PBS Kids, Qubo, and Smile.
The series has 62 episodes and is centered on a group of aircraft who live in the fictional city of Tarrytown. It is intended to be educational and to teach life and moral lessons to children. The episodes are commonly distributed in 25-minute-long (as without commercials) pairs, with one header sequence and one end credits for each pair. Each episode contains one or more songs. The theme song and the majority of the other songs were written by well-known children's singer/songwriter Stephen Michael Schwartz, and sung by his popular musical group, Parachute Express.
Recently in 2021, a reboot was announced with a different animation style, which will be produced by Trilogy Animation.
Plot
Tarrytown is full of fun for 6-year-old Jay Jay the Jet Plane. A happy little plane, he and his friends -- including pink and yellow plane Tracy, helicopter Herky, fire engine Revvin' Evan and tow truck Tuffy -- explore and buzz around the fantasy-inspired town. There are also some humans in Tarrytown, such as Brenda Blue, Mrs. Blue, Miss Jones and Easy O'Malley. Anything is possible, and excitement is just waiting for Jay Jay to discover it!
Why It Won't Make You Go on a Magical Flight
- The character designs for the planes and the other machines not only look horrible, but also lazy as they're basically vehicles with human faces on them. In addition, the designs look so creepy that they could very likely give kids nightmares.
- The designs try too hard to make it resemble the character designs from Thomas & Friends; that show actually managed to work well with the designs due to it taking a realistic approach (with the only exception being the All Engines Go! reboot), but with this show, it doesn't work well at all due to the character designs being a mix between a cartoony and realistic design, when it would have worked better to choose one or the other.
- In the episode "A Trip to Skylandia", the Skylandia vehicles have clothes as part of their models and as a result these clothes stretch when the vehicles move, making it look a bit awkward.
- The CGI animation is mediocre, lazy-looking, and has aged like spoiled milk that it even looks like something animated by Vídeo Brinquedo, Xing Xing Digital, or Spark Plug Entertainment. It doesn't help that this show has bad CGI mixed with live-action actors, making it look even worse.
- The lip-syncing for the vehicle characters is abysmal at best.
- A fair amount of bland and/or unlikable characters, with the only exceptions being Big Jake, Savannah, and Revvin Evan.
- Jay Jay, the titular main character, has a very generic personality.
- Also, his voice and singing voice sound awful.
- Herky the Helicopter is a poorly done comic relief. He's basically an offensive Mexican stereotype (Italian in the pilot), whose voice is as bad and annoying as Bubsy's.
- Snuffy has a horrendous voice, and he sounds like if a very sick child with a runny nose took the role of him. Furthermore, his design is terrible and looks more like a green giant flying mouse than an airplane.
- Tracy has a design that is recycled from Jay Jay's design being colored purplish pink, another sign of laziness. Not to mention, her personality is just as bad as Jay Jay's.
- Old Oscar is a poorly written adult plane.
- Brenda Blue is also another poorly written character who just gets involved in the plane's actions.
- Revvin' Evan’s cousin, Tuffy, a tow truck, is also a racist stereotype, as she’s a racist Asian stereotype. Her voice is very annoying and talks and acts like a toddler as well as having the worst design in the series.
- Jay Jay, the titular main character, has a very generic personality.
- Besides the unlikable characters, there are characters who are racist stereotypes. It's unknown if this was intentional or unintentional, but we're surprised the cancel culture hasn’t banned the show yet.
- As stated above, Herky is a racist Mexican stereotype (Italian in the pilot).
- As stated above, Tuffy is a racist Asian stereotype and is the most offensive of all of them and was even panned by a parent on Common Sense Media.
- As mentioned above, the voice acting is plain terrible. It's even more shocking that it has many talented voice actors, like Debi Derryberry from Jimmy Neutron (voice of Jay Jay, Savannah, and Revvin' Evan in the PBS Kids era), the late Mary Kay Bergman from South Park (voice of Jay Jay, Herky, Savannah, and Revvin' Evan in the TLC era), Sandy Fox from Sailor Moon (voice of Tracy and Snuffy in the PBS Kids era as well as Tuffy in both eras), Gina Ribisi (voice of Tracy and Snuffy in the TLC era), Chuck Morgan (voice of Big Jake and Old Oscar in the TLC era), and Michael Donovan (voice of Big Jake and Old Oscar in the PBS Kids era).
- There are pointless plots in some of the episodes:
- In "Big Jake's Birthday Surprise", there is a plot that reads, "It's Big Jake's birthday, and after E.Z. sends him to do a long delivery, Jay Jay and friends have to think of what to give him. When Jay Jay cannot think of a present, he turns to searching for something that will give him an idea."
- Another weak plot would be in the episode "Jay Jay's New Wheels". The plot reads, "One summer day, Jay Jay, Snuffy, and Tracy were playing a game of Follow the Leader. First, they hop in a line, and Jay Jay stands on one-wheel, which Tracy can do but Snuffy can't. After Jay Jay spins around on one wheel, the other two comment on him being so good at doing tricks they can't do. Jay Jay is flattered and points out he couldn't have done it without his wheels."
- There are also a few overused pop culture references. For example, the plot of the episode, "A Trip to Skylandia", spoofs the plot of The Wizard of Oz.
- Most of the songs, especially the theme song, are cringeworthy and ear-grating thanks to the terrible voice acting.
- Despite this, some of the songs have rejected tunes that look like they were stolen from songs from other shows.
- Even the background music is mediocre.
- It almost ended Mary Kay Bergman's career on a sour note as she would only go on to have a few more roles before tragically killing herself in 1999.
- The pilot series looks creepier and even worse than the CGI series.
- The Christian dub of the CGI series is pointless, and it shoves religion down everyone's throats.
- The miniseries Jay Jay's Mysteries was a pointless and bland way to end the show.
- There are episodes featuring the vehicles with uncharacteristically human characteristics such as characters eating (an episode features Tracy gorging on candy and two episodes show Herky eating donuts and it's treated like a drug addiction), Snuffy losing his baby teeth, and indication that the planes age like humans (an episode revolving around Tracy giving up her security item, a blanket and it was explicitly stated that it was her baby blanket). While it shows creativity, it comes off as rather disturbing and it makes you question how the planes process food and grow.
Redeeming Qualities
- The miniature sets the characters were placed onto actually look good.
- The international dubs, while not great, are at least not as bad as the original English dub.
- The Arabic dub was pretty well received.
- It does teach some morals like how to help others, value your friends, love yourself, and facing your own shyness.
- The Tarrytown Airport concept is a very good inspiration and nice fictional place, even if its animation is dated by today's standards.
- The reboot is looking like an improvement as it looks less uncanny and cleaner along with better character designs.
- Note that the reboot series is being done by the same company that animated The VeggieTales Show, which is Trilogy Animation. The art style looks similar to Disney’s movie Planes and short film Pedro.
- Big Jake, Savannah, and Revvin' Evan are the only likable characters.
- Keep in mind that this show was originally well received during its time. It just didn't age well in modern times.
- Albeit coming off as disturbing, having the vehicles with human characteristics is very creative.
Reception
As mentioned earlier, the show was well-received during its time, but as time went on, reception became mixed-to-negative and currently has a 3.8/10 rating on IMDb.
Trivia
- Aside from the poorly aged motion capture gaining infamy, Jay Jay was a popular character to use in animutations back when they were extremely popular, such as Neil Cicierega's animutation of the first ending for Pokémon (Japanese version).
- The show spawned the now-dead internet meme "Jay Jay Bombs Syria".
- Mary Kay Bergman committed suicide on November 11, 1999, at 38 years old, and was replaced by Debi Derryberry.
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