Pakdam Pakdai

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Pakdam Pakdai
It's a rip-off of a rip-off (actually, a good one)! Truly, we have reached the ultimate rip-off status.
Genre: Comedy Slapstick Running Time: 7-8 minutes Country: India Release Date: May 27, 2013 - Present Network(s): Nickelodeon India (2013-2014) Nickelodeon Sonic (2014-present) Cartoon Network (2013-2019) TDM Ou Mun (2020-present) Distributed by: Viacom18 Seasons: 5 Episodes: 351

Pakdam Pakdai (Hindi name: पकड़म पकड़ाई), also known internationally as Rat-A-Tat, is an Indian animated comedy TV series created by Toonz Animation for Nickelodeon India.

Plot

There is a constant war between Doggy Don and the three clever mice who live in his house. However, with the help of Doggy Don's brother, an ex-army dog, they fight the mice to win back their house.

Why It Should Have Been Pakdamned

1. First and foremost, this show lacks any originality whatsoever, as it's nothing more than just a low-budget clone and a complete imitation of Oggy and the Cockroaches, based on the original's bad qualities and perhaps surpassing even its worst seasons. It was most likely made because Nick India lost the rights to Oggy in 2012 to Cartoon Network India and was made as a replacement due to the said show's popularity.
   • The show's premise is an anthropomorphic housepet dueling against a trio of vermin, with his green-furred relative. Sure, not familiar at all.
   • Doggy Don's name bears a resemblance to Oggy's name, just one letter off.
   • The show also lacks any dialogue, but has an Indian version where it's narrated (since Oggy had a dub parodying Bollywood stars).
   • One of the Mice Brothers' laughter sounds much like the audio that plays when Joey is laughing from Oggy and the Cockroaches.
   • It even rips off Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes by having violent slapstick and overusing its stock sound effects, which unlike in the aforementioned shows, are also often placed at inappropriate times; even some scenes that are directly stolen from the Tom and Jerry and Oggy and the Cockroaches, much to the point where it can easily make the viewer think the show is intentionally terrible and nothing but a low-budget clone.
2. Much like the Gene Deitch era of Tom and Jerry, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show and Herman and Katnip, the relationship between the dogs and mice characters is seemingly imbalanced, with the antagonistic mice torturing the main characters for no reason and undeservedly winning at the end of most episodes.
3. Plenty of very poorly-written episodes that often feel that there is little to no story at all.
4. Quantity over quality: The show lasted way too long for a widely hated mockbuster cartoon show, having a total of 5 seasons and 350+ eight-minute episodes, hence showing how Toonz Animation is blind to the negative criticism to the show.
5. The characters come off as unlikable and idiotic, even for slapstick comedy standards, and are portrayed as caricatures of the ones from OatC.
   • The Mice Brothers, while intentionally unlikable, are annoying and sadistic jerks who humiliate Don and Colonel if they barely provoke them. Not to mention that almost all them have the same personalities as the Cockroaches, with Lambu (or Larry) being the "sexy" (note the quotes) one like Marky, Motu (or Marly) is the simpleton clumsy 24/7 eating fat like Deedee and Chotu (Charly) has little to no personality besides being the smart one (like Joey with weapons).
   • The Doggie Brothers, while intentionally sympathetic, are annoying, ill-tempered, and unlikable mostly to the mice. They even laugh at them when they get hurt or humiliated.
     • Don is a control freak, and even worse, every time the mice bother him even in the slightest way, he rages and not in a good way. Not to mention that he is very dim-witted and most of the time, his idiocy isn't all that funny. In one episode, he ate a remote so the mice couldn't find it.
     • Colonel is egotistical and loves to laugh at Don. Though Jack from OatC tends to do something selfish too, but not to this extent as what Colonel would do. He even calls Doggy Don "Baby" just like Jack in the Hindi dub of Oggy and the Cockroaches.
   • Don and Colonel's granny is an abusive relative compared to Oggy's, as she is so strict with the two that she abuses them and beats them up.
   • Ballu serve the same purpose as Bob the bulldog, except he beats the characters up on-screen, which is very mean-spirited.
6. The animation is pretty cheap and terrible, especially for 2013 standards. Most of them feel janky with minimal movement, poor use of motion blur effects, and smear frames (which also add to the clipart feeling).
7. With the sole exception of Doggy Don and Colonel, the character designs are either bland, weak, or out-of-place. The fact this is a cartoon makes them feel as if they're animated clipart characters, not to mention the occasional inconsistency in the sizes of their designs.
8. The TDM Ou Mun version suffers poor translation for the Chinese narration as well as the subtitles for text translation.
9. Abysmal voice acting, as it's just animal noises. There's a narrator in the original Indian version though, but it can also make it as hard to watch.
   • While the movies do have dialogue for the characters, it does not help that it contradicts the source material of the TV show itself.
   • Don and Colonel's screaming can get irritating and cliché, which would also happen to the mice.
   • Some of the vocal effects used are laughably misplaced due to how unfitting they are for the characters, such as Doggy Don emitting a girly scream in "Don vs Bees", even if it's an intentional joke.
10. On the subject of bad and somewhat annoying sound effects, on the international version the screams are also high-pitched, and sometimes the crying ones too.
11. The music can be generically poor, such as the theme song.
12. The humor is pretty stale, as the episodes sometimes focus only on slapstick humor, and the rest of the jokes can be tedious if repeated over and over, making them boring to watch after a couple of minutes. Also, unlike Oggy and the Cockroaches and Tom and Jerry, it overuses toilet humor and gross-out jokes, while the aforementioned two shows can handle their humor and jokes much better than this.
13. There are lots of mean-spirited moments, such as:
    • In one episode, the mice actually kick Ballu's balls!
    • In "An Eerie Hustle", they actually kill Don and feel no remorse (In the Hindi voice-over, they say "Today, Doggy Don will have a good sleep inside the ground!")! On top of that, the episode ends with Doggy Don, the mice brothers, and Colonel all dead and turned into ghosts.
    • In one episode, they make Colonel's eyes pop out in a hospital.
14. There are tons of extremely illogical and downright nonsensical scenes that make absolutely zero sense whatsoever even by slapstick comedy standards are scattered throughout the show, perhaps even more so than any other cartoon show ever existed. Not even the most illogical of bad cartoon shows or movies like George of the Jungle (2007), Teen Titans Go!, the Gene Deitch era of Tom and Jerry, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" or Looney Tunes' The Larriva Eleven would have gone this far with such illogical nonsense for the sake of cheap comedy. Examples include:
    • "Ice Cream Zombies" (while a good episode) has the ice cream with chilli curing zombies.
    • The scene where the whole world sinks due to rain.
    • The mice brothers cooking food using explosives.
    • The scene where characters land from a plane or from space towards the earth without killing themselves (no joke).
15. Lazy editing as there are animation errors everywhere (likely as a rushed production). Sometimes, the screen will outright flash to black when cutting to the next shot.
16. The show even has a whole lot of copyright infringement:
    • In one episode, the rats watch a scene from The Jungle Book (1967) without permission from Disney.
    • "Don's Sumo Wrestling Championship Animal Cartoons" uses a DVD cover of Super Duper Sumos without permission from DiC Entertainment (now known as WildBrain).
    • "Rest-O-War" uses Mel Blanc's scream from Looney Tunes without permission from Warner Bros. as well as the female one provided by June Foray, also used in many episodes like "Tree House Don".
    • As mentioned before, one of the mice's laughter is the exact same laughing sound as for the cockroaches from Oggy and the Cockroaches.
    • One of the mice, Motu, has a design too similar to Remy from Ratatouille.
17. The episodes' title cards are incredibly ugly, cheap, poorly drawn, and are drawn way too small to be seen clearly by viewers, especially to viewers who have poor eyesight, or when the show is screened on small-sized television screens or even mobile phones. Not only that, the title card sequences are very boring to look at since they're very silent with no music playing over them.
18. The pacing is particularly poor, as most of the time it tends to go way too fast at a lightning speed that it gets mind-boggling after a while.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The low production values often make the show come off as unintentionally hilarious to some viewers.
2. Despite what WISHBP #1 said, the show at least has some sort of originally to it, which is how Chotu has his own weaponry such as a grappling hook.
3. Despite the music being mostly poor, it can be ok to listen to at times.
4. Doggy Don and Colonel's designs are at least passable.
5. Some funny moments here and there.
6. There are a few good episodes like "Ice Cream Zombies".
7. The mice actually do get their comeuppance in some episodes like "Don vs Bees".
8. At least the characters' screen-time is more balanced compared to some episodes from the show it ripped off.

Trivia

• There was a little broadcasting event going on called "Doggy and Oggy", featuring this and the show that it ripped off.
• This was one of the most frequently aired shows on the network as it airs on Nick India's sister channel, Sonic, nearly the whole day. Zig & Sharko has been aired frequently too.
• During the year of its release, it aired on Nickelodeon India. In 2014 It moved to Sonic Nickelodeon.
• It aired on Cartoon Network Asia for a short while.
• It aired in 2020 in TDM Ou Mun in the Chinese province of Macao, and some parts of Guangzhou.

Reception

It's popular in India (due to it being based of another well-loved show) and it won the "Best Animated TV Episode" award at the 2014 BAF Awards, organized by FICCI, for the episode "Safari Don". However, it was panned by critics around the world, with criticism being targeted at its unoriginality and extremely poor production values. Though it currently has a rating of 7/10 on IMDb, the show's reviews were overwhelmingly negative.

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