The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican

♥	This article is dedicated to Sam Singer (August 27, 1912 - January 25, 2001).

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican
Behold, the end result of making a cartoon with the budget of a torn carpet and an expired milk carton.
Genre: Animation Running Time: 5 minutes Country: United States Release Date: 1954 Network(s): Syndication Created by: Sam Singer Starring: Sam Singer Unknown actress (uncredited) Episodes: 6 Previous show: Adventures of Pow Wow Next show: Bucky and Pepito

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican is a 1950s American animated television series created by the late Sam Singer, who also did all of the voices in the show, that aired in local TV stations of the Chicago. It is considered one of the worst cartoons of all time by many, and this page pretty much explains why.

Plot

As you can expect from the title, it is about a pelican named Paddy going on numerous adventures.

Why It Does Not Go on Any Adventures

1. The animation is terrible, reused and abundant, because it is actually a bunch of pencil tests that somehow got submitted as finished cartoons.
   • If the animation wasn't bad enough, In the low-quality copy to "Piggy Bank Robbery", the screen randomly becomes blurry and dark at times, even though it isn't supposed to be dark.
   • Not to mention, some scenes are not even animated at all, which is just lazy.
2. Bad lip-syncing due to reused animation which looks like it was done by a 4-year-old.
3. It tries to be like other classic cartoons like Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes but fails terribly.
4. The character designs, while not bad, look like generic Disney-styled rip-offs.
5. Poor yet very cringeworthy attempts at humor that obviously fail.
6. The plots are generic and have been done way better in other shows.
7. Sam Singer's voice acting is awful and doesn't try to make any of the characters sound distinct from each other, plus the fact he did all of this without a script.
8. Ear-grating theme song that sounds like the show is LAUGHING at you for being stupid enough to watch it.
9. Poorly synced soundtrack that changes from a pipe organ to squawking.
10. Very poor sound editing, especially in the opening sequence where the narration in the background is hard to hear due to its low volume and playing over the "laughing like" theme song (see WIDNGOAA#8).
11. No sound effects at all.
12. In some parts of episodes in this cartoon, you can hear a dog barking in the background if you listen closely enough.
13. In the episode “The Land of More”, Paddy does not appear at all, despite the title of the show. He also only appears at the end of “Pirate Pete”.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The bad lip-syncing and lack of sound effects can both be unintentionally hilarious to some viewers and people depending on your POV with the voices are either seen as hilariously awful or atrocious.
2. This was the second animated series made specifically for television, so it gets a pass because nobody knew how to translate animated shorts to fit television standards of the day. For all we know, Sam Singer was on incredibly strict deadlines and was forced to submit unfinished work that television stations deemed "good enough" because they had nothing else to air in that timeslot.
3. Some of the character designs are decent, despite them looking like they were stolen from Disney.
   • Speaking of the animation, although it's mostly bad, it can also be decent or alright on very rare occasions like at the end of "Pirate Pete" where the only scene with Paddy in it is decent.

Reception

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican received overwhelmingly negative reviews the show has a 1.5/10 currently on IMDB making it one of the lowest rated TV shows on the site just behind Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go.

Trivia

• The entire show is in the public domain, meaning it is free of copyright, because Sam Singer and company never bothered to renew the copyright, as would have been required for 1950s works. This means it can be used for any purpose, including redistributing and remixing and can be downloaded for free online.
• Despite claims that it was aired in 1950, A "Billboard" newspaper from 1954 about TV Shows currently in production shows that the series started production on the first day of June of that year, with it copyrighted in 1954 as such. It is likely that the series did got to air as some newspapers after that one show the name of the show. Plus, it was mentioned that 65 episodes were to be produced, however, only 6 ended up being produced.

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