The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican
Behold, the cartoon show from the 50s era with the lowest number of production values.
Genre: Animation Running Time: 5 minutes Country: United States Release Date: September 11 - October 13, 1950 Network(s): WENR-TV (now WLS-TV)/ABC Created by: Sam Singer Starring: Sam Singer Seasons: 1 Episodes: 6 Previous show: Adventures of Pow Wow Next show: Bucky and Pepito

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican was a 1950s American animated television series created by 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 an 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, 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 fails.
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.
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 WIS #8).
11. No sound effects at all.
12. In some parts of episodes of the show, 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 looking like they were stolen from Disney

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 airing in 1950 for some reason the end card says “MCMLIV” which translates to 1954.

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