The Brothers Flub

The Brothers Flub
Behold. Nickelodeon's biggest animated flop of late-1999.
Genre: Science fiction Running Time: 22-26 minutes Release Date: January 16, 1999-January 8, 2000 Network(s): Nickelodeon Created by: David Burke Laslo Nosek Distributed by: Sunbow Entertainment Starring: Scott Menville Jerry Sroka Charlotte Rae✝ Ron Hale Christine Cavanaugh✝ Seasons: 1 Episodes: 26 (52 in segments)

The Brothers Flub is an animated television series, produced by Sunbow Productions, and co-produced by Ravensburger. It aired in the United States on Nickelodeon. The Brothers Flub lasted for twenty-six episodes, airing on Sundays from January 1999, until its cancellation, in January 2000.

Story

The Brothers Flub takes place in a fictionalized version of outer space. The show's title refers to its two central characters: a pair of blue-furred alien brothers named Guapo and Fraz Flub. Guapo is shorter and fatter than his brother, and is a darker shade of blue. Both wear bodysuits, shoes, and caps.

In the series, they work for a company called RetroGrade Interdimensional Couriers, of which a green-colored female alien, named Tarara Boomdeyay, is the boss. Other characters at their job include a female alien named Valerina and an older orange, male alien named Squish. The brothers, who are couriers, through their universe in their spacecraft, called Hoog, to deliver packages to various planets. Each episode features a different planet with a different characteristic, such as, "The Land of Oversized Games", which comprises life-sized game pieces such as a pinball machine, or, "Hip City", a planet inhabited by beatnik aliens.

Why It Flubs (In a Bad Way)

1. Poor and stiff animation, which is trying too hard to imitate Klasky Csupo.
2. Annoying, yet pretty mediocre voice acting.
3. The stories are overly surreal, and dumb.
4. The theme song is horrendous, which has been considered one of the worst theme songs ever.
5. The title is also very dumb. If one actually never heard of this show, then they would say it is a ripoff of The Brothers Grunt, due to the similar titles, although The Brothers Grunt is an adult show, with a much different concept, and not for kids.
6. Nickelodeon rarely, if ever, reran any episodes, and once, they lost the syndication rights, to both this series, and Pelswick, they couldn't do anything more with them.
7. There are bad morals, like in, "Pay Dirt", the brothers got rich from no sleep, bathing, or free time.
8. Guapo is a very inconsistent character. Sometimes, he is the nicest character in the show, other times, he is the most rotten.
9. Fraz is constantly tortured by everyone around him. It's cruel, rather than funny.
10. The brothers pretty much take the spotlight away, from the rest of the characters, barely giving them any screen time. Fraz himself is the worst offender, the show basically being centered around him, and almost nothing happens without him. He only ever takes a backseat in Double Feature and a Courier's Carol.
11. Miss Boomdeyay is the worst character in the show, she rules Retrograde with an iron fist, and gets away with it. Most episodes end with her torturing the brothers.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Decent concept, despite the poor execution.
2. While the brothers have a toxic relationship, it is shown, at times, that they truly love each other.
3. The show has good morals at times, like in Double Feature, quit when you're being mistreated, and family is more important, than fame or Bad Judgement Day, and learning to trust your loved ones.
4. The visuals are wacky and creative, at times.
5. Decent, and passable character designs.
6. Fraz is sometimes likeable. Wanting to help others like in Wrestlemaniacs and Pizza, Pizza, Pizza. He also faces his fears all the time to help others, especially his brother.
7. Even though the intro is awful, the rest of the music is actually easy on the ears.
8. The voice acting by Scott Menville and Christine Cavanaugh is great.

Reception

The Brothers Flub has been enormously panned by critics and audiences. It currently holds a 4.0/10 on IMDb and it has been criticized for the unlikable characters, poor animation, and theme song. It has been considered to be one of the worst Nickelodeon shows, of all time.

Trivia

• The Brothers Flub is considered one of the most obscure Nickelodeon shows of all time, as there's barely much of a fanbase for the show; only a very small handful of people are dedicated to preserving its memory.
• Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) had six toys based on the series at one point in 1999.
• Only two (out-of-print) VHS releases exist, with only four episodes on each, and for the longest time there was almost nothing online.
  • The entire show was on Kidobi, an obscure video website, which removed the show some time ago.
  • A few episodes were available on iTunes in the early 2010s, but they were eventually removed.
  • Nowadays, the show has an official YouTube channel, which uploaded most of the episodes for free. Even then, the channel forgot to upload one of the episodes (though the missing one is available on unofficial streaming sites), so only 25 of the show's 26 episodes are accessible.
  • In Chile, a kids channel called Funbox used to rerun the show far more than either Nickelodeon or Canal+ did.
• During its run, The Brothers Flub was shown on mostly Sunday afternoons (sometimes Fridays) with minimal promotion and hardly any reruns.
  • In Poland, the show debuted on Canal+ (a premium TV channel in Poland) on September 20, 1999 (about nine months after the US premiere), but unlike in the USA (where new episodes premiered on either Fridays or Sundays), new episodes premiered in Poland on weekdays at 6:30 PM; the last (26) episode aired on October 25, 1999—about two months before the show's cancellation in the US. The show was also rerun in Poland once; all 26 episodes were rerun on Canal+ from December 29, 1999 to February 2, 2000 on weekdays at 2:30 PM.
• All 26 episodes of the show were produced in 1998, if the copyright date in the credits is anything to go by; the show ultimately premiered in January 1999 instead.
• The credits list the voice actors but don't say who voiced which character.

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