The Eggs (TV series)

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♥ This article is dedicated to Michael O'Reilly (December 10, 1944 - June 1, 2021, at 76 from liver cancer) and Philip Dalkin (February 28, 1955 - August 4, 2022, at 67 from a short illness).


The Eggs
Behold people, one of the most bizarre and cheapest-looking Flash shows ever brought to you by Nine Network, which also brought you The Shapies, Pixel Pinkie, The Day My Butt Went Psycho!, and Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos.
Genre: Adventure
Science fantasy
Comedy
Animation
Musical
Running Time: 12 minutes
Country: Australia
Canada
Release Date: 2004 - 2005
Network(s): Nine Network (Australia)
e.tv (South Africa)
Created by: Tony Byrne
Brendan Byrne
Don Arioli
Distributed by: New Bike Entertainment (currently)
VGI Entertainment
Porchlight Entertainment
Starring: Pierre Brault
Kate Hurman
Rick Jones
Hélène Joy
John Koensgen
Nancy Neilson
Mike O'Reilly
Terrence Scammell
Ross Wilson
Seasons: 4
Episodes: 52


The Eggs is an Australian-Canadian children's animated series that first premiered on Nine Network in 2004.

Plot

The Eggs follows the colorful adventures of four anthropomorphic egg “college graduates”: Benedict (voiced by Mike O'Reilly), Yolky (voiced by Kate Hurman), Scramble (voiced by Terrence Scammell), and Sunnyside (voiced by Helene Joy), who travel through the Looneyverse to search out valuable new sounds for their music-loving home planet of Kazoo. On their travels, they visit many unique and different planets each with its own music and sounds.

Rotten Egg Qualities

  1. To start on this series, it has some of the laziest and cheapest Flash animation out of everything in the 2000s. It's slightly better than Just Jamie and Faireez (the shows that were produced by the same company as this show, Funbag; in which both of them look worse), but still.
    • It doesn't help that the show was animated by Atomic Productions, who also animated Just Jamie.
    • As a plus, the animation looks eerily similar to the infamous YouTube Kids Cartoons.
  2. The designs for the characters, while cute and nowhere near as ugly as the Just Jamie designs, look very simplistic and unappealing with little to no details.
    • For the designs of the Eggs themselves, they look more like simplistic ovals/ellipses and circles than actual eggs (this especially applies to Scramble, as he looks like a circle).
    • The plot states that they're supposed to be "college graduate" students (if they were, they would be mostly adults), but the designs make them look like kids and teenagers.
    • Speaking of the designs for the "college graduate" students, they're very uncanny to look at. What's surprising is that this was meant to be an "improvement" over the original character designs which originally looked like this. Horrifying, right?
  3. Constant animation errors, especially in the earlier episodes. For example, sometimes when a character talks, their mouth doesn't move at all or doesn't match up with the dialogue.
    • The most infamous example is in the episode "Tune Up", where when Sunnyside gets set off from jail, she speaks; if you look closely, however, her mouth does not move while her audio is still on.
    • Most of the animation errors are either the characters' mouths disappearing for a split-second, or occasionally their bodies or parts of their suits disappearing when they move. This happened in "Now You See Her".
  4. Most of the characters have little to no personality whatsoever and some are even cliches and stereotypes.
    • Benedict is the smart one controlling the spaceship, Shelly.
    • Yolky is the small one of the crew and is sometimes treated like a child by the rest of the gang (this was especially frequent in early episodes). However, she does help with fixing Shelly by recording and playing new sounds.
    • Scramble is the nervous one and basically the comic relief of the show as well as being the Butt-Monkey. He's also used for toilet humor (see REQ#8), which is not good at all.
    • Sunnyside is a character that pretty much has no personality other than loving to collect new sounds and music. She also owns a garden; other than that, that's really it.
    • There's also Eggor, who (since he's Benedict's assistant) listens to and does Benedict's commands and nothing else. It doesn't help that he's a recurring character.
  5. Effects are often used in this show, especially the “Motion Blur” effect, which is mainly used whenever the characters move. This can make some viewers suffer from Motion Sickness.
  6. The backgrounds sometimes have low-quality pixels in them when they are zoomed in.
  7. It has some mean-spirited, unfunny and infamous moments.
    • In the episode "Yolky Saves the Day", even though Yolky saved Benedict, Scramble and Sunnyside, they're still mad at her due to Yolky recording the robots.
    • In the episodes "Water Music" (while a good episode) and "Lost in Space", there was one infamous scene where it has a close-up of Scramble's belly rumbling because he's hungry. This may encourage vore.
    • In the infamous episode "Too Much of a Good Thing", Scramble gets in love and even at one point, harasses Min. We kid you not.
  8. Overuse of gross-out and toilet humor. The most definitive example of this is a running gag with Scramble farting, which happens whenever he's nervous.
    • What's completely worse is that this happens throughout almost the entirety of the show, within almost every episode. No joke.
    • Sometimes, he turns green before he farts, which looks weird and unnecessary, as if he’s about to throw up instead (it also doesn't make sense since he's already (light-)green).
    • There is even one episode under the name of "Counting the Beat" where the team used Scramble's gas to blast the rocket out of the sun. We're seriously not joking about this either.
  9. There were moments from some episodes that depicted cannibalism.
    • In "One at a Time", the "Mono" creatures eat the crew's "egg-mobiles" and Scramble calls them cannibals for doing that.
    • In "A Lullaby for Shelly," Scramble is seen eating breakfast which has scrambled eggs in it, making him a hypocrite. The same goes to Yolky, who does the same thing in "Lost in Space" and "Copy Cat".
  10. Due to the poor writing, especially if they're written by Philip Dalkin or lesser extent, Ray Boseley, there are some bad/average episodes here or there such as:
    • "One at a Time"
    • "Where's Shelly?"
    • "Gulpy Wulpy"
    • "Peanut Surprise"
    • "The Missing Egg"
    • "Counting the Beat"
    • "Double Yolkers"
    • "Cinderbot"
    • "Country Music Blues"
    • "Copy Cat"
    • "The Deserter"
    • "Music Trap"
    • "Too Much of a Good Thing"
    • "A Visit to Oogy"
    • "Plunka"
    • "Lost in Space"
    • "Return to Monotogmous"
  11. The episode "Country Music Blues" has the main characters visit the planet where everyone is crying due to the sad song, which is kind of annoying to listen to, and the crying as well. Not helping that this episode has the highest amount of crying from this show.
  12. Some of the songs at the end of each episode are not that great and the singing voice actors for some of these characters are irritating like Scramble for example.
    • The "Music Trap" song, while pretty catchy to hear, has a dark and depressing lyric which said, "You'll be gone for a song, and you'll never come back".
    • The "Space Race" song from "Which Came First" sounds too similar to Wacky Races.
  13. Unoriginal names. For example, the planet where the main characters live on is literally called, and we kid you not, "Kazoo".
    • Some characters even have some confusing names. For example, the crab in "Message in a Bottle" is called "Mr. Fryday".
    • Even the title of the show itself is lazy and simple. It is so simple that it's almost impossible to find or search up anything related to this show with this title, unless you could type "The Eggs (2004)", but still.
  14. To add to REQ#2, the character designs for most of the other characters look either off-putting or awful.
    • Eggor looks as if he's misshapen, even though he's a robot.
    • The Worms look like they’re caterpillars.
      • Speaking of which, their designs look even worse in the earlier episodes, which thankfully got fixed starting with the episode "Rubbish Shoot".
    • Most of the other creatures of this show look weird, ugly, uncanny, and don't really fit in the show.
  15. The character names are all based on egg names. Speaking of which, this show also has egg jokes which will get annoying quickly.
  16. The intros leave a lot to be desired and are lazily made, with the first being worse. The first one uses bad effects and footage from the episodes to the songs. It's not like the second intro was good either.
    • While catchy, it's very annoying, lazy, cheesy, noisy, lame, and generic as it involves the main characters and an off-screen narrator repeatedly singing the same lyrics "Yeah yeah, we're the Eggs!" and the narrator singing random space-related stuff.
      • It doesn't help as it is the tagline of this show.
    • While the second intro was a huge improvement, it still uses episode footage with sound effects.
  17. The voice acting, while fine, can be annoying at times, especially Scramble when he's screaming.
  18. The show ended on a cliffhanger. The final episode had them going to another universe called the Gooneyverse, a carbon copy of Looneyverse, showing how unoriginal this show is; when they do, it abruptly cuts to the song of the episode.
    • There was going to be a fifth season made but Nine possibly denied it or had no word for a season renewal, causing the show to end on a cliffhanger.
    • To make matters worse, the animation studio that produced the show, Funbag Animation Studios Inc., got shut down on April 29, 2007, leaving no chance for the show to be renewed or make more new episodes. After this, some of the employees at the studio founded New Bike Entertainment to secure Funbag's assets.
  19. Ironically, since the show is produced in Australia, none of the characters even have Australian accents before them being voiced by Canadian actors who put on their accents instead of even impersonating the Australians.
    • This is actually what to expect from shows co-produced in both Australia and Canada where most of the characters, or to a bigger extent, all of the characters, are voiced by Canadian actors and actresses instead of any Australian actors/actresses, sometimes a few.

Fresh Egg Qualities

  1. The second intro, while not great, is a huge improvement over the first.
  2. The designs, while simplistic, may look cute, and at least they're nowhere near as hideous and ugly as the Just Jamie designs, as mentioned before.
  3. Most of the songs are good and pretty catchy, including the intro music.
  4. The animation inexplicably improved in later episodes.
  5. The second half of the show was a slight improvement.
  6. The cheap flash animation sometimes makes for unintentional comedy.
  7. Some characters designs like Beany the String Bean from "The Stringiest Bean", Mr. Fryday from "Message in a Bottle", and the Groovians "Sunnyside Up" and "Top of the Pops" look good/decent and fitting.
  8. Sometimes, the main characters can be rescued by someone like Scramble in "The Deserter", "Water Music" and "The Bubatuba"; Eggor in "Country Music Blues" and "Don't Go Home"; and Yolky in "Yolky Saves the Day".
  9. Scramble doesn't fart in some episodes like "A Lullaby for Shelly", "Copy Cat", "Country Music Blues" and "Sunnyside Up".
    • He farted once in some episodes such as "There's Shelly" and "Now You See Her".
  10. Lot of good episodes such as:
    • "The Beginning" (an okay way to start the series)
    • "Which Came First"
    • "Pet Show"
    • "The Black Hole"
    • "Now You See Her"
    • "Crosswinds"
    • "Choog"
    • "Water Music"
    • "The Worms of Ineptune"
    • "A Lullaby for Shelly"
    • "There's Shelly"
    • "A Hair Raising Tale"
    • "Rubbish Shoot"
    • "Sunnyside Up"
    • "The Silent Shell"
    • "The Big Freeze"
    • "The March of Ides"
    • "Yolky Saves the Day"
    • "The Dance Craze"
    • "The Bloogles"
    • "Homecoming" (which was a good way to end the show, despite it ending on a cliffhanger)
  11. While annoying at the times, the voice acting is pretty fine.
  12. The soundtrack is pretty decent to hear.
  13. There are some heartwarming moments here and there, such as:
    • Sunnyside apologizing to Shelly in "The Big Freeze".
    • Yolky comforting Oogy in "A Visit to Oogy".
    • Sunnyside's wonderful and very heartwarming speech at the end of "Crosswinds".
  14. Besides the overuse of gross-out humor, there are some unintentionally funny moments here and there.
  15. Some funny one-liners like "What if today is the day?", "ARE WE THERE YET, ARE WE THERE YET, ARE WE THERE YET?!", "But I always crack under pressure!", "Don't you ever LISTEN TO MEEE?!?!", "You cannibals!" (though offensive), "Eggor, my man", and "What? I'm a scientist.".
  16. At the end of the episode "Message in a Bottle", it teaches people not to judge a book or a ball by its cover.

Episodes With Their Own Pages

  • Counting the Beat
  • Double Yolkers
  • Cinderbot
  • Country Music Blues
  • Too Much of a Good Thing
  • The Deserter
  • Copy Cat
  • A Visit to Oogy
  • Lost in Space
  • Where's Shelly?
  • Music Trap
  • Peanut Surprise
  • Return to Monotogmous

Trivia

  • This series used to be completely lost media, with only the first two episodes (which were only available on Vimeo), the first intro, and pieces of information about the show found at the time, but all of the episodes have now been found by various users, notably New Bike Entertainment, who uploaded all of the episodes and currently owns the now-defunct Funbag Animation Studios trademark and its assets, which include The Eggs, Just Jamie, and The Mole Sisters.
  • Despite the show being obscure, there were DVDs of it released only in Australia. There were four of them released with each having 13 episodes.
  • The show became a meme by a British YouTube user named "Xploshi" with a short video named "scramble.mov" which showcase Scramble saying "What if today is the day?" from "The Beginning", which was the first episode. References to the show can be found in her other videos such as "Angel Dust blows up the hotel".
  • A scene of the episode "The Black Hole" was featured in the 2006 Australian drama film Jindabyne in the scene where Tom, Caylin-Calandria, and Vanessa watch it on TV at night while Claire, Jude, and Carmel converse together.
  • Michael O'Reilly who voiced Benedict died on June 1, 2021. He was credited as Mike O'Reilly in the show.
  • Philip Dalkin, the writer for most of the episodes of the show, died on August 4, 2022, due to an illness at the age of 67. He has also written episodes for shows such as Get Ace, The Deep, Dogstar, and H2O: Just Add Water.
  • Despite it being a Canadian co-production, this show never aired in Canada.
    • This is odd as New Bike is Canadian who produces and distributes the show, and Nine Network is Australian, which only airs the show.
  • Phil Postma, the character designer of the creatures, has also made character designs for shows like Gerald McBoing Boing, The Ripping Friends, Toad Patrol, Undergrads, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, and American Dragon: Jake Long.
  • Gillian Carr has also directed shows such as Faireez, SheZow, Flea-bitten, and Kuu Kuu Harajuku.
  • Don Arioli (the creator and writer of the show) died on October 4, 2005. He was also the creator of Faireez.

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