The Shapies

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The Shapies
A perfect storm of animated awfulness... from the same Australian network that brought you bizarrely The Eggs and most infamously Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos.
Genre: Animation Comedy Family Musical Running Time: 22-24 minutes Country: Australia Release Date: July 6 - December 30, 2002 Network(s): Nine Network Created by: Mark Traynor Distributed by: Light Knights Productions Porchlight Entertainment Starring: Tony Bellette Jane U'Brien Joey Moore George Blackley Declan Steele Bonnie Fraser Seasons: 2 Episodes: 27

The Shapies is an Australian children's computer animated musical television series that aired for two seasons, spanning 27 episodes in 2002.

Plot

The Shapies are a band comprising of anthropomorphic geometric shapes that reside in a toy box in the bedroom of a boy named Zack. They become sentient by the Mirror Man whenever no humans are present. When brought to life from the toy box, they go on many adventures throughout Zack's bedroom among other places.

Bad Qualities

1. Horrible and creepy CGI animation, even for 2002 standards. It seems to look unfinished with the movements being stiff and many of the characters take you straight into the Uncanny Valley, especially Paul the Ball. Keep in mind this came out the same year as The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, which looked way better than this.
2. The series is a rip-off of the Toy Story series through its core concept of toys coming to life when humans aren't present as well as their owner Zack being a rip-off of Andy Davis in appearance and personality.
3. The title characters are stereotypical and flat:
   • Bob Oblong is your typical self-proclaimed leader who possesses an "I'm not scared" attitude.
   • Paul the Ball is a standard comic relief who is really unfunny and has a very grating voice as well as a tendency to hyperventilate.
   • Tammy Triangle is a tomboy with a take-no-prisoners demeanor who often acts selfish.
   • Sammy Square is the smart guy and ideas person who doesn't do much other than to muster up strategies.
   • Sarah Circle is just a female version of Sammy only dealing with friction with the other characters and speaks in technobabble at times.
   • Starry Star is irritatingly sweet who speaks in an indecipherable accent.
   • Sally Cylinder is the vain fame-obsessed type who is very prissy in a similar manner to Willie Scott from Indiana Jones and mostly just argues with Tammy.
   • Rex the Rectangle is a dog who is useless other than being the drummer of the Shapies.
   • Connie Cone, despite being generally quiet, is sickeningly cute, especially during the times when she does speak.
   • Perry Pyramid is the laid-back one who doesn't do much since he's the last Shapie to be found.
4. Mr. Boo is a generic villain whose motivation is to overthrow the Shapies just so he can have Zack's bedroom all to himself. He also strangely resembles the title characters from Butt-Ugly Martians, which is also bad.
5. Mirror Man is a clichéd mentor for the Shapies.
6. The plots are really unimaginative.
7. Atrocious voice acting, ranging from hammy, such as Bob Oblong and Mr. Boo, to downright cringeworthy, such as Paul the Ball and Sally Cylinder.
8. Forgettable and pointless songs. The Eggs, a show from the same network, had good and unforgettable songs than the ones from this show.
   • The theme songs for each member of the Shapies in particular are just there to pad out the runtime where three of them are played in each episode which interrupts the story in the process and having to hear the same songs as the series goes on can be tiresome really fast. The videos themselves constantly repeat footage and many of the song's performers don't sound like the characters such as Bob's song.

Good Qualities

1. The idea of a band consisting of toy anthropomorphic shapes is interesting and had potential, but it executed poorly.
2. The Shapies have decent character designs.
3. It has a creative way of toys coming to life where Mirror Man blows Zack's treasure chest toy box before it sinks into the ocean rug leaving the toys alone.
4. The theme song is admittedly catchy, especially the instrumental version.
5. The human characters' faces are not shown, especially given that the series is low-budget and that they could come across as more jarring than the toys themselves.

Reception

It has a score of 4.7/10 on IMDb.

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