The Shnookums and Meat Funny Show

The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show (aka Shnookums and Meat) was a show created for the programming block; The Disney Afternoon, in 1995. The show starred a cat and dog named Shnookums and Meat and featured two segments (Pith Possum and Tex Tinstar). The show was edgier compared to other Disney shows at the time due to the show being influenced by another popular cartoon at the time: The Ren & Stimpy Show. It is a spin-off of the show Marsupilami.

The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show

Disney's unfunny Ren & Stimpy ripoff with none of the charm and likeability that show had (at least, for the first 2 seasons).

Genre:	Comedy Animation Slapstick
Running Time:	30 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	January 2 - March 27, 1995
Network(s):	Syndication
Created by:	Bill Kopp
Distributed by:	Buena Vista Television
Starring:	Charlie Adler Jeff Bennett Corey Burton Jim Cummings Brad Garrett Jess Harnell Steve Mackall Tress MacNeille Jason Marsden Frank Welker April Winchell Patric Zimmerman
Seasons:	1
Episodes:	13
Previous show:	Marsupilami (1993)
Next show:	Quack Pack (1996)

Why It's An Unfunny Cartoon Show

The main problem with the show is that it's a shameless attempt to cash in with sucess of The Ren & Stimpy Show, and that it completely lacks the charm, creativity, and cleverness the show ever had.
- Granted, there have been a couple of "clones" of The Ren & Stimpy Show before and after this one, those clones being Hanna-Barbera's 2 Stupid Dogs and Cartoon Network's Cow and Chicken respectively. But at least these "Ren & Stimpy clones" had several unique elements that made them stand out as their own thing, unlike this show, as it rips off once too many elements of The Ren & Stimpy Show, such as the title of the show and the fact that the titular characters are a cat and a dog with the smaller one being cruel and the larger one being stupid; the only difference being that they are basically species-swapped since Shnookums is a cat version of Ren Höek and Meat is a dog version of Stimpy J. Cat.
- The other problem is that The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show is that it feels like it's afraid to be a gross-out show despite being clearly inspired by The Ren & Stimpy Show, whereas the aforementioned Cow and Chicken and 2 Stupid Dogs actually lived up to the fact that they were both inspired by The Ren & Stimpy Show.
The animation is very mediocre by Disney's Saturday Morning standards (even though it's not completely terrible).
- When the animation delves into gross-out territory and has intentionally grotesque moments of making the characters have distorted faces in an over-the-top fashion, it looks extremely ugly and unappealing.
- A strong example of the flaws of the slapstick scenes is how the titular characters continuously stay on-model and they have little to no exaggerated facial expressions to show their emotions whenever they receive tons of physical pain, making those scenes seem rather lifeless and more often than not, bland.
It tries way too hard to be different and out of its comfort zone, but it doesn't really know what it's trying to be different at since the animation still looks too polished and safe to stand out from the usual style of Disney cartoons in the 90s, and most of the episodes can be considered generic and typical as a "wild 90s gross-out cartoon" without anything remarkable to make it distinct.
Ugly colors and poorly drawn backgrounds.
Countless animation errors, especially with semi-realistic close-ups/etc.
A lot of the soundtrack is both annoying and forgettable. Examples of this include the title cards that have irritating sounds of toy squeaking in it.
- Like the songs mentioned above, the music such as the opening sequence can be too loud as well.
The two titular main characters are presented and written as obnoxious, moronic, overly typical, uninteresting, and irredeemably dull characters by voice and personality traits. Especially Shnookums.
Bad voice acting from the titular duo, especially from Shnookums, despite them being voiced by voice talents such as Frank Welker and Jason Marsden.
The slapstick is incredibly plodding, over-exaggerated, and uninspiring, which absolutely kills this show's potential with comedic timing since it is also polished as a 'safe kids cartoon', such to the point that it made the whole idea of being "extreme" with its humor entirely pointless.
- Due to the lack of emotion in the characters whenever something painful happens to them as mentioned in WIAUCS #2, this is what makes these types of slapstick scenes downright boring and tedious.
Arrogant title: The title says "Funny Cartoon Show" when the show itself, for the most part, is barely even funny.
- It also contains several skits and segments that only appear after the Shnookums and Meat segments finish, making the show's title a little rushed and underdeveloped.
Most of the jokes don't make a lick of sense nor do they work whatsoever because of how unrelated and random they are to the plots occurring in them, nor is the comedic timing even structured most of the time.
A large amount of unfunny gross-out that isn't suitable for kids, even coming from a big name corporation like Disney.
Many episodes don't establish any form of logic. In other words, the episode's plots and the things that happen usually don't make any sense, like the infamous "Pain in the Brain" for example.
Several characters have unoriginal designs like Shnookums' character design looking like Sylvester from Looney Tunes and Doris Deer's character design looking very similar to that Hello Nurse from Animaniacs.
This was one of the many shows (e.g. Quack Pack) that had started the decline of The Disney Afternoon.

Redeeming Qualities

Some of the bits of the animation are acceptable and passable.
Despite WIAUCS #2, it was one of Disney Television Animation’s first-ever gross-out shows, which made the show pretty unique for its time.
Even if the opening sequence is so loud, forgettable, and annoying, there are some instances where it's kinda catchy.
The voice acting for stock characters in the Shnookums and Meat segments and the characters in Pith Possum and Tex Tinstar are decent.
The Pith Possum and Tex Tinstar sketches (the latter being sketches that do have continuity) are better than the Shnookums and Meat sketches themselves (even if the Pith Possum sketches are also flawed).
Though her design is unoriginal, Doris Deer is a very attractive character.
Funny moments here and there.
The music is sometimes passable.
Fortunately it was the only bad show that was forgotten from the Disney Afternoon.
The best episode of the series was the Halloween episode, The Night of The Living Shnookums. It shows the perfect way Disney would do a Ren & Stimpy parody with its own Saturday morning style by showing the true potential of Disney absurdity, gross-out, well-done slapstick & having a lot of funny moments that work as legitimate jokes, even more than usual (despite at least one joke not making sense but was somewhat silly), with a coherent if pretty weird plot.
At least it doesn't take the gross-out aspect to the absolute extreme unlike a certain other show.
“The Night of The Living Shnookums”, which should be a Halloween special, and “Step-Ladder to Heaven”, which the blue angel dog does see how Shnookums and Meat have been awful for their files are the only two good episodes of the show, even if the comedy falls flat in some areas throughout said episodes.

Trivia

This show never saw any official home video releases of any kind, and it is one of the few Disney shows that is currently not available on Disney+.

Videos

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