Teddy Outsmarts M.A.V.O. is another one of the compilation tapes that has three episodes on it, edited together rather than a singular episode. It's also the first since The Treasure of Grundo that I didn't own or rent from the video store. And it's the final Teddy Ruxpin VHS tape to include an intro and outro featuring a live action Teddy Ruxpin as the host. Later tapes would simply go from the Hi-Tops Video logo to the opening theme of the animated series at the beginning, and then either a sneak preview of Volume 7 Come Dream with Me Tonight at the end of the tape or simply nothing at all.
I admit that the three episodes that are on this tape, "Tweeg's Mom", "The Surf Grunges", and "The New M.A.V.O. Member", are ones that I don't remember watching when I was a kid. I probably did see them on TV at one point seen as how I used to watch The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin all the time when I was a kid. I just don't remember these particular episodes from back then as I didn't have this VHS tape and they weren't episodes that my dad had taped off the TV onto a blank VHS tape like he had other episodes of the series. So the first time I remember seeing these three episodes was when I first got the 2012 DVD box set and binged the entire series.
These three episodes are pretty good. They're not my favourite set of episodes, but they're still really good. We get a lot about Tweeg's background in these three episodes. Not only do we meet Tweeg's mother, Eleanor, but we learn that his father, Elroy was a Grunge, and that his full name is Jack W. Tweeg. We don't actually see Elroy outside of the flashback in "The Surf Grunges" until the end of the series, but I'd actually forgotten that he was introduced this early in the series. I actually laughed when Teddy, Grubby and Gimmick reacted to finding out that Tweeg actually had a first name and a middle initial.
Another element that was introduced in this block of episodes is the Surf Grunges, a group of Grunges who surf at Ben's Beach. The Surf Grunges are actually more prominent throughout the series than the regular Jungle Grunges that were introduced in "Guests of the Grunges". I think the Jungle Grunges only appear in a handful of episodes but the Surf Grunges show up a bit more frequently, even in episodes that take place during the winter and the Grundo Games arc in episodes 47 through 50 of the series.
However the one element introduced in this block of episodes that has a lasting impact on the show until the very end of the series. That element is M.A.V.O., also known as the Monsters and Villains Organization, led by the Supreme Oppressor, Quellor. While M.A.V.O. was hinted at in "Grubby's Romance", this block of episodes was the group's full introduction, and the one that really opened up the Teddy Ruxpin mythos more than the book and tape series ever managed to do. Prior to the introduction of M.A.V.O. The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin was just a simple, but decent, adventure show that was fun to watch. The introduction of M.A.V.O. though turned the series into a full fledged Fantasy series that has you invested in the world of the show, not just the characters from episode to episode. And it's because of this expansion that I feel this series really shined as the best example of what an '80s cartoon based off a toy could be.
Oh sure you had G.I. Joe, The Transformers, The Care Bears, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but those shows, as enjoyable as they were, had a formula that they stuck to and they became predictable after a couple of seasons. The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin was only 65 episodes long, but it provided a long term narrative from beginning to end. And while the standalone episodes that started or ended an arc were fairly predictable as you knew Tweeg and L.B. or the Mudblups would never actually succeed against Teddy and his friends, it was the arcs themselves that were unpredictable and you actually felt the danger that Teddy and his friends were in which automatically raises the quality of the show above the formulaic type of storytelling that the other cartoons from the '80s were doing at the time. Which isn't to say that those other shows were bad, in fact The Care Bears and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles complete the triangle of my favourite cartoons from the '80s, it's just they were all doing very similar things.
If I had to nitpick anything about this tape, it's that the animation itself is slightly inconsistent. For example in "The New M.A.V.O. Member" the Portable Reducing Machine looks exactly like a miniature version of the Reducing Machine seen in "Take a Good Look", except in one scene where it looks like it does in every other episode that it appears in. Also the contrast is very inconsistent too. This is actually a problem with '80s and '90s animation in general, but some episodes are brighter than others are. Not necessarily in terms of what time of day the episode takes place during or whether an episode takes place inside or outside but the colours used in the animation itself end up varying in some places both in a particular episode and across multiple episodes. But again that's a problem with the show itself rather than the actual VHS release of the episodes.
Overall while this isn't my favourite Teddy Ruxpin tape of the ones I've seen during this run through or even of the ones that I've seen overall, it's still a really good release. It's also an iconic bunch of episodes simply because it's the set that introduces a bunch of important characters and plotlines into the series. I also like how the episodes were edited together. Unlike on The Treasure of Grundo tape where the episodes were haphazardly edited together from three episodes that aren't even consecutive in one section, these were just three episodes in a row that were put together with only the title cards and end credits removed from two of the episodes. Which is pretty cool in my books.
I'll be back next week with my review of the seventh volume of the Hi-Tops Video Teddy Ruxpin VHS releases, Come Dream with Me Tonight. Unlike the rest of the tapes in this run, this tape is a live action special based on the 13th book and tape set for the original Teddy Ruxpin talking toy, "Teddy Ruxpin Lullabies". There's a bit of a story to the tape though, but I'll mostly be focusing on the songs as it's basically just a collection of music videos so to speak. So join me for that next week. Until then have a great week and I'll see you tomorrow for this week's comic book review. Later.
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