Monday, 6 July 2020

The World of Teddy Ruxpin Volume 9: Tweeg Gets the Tweezles (1988) VHS Review


The World of Teddy Ruxpin Volume 9: Tweeg Gets the Tweezles is the last Teddy Ruxpin VHS tape I ever owned as a kid. It's also the one I probably watched the most aside from Guests of the Grunges. The tagline of the tape "A healthy attitude works wonders" is something I've tried my best to adopt in my own life, especially when dealing with my own health issues. And that tagline is in the episode that's on the tape "Tweeg Gets the Tweezles" even going as far as getting it's own song. Which is pretty cool.

So "Tweeg Gets the Tweezles" is another episode that was adapted from the books with very few changes made to it. The M.A.V.O. subplot continues from the previous two episodes, this time with Tweeg getting a visit from a dues collector, who's name is escaping me at the moment. The only other change is a scene where Gimmick is working on yet another food centric experiment. Which is a pattern that I hadn't actually noticed during my previous viewings of these last three episodes. In "The Faded Fobs" Gimmick attempted to enlarge a strawberry so they wouldn't have to go out and pick them so often, then in "The Medicine Wagon" he was working on a sandwich compression machine, and then here in "Tweeg Gets the Tweezles" he was working on an automatic bread buttering machine. None of which worked the way he'd anticipated. So that's sort of interesting.

Aside from those two additions, there really isn't any differences between the TV series episode and the book and tape set. That's because, like "The Medicine Wagon" Teddy, Grubby and Gimmick interact with Tweeg and L.B. for much of the episode, so there was no need to add a Tweeg subplot to the episode, since the characters are together. This actually doesn't happen again until episode 37, "The Third Crystal". 

Aside from the episode itself, the thing that made this tape stick out to me above the others, is after the episode, but before the end credits start rolling, is a preview for Volume 7, Come Dream with Me Tonight, with the live action Teddy Ruxpin from the special singing "This Lovely Night", which was the first time I ever heard this song since I never had "Teddy Ruxpin Lullabies" growing up. It's such a sweet love song that it has stuck with me ever since I saw this tape. And of course, being a kid at the time I heard the song for the first time, and not having the book for "Teddy Ruxpin Lullabies" or the VHS tape for Come Dream with Me Tonight, I had no idea what the song was called and there was no internet for me to look it up on either. So it wasn't until 2010 when I joined the old Teddy Ruxpin Online forums that I found out what the song was and where it appeared in the book and tape series. Either way I didn't know a thing about the song other than that Teddy Ruxpin sang it and that I like it a lot.

Overall, this is a great tape. As I've mentioned in previous Teddy Ruxpin VHS reviews, episodes like this may be filler episodes, but they're fun to watch and still manage to do a bit of world building. In this case we meet the Dues Collector, whose name, I still can't remember and learn that Tweeg hadn't paid his membership fees yet, despite just being an apprentice member of M.A.V.O. Which is something that comes up a couple of times over the course of the series. 

That's it for this week's Teddy Ruxpin VHS review. There are only three more left to go, though as a bonus I may add The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, the TV movie VHS and Teddy Ruxpin: The Movie after Volume 12. We'll see though. For now I'll be back next week for Volume 10, A Royal Adventure which is probably the longest in terms of the tape's run time, even though there's four episodes on the tape like there was for The Treasure of Grundo. So until then have a great week and I will see you back here tomorrow for this week's comic book review. Later. 

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