Hey guys! Welcome to another review. Today is another family friendly review and I'm going to be taking a look at a book and tape set from my childhood. It's the 17th book and tape set in the The World of Teddy Ruxpin series, Grundo Springtime Singtime. I realize that that's a really random Teddy Ruxpin story to start with, but there's no real order to this series, and I did the VHS tapes in order, so I don't feel like doing that for 38 book and tape sets. Let's get into it.
As you all know by now, I am a huge Teddy Ruxpin fan. I grew up listening to the tapes on my original 1985 Teddy Ruxpin, while looking at the books, I watched the animated series on TV, as well as the episodes that I had on VHS, and I even watched the 1985 live action/animatronic TV movie on VHS. While my relationship with Teddy didn't go beyond the original talking toy and book & tape series, I maintained that relationship throughout my entire life. Mostly. There was a brief period where I didn't have any Teddy Ruxpin stuff except for my two original Teddys, and the Tweeg figure I've had since I was a kid, and no way to watch my VHS tapes. It wasn't until a chance encounter with a fellow fan online that my love of the series returned. He'd digitized all of the original audiotapes into MP3s and e-mailed them to me and that was it. I was back. Then I also joined a fan community, which I'm still part of (sort of) today. When a new complete series DVD set was released in 2012, I bought it and immediately binged the entire series in ten days (a disc per day). So why am I reviewing Grundo Springtime Singtime first instead of The Airship? Because Teddy Ruxpin has great sing along tapes that aren't heavy on story and I loved those as much as I did the story tapes. This was my favourite one of them all.
The story of this tape is that Teddy and Grubby are invited to the annual Grundo Springtime Singtime festival to sing on stage with the Grunges and the Fobs. And they do. "Spring Has Sprung", "Fobs are Gobs of Fun", "Grubby's Roasted Root Stew", "A Happy Sing Along Song" and "I'm an Honorary Grunge" are the songs sung on this tape. I don't really have a favourite among them either because they're all so good. But if you made me choose a favourite it would have to be "A Happy Sing Along Song". As Teddy says in the tape, it's a song that everyone can sing along on. Especially the people who don't share Grubby's taste in food...which is every single person in Grundo, except for the Mudblups. Who aren't even in this story.
While Teddy Ruxpin creator, Ken Forsse, writes a good chunk of the stories, there are 16 of them, including this one, that weren't written by him at all. Generally the writers were Will Ryan (Grubby), Phil Baron (Teddy Ruxpin himself), and Michelle Baron, Phil's wife. Grundo Springtime Singtime was written by Will Ryan. He also wrote the songs for the story as well.
Speaking of Grubby, who let him have a booth for his root stew? Is it just one of those festivals where everybody in town has a booth there and they don't have to pay to have a booth? Or is it just a situation where they didn't want to hurt Grubby's feelings so they let him have a booth anyway? Is that why the 25 cents and 10 cents are crossed out, and "FREE" is written in big bold letters, in red?
I love the artwork in these books. The pictures for Grundo Springtime Singtime were illustrated by David High, Russell Hicks, Theresa Mazurek, Allyn Conley/Gorniak, and Julie Armstrong. I'm not really sure which illustrator does what, like who's on backgrounds, who draws which characters etc. There's also three styles to the character designs in these books. There's the one you see in the images above, which is the standard design. But then there's the earlier design from The Airship and a few other of the earliest books. There's also a third design which was used for the later books in the series. This last design is much more cartoony than even the first designs from the earliest books. I think the only change in artist between The Airship and Grundo Springtime Singtime is a swapout of two artists for three, though David High and Russell Hicks are the main illustrators throughout the series. At least Russell Hicks is, because by the time the final story in the series Lullabies II came out, David High was no longer listed and Theresa Mazurek had also replaced him as the Art Director for the series.
Overall I really enjoy this Teddy Ruxpin sing along tape. Although the songs are pretty easy to learn, this book came out before they began the practice of including the full text of the story, including the song lyrics, in the book. With this book they were still using the original one sentence, or a song's title, in a box in the corner of the page. So with this story you just gotta listen to it a million times to learn the words to the songs. Not that that was a problem for us Teddy Ruxpin fans when we were kids in the '80s and '90s. It drove our parents insane most likely though...again, not a bad thing.
Alright guys, that's gonna be it for me for today. I've got another Hardy Boys blog post out tomorrow. Why? Because, I can and I have one more Hardy Boys thing to talk about before I review some of the books before the new TV show starts in 16 days. Yes, I am counting down the days until the show starts, don't judge me. Lol. Until tomorrow I will talk to you all later. Bye!
*book cover is from the Teddy Ruxpin Wiki, and the artwork pictures were taken my me.
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