the early 2000s for cartoons had a lot of varying degrees of success 2d animation was still rolling
strong and 3d animation was steadily creeping up behind it and what perhaps made the 3d animation
more exciting was that it was something new not every show was doing it and at that particular
time it felt like every week there was a new 2d animated show premiering across disney channel
nickelodeon and cartoon network primarily it was hard to stand out from the crowd when every other
show was trying to do the same thing the creators of course don't want their show to only last a
season because it didn't do well in a poorly given time spot on tv unfortunately that's just how it
was in most cases and still is didn't matter if you had the best animation or the best writing
or the coolest concept if the kids didn't tune in the network didn't care about how high art your
product is if it can't sell then they don't want to continue to buy if you get what i'm saying so
there are a plethora of cartoons that ran for a season or two that never got their day in the sun
instead they were relegated to the dark caves of bad time slots weird territorial syndication
and worst of all complete total obscurity now sometimes these shows if you were even able to
catch an episode nowadays feels like a fever dream did they exist did they not exist this
is the question a while back i was talking with some friends and i brought up a show that for some
reason crawled out of the back of my memories and one by one i saw everyone's faces start to
realize they had a faint memory of the same show but they couldn't tell you anything about it the
main thing that we could all remember was the theme song yakity yak a show that follows a 12
year old yak named yakity i will not talk back he aspires to be a stand-up comedian a premise
in a kid's cartoon that i think is really unique something different more so than just the kids or
yak going to a school and living a regular life and maybe getting into some average hijinks but
as a yak so after all these years digging back up these hidden memories got me interested in
tracking down this show and watching it again to see and learn why we well at least myself and some
of my friends barely remember yakity yak well the first thing you're greeted to upon watching
the first couple of episodes is a lot to take in of course we have the yak yakity and his friend a
young pineapple kid thing named keo we immediately see their personalities keo is just too shy
anthropomorphic fruit who is pretty smart when it comes to school and basic general knowledge
and yakity well yakity is a daydreamer but remember right after a dream you need to wake up
well that was nuts man what a nightmare one looking out the window
thinking of his future of hopefully being a stand-up comedian well be it like i said
i love the comedian aspect maybe nowadays he even has a youtube podcast with his other comedian
friends but you'll begin to see right away where this show may have gone wrong from the start the
second episode sees the two friends do the whole let's cheat and some contest or game show where
in which one person feeds the other person the correct answers in some ridiculous way
which will end up in the two getting into a fight and everything getting ruined a plot and situation
we've seen time and time again both before and after yakity yak's version of this same plot this
isn't just a this show thing every live-action sitcom or cartoon goes through its verification of
things similar storylines life lessons and tropes we've seen a million times over but just doing it
within the world they've built with those set of characters this could result both in something
special adding something new to the zeitgeist by improving on said retold story elements or it
could come off as a lazy retread as to cut corners in the writer's room compare it to drake and josh
who would tell the same plot except drake is doing it to impress a smart girl while pineapple head
wants money and there's a lot of cheese involved cheese discounted cheese maybe you should figure
out what you're gonna do with three tons of melting cheese we're gonna need to buy a lot
of crackers you're wearing a hat full of cheese i like chocolate milk well again nothing of this is
inherently bad the show just didn't bring anything new we've seen these stories told before we've
seen animal and human characters coexisting in a regular setting before we've just seen and heard
all of this before as the series goes on you start to see this pattern more and more clear
it just never felt like the show found its voice its true identity something as to differentiate
it from the crowd of other shows out around the same time another problem that at least in my
eyes well i guess my ears really that made the show less enjoyable was the voice inflections
the voice actors were directed to give to the characters yakity our literal main character
has a very ear piercing voice that has some raspiness to it but it inflects up and down as he
shouts and speaks at a regular volume golly nice april sweaty hands wow incredible professor crazy
hair q as well almost sounds like he's hurting himself to speak it's just a little off-putting
to deal with within each episode hi lemony gee your hair looks nice well if you want my advice
oh yeah and their other friend the third in the group lemony has a higher pitched nasally voice
how can that actors say that silly stuff with a straight face step one we gotta hit them all
girlfriend and the last thing i want to do is nitpick that's not my goal here but i want to
point out the voices as if you can't get past this factor then you can't really enjoy the
rest of the show that's not a knock at the voice actors i've looked into their other
work and they've each done their own great things outside of this but the voice direction here just
wasn't it as the series progresses we see more of the same and not returning a library book on time
learning lying is bad getting made fun of for holding on to childhood items and eventually
learning to love yourself no matter what somebody else says to bring you down
learning about responsibilities you name it it's here it's been told before and it doesn't use any
new or unique angles to make the story its own yakity yak lasted a total of 26 episodes with
two 12 minute segments each it's a fast watch if you decide to sit through it which is nice
it feels like it didn't overstay its welcome that being said i really wanted to like the show the
memory of the theme song and the characters had me excited to hopefully find a hidden gem of a show
but unfortunately some nostalgic memories are just that and better left that way it's not hard to see
why the show wasn't renewed nor why it didn't become the next big cartoon at the time but hey
at least we still got that great theme song oh my god
so yeah that was yakity yak i actually remember how i first found this show as a kid in 2005
on neptune's a side channel of nickelodeon they always played a lot of reruns of shows that didn't
get a lot of play anymore on nickelodeon proper as well as the obscure stuff like
yakityak which actually was on regular nickelodeon for a short time in 2003 and 2004 but was quickly
tossed over for the next several years on the nicktoon channel there's an interesting history of
this canadian australian created show but that's my memory of discovering it on nicktoons on some
random time slot that yes even i didn't pay too much attention to other than retaining the memory
and thought of this show existing it was a fun trip down memory lane and i'm glad that i've
finally rewatched it but i don't think i'll be revisiting it at least not anytime soon but it
marinates some more in the back of my mind and re-re-discover it in like 2041 or something but
yeah please let me know what you thought of this show in the comments have you seen it
have you even heard of it all of that as well as what other shows do you barely remember that
fester in the dark depths of your memory banks of course i appreciate all of you watching this
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huge thank you once again i'll see you soon with a new video or two next week until then later