bread what is it i don't know that's not my job to explain to you my job is to talk
about bread winners a cartoon on nickelodeon that lasted for two seasons about two best
friend anthropomorphic ducks whose job it is is to deliver bread with their flying van
on their planet of pongia that name is brilliant it was bright and colorful and full of wacky
adventures but despite strong viewership at the start would be scorned with negative reviews going
after the look of the show lack of plot lines that were deeper than surface level and humor
akin to the lowest form of it from a strong premiere to a force to the side
ending on the dreaded nicktoon network graveyard today we are going to take a look at the rise
and sad fall of winners we're gonna need a bigger lily pad oh boy we got a big one
i'm gonna miss those crazy baps february 17 2014 breadwinners would premiere on nickelodeon to
about 2.8 million viewers originally started off as a standalone short shown off at a new york city
bar the show made a splash on the network hitting a solid ranking within a surprising older teen to
young adult demographic and as the months went on the show would rank high with kids pre-teen
and under still bringing in a solid 1.7 million views to the show everything on the surface here
looked pretty great strong viewer numbers a spread in the demographic to have a wide range of fans
the show seemed to be on a good path to success by may of 2014 the show was already renewed for
a second season all good signs and it all started out with a wish and a dream and a two-month adobe
flash made short back in 2010 an animated sketch show mad based off of mad magazine
was new to cartoon network two people that worked on that show steve borst one of the show's writers
and gary doodles d raphael an animator turned lead animator for the show got together on their
own time at gary's apartment with a fun concept of what bread winners is and spent two months working
on a short for it that would both be shown off at the midsummer night tunes film festival at a bar
in new york city along with uploading the short onto youtube which would get some attention and a
bunch of eyes on it in its first week on youtube it racked in around 15 000 views as boris noted
that it just took on a life of its own but knowing that they wanted more from bread winners as they
had more stories to tell about these bread-selling ducks the viewers of the short wanted more as well
on a whim they sent their short to nickelodeon not in hopes that it was a surefire thing that
would get their attention but sometimes stranger things have happened and what's the harm in trying
right to both of their surprise nickelodeon reached back out to them interested in the
property something so out of the blue and realm of actual thought that gary was very confused by this
offer and originally thought that it was just spam it couldn't be real could it spoiler alert it was
real a handful of months later and the creators of the short were both hired to take what they
had with their original short and build it into a full-on series for nickelodeon 20 episodes were
ordered and it even premiered five days ahead of its scheduled premiere set for february 22nd
2014 on the 17th for a sneak beak preview to generate hype for this new series the first season
viewership-wise was great bringing a healthy one to two million viewers before tapering off a bit
as the season would play out for the rest of the year and into 2015. the critical reviews of the
show however were not kind to it but despite this the series would be renewed for a second season
with another 20 episodes while the rise of the show was strong there is a reason that this video
is titled rise and fall but before we get into all of that we need to take a look at the show in
general to grasp what it truly was we definitely have a problem here breadwinners up next
we delivered all the bread all the bread bread winners follows two duck best friends sway
sway and badus sway sway voiced by robbie damon actually comes from a long line of family members
who were bred delivery ducks making him perfect and destined for the job sure let's go with that
because you'll see in the show that his antics with badous would tell a different story but
i digress he is the one who pilots their rocket-powered flying van but deuce voiced
by eric baza serves as the duo's navigator for the deliveries he's smaller than swaysway but
brings just as much if not more energy to every situation throughout their goofball deliveries
they often have to come up with ways to fix solve or get past problems majority caused because of
them by leveling up and or transforming themselves in order to do so why be because they they can i
guess the main concept is simple as the outliers within any given episode are what draw you in
there is a supporting cast of interesting characters as well from their pet frog jelly who
doesn't speak outside of saying ribbit but is voiced by alexander polinski the bread maker
himself in which the two seek advice or assistance from voiced by fred tatisher is kinda like a genie
as he appears after his magical toaster is rubbed when the two need some work done on their van
keta a swan who runs her own mechanic shop is there for them voiced by carrie walgren because of
their constant mayhem and less than satisfactory flying or driving whatever you call it officer ram
bamboo voiced by audrey wazilowski is a yellow toad chief officer of the tad police and as the
one who teaches driving class you can only imagine how quickly they get on her nerves and as far
as any notable shady characters or considered bad guys s scott bullock voiced t midi an owl
an owl who shut up an owl who while having a low patience tolerance to these two
is their number one customer there's mr pumpers voiced by michael leon wooley he's a stork who
performs a lot of get rich quick schemes that pretty much work out for him every time he also
owns the pumper's diner a sky floating restaurant and then there is unski the great voiced by norma
the nor i am so sorry nolan north i didn't mean to say that but i i'm just gonna leave it in he's
a viking beaver who talks in the third person steals anything that he wants to steal and is
generally a menace to pongia man that is just such a good name i think the most unique thing
about this show is the way in which episodes are made traditionally you have the ideas storyboards
and everything leading up to production being worked on first and foremost here however the
music takes center stage as the episodes are built upon the music first specifically the score of the
show by tommy sikka a friend of gary's from a band they used to play in together before any
animation the score of the show would be recorded first this being a guiding line that drives the
events of the show at a certain beat-by-beat rate faster than most downtime is rarely a thing
found within this show it's filled with constant shenanigans bits action and conversations that
fly by faster than the van this constant beat throughout the show idea seemed to work out as
during test screenings with kids they would quote unquote bounce to the rhythm of the show developed
couple this with the look of the show being styled more cartoony to fit an aesthetic of retro video
games with pixelated-esque backgrounds as well as the shadows of the characters themselves
for me i think the show is pretty alright i know that the random equals funny humor gets on a lot
of people's nerves making something like this easier to tune off and sure it does get that way
quite a bit but i do find it fascinating about the score driving the show's flow in which made
the experience of watching the show way more enjoyable and easier to sit through for me it
didn't do anything too special to stand out from other shows around the time but it had some truly
unique qualities that did make it more its own i like how bright and vivid it is maybe just not how
childish it is most different types of humor i can find enjoyment in whether it's deemed toilet
humor or gross out humor or whatever if a comedy cartoon or not can get a singular chuckle out of
me or contain my interest then i don't personally see any major failure in it the story of how this
show came to be is inspiring and i'm glad that two people with an idea were able to successfully get
their short scene and picked up for a full show especially when it seemed like such an incredibly
far long shot april 5th 2015 the second season of breadwinners would premiere on nickelodeon
this time to less viewership and less support for the show the negative critic
reviews surely didn't help and overall the beginning of the end for the show was clear
more breadwinners up next
nine episodes that's how many episodes came out between april and december of 2015. sure you can
consider that to be half the season roughly for a mid-season break but it was odd because of the
spacing between episodes being far apart this seemed a bit more calculated from nickelodeon as
the initial faith they seemed to have in the show was no longer there essentially self-sabotaging
their own show the viewership dropping and the bad reviews had them begin to shove the show
aside but more importantly this can also be due to the fact that at this point for the network
they were looking for the next spongebob throwing money at so many new ideas for a chance to see if
that was it and pushing them aside if it didn't immediately have the impact they thought it would
these other shows like breadwinners we will sure cover soon but specifically for this show it was
given a sentence that most mid-2000 shows faced the nicktoon network curse returning for the rest
of season 2 in april of 2016 and running the final 11 episodes until september of that year however
it was only now on the nicktoon network channel notorious as the graveyard for shows that the
main nickelodeon channel pushed away for them to quietly end their run while there is a lot
of stuff that the nicktoons network is a good thing for it's not always all bad it's just
been known mainly for this reason thus getting deemed the place non-spongebob shows go to die
even though the show would come to an end with the final episode feeling just like any other episode
nicktoons kept the show alive for reruns up until december of 2020 where now the whole
show resides on paramount plus the only physical release of the show was on a season 1 dvd set but
nothing for season 2. as quickly as the show was picked up on a whim it was gone just as fast and
given a fate all too familiar to so many other nickelodeon cartoons both creators went on to do
other things with their career though with gary going on to be an animator on the netflix show
the midnight gospel and steve went on to work on teen titans go the sadder and more
sinister aspect of all of this though isn't the forcing of the show onto a side network channel
but the ownership of the ip legally nickelodeon purchases the ip and decides what happens with it
that's a common practice but at one point viacom used their powers of owning the ip to copyright
claim the original short that was made and posted on youtube claiming it all is their own so i guess
the real breadwinner here at the end of the day was viacom but what do you guys think about this
show i've heard some pretty positive things in my comment section about it and i can see
why it was enjoyed and also why it may not have been for everybody but tell me your opinions on
the show in the comments thanks so much for watching make sure to hit the like button
and subscribe for more content like this or i'll destroy this spyro plush with my bare
hands follow me on twitter and i'll be back with another video soon but until then later
you