Chucklewood Critters was an American line of television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 specials and an animated TV series created by former Hanna-Barbera animators, Bill Hutten and Tony Love, which centered on two woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...

 animals: Buttons, a young bear

Bear

Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...

 cub, and Rusty, a fox

Fox

Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...

 cub. It started as a Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 special in 1983 called The Christmas Tree Train, followed by eight more holiday/seasonal specials. In 1997 it was developed into a series entitled The New Chucklewood Critters, which ran for two seasons.

Characters

• Buttons lives in a cave in Chucklewood Park, along with his parents, Abner and Bridgett.
• Rusty and his parents, George and Rosie, live in the same cave as Buttons' family.
• Ranger Jones, a.k.a. Jonesy, is the park ranger
  Park ranger
  A park ranger or forest ranger is a person entrusted with protecting and preserving parklands – national, state, provincial, or local parks. Different countries use different names for the position. Ranger is the favored term in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Within the United...
  
   in charge of Chucklewood, and the only regular human character in the series.
• Bearbette and Frisky are a zaftig female bear
  Bear
  Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...
  
   cub and a slim female fox
  Fox
  Fox is a common name for many species of omnivorous mammals belonging to the Canidae family. Foxes are small to medium-sized canids , characterized by possessing a long narrow snout, and a bushy tail .Members of about 37 species are referred to as foxes, of which only 12 species actually belong to...
  
   cub, respectively; they were introduced in the Valentine's Day
  Valentine's Day
  Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496...
  
   special, Honeybunch. They live in Chucklewood with Bearbette's parents, Darwin and Bernadine; Frisky is an adopted
  Adoption
  Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
  
   member of the family and as Buttons and Rusty's future wives.
• Skipper and Bluebell are rabbits, introduced in A Chucklewood Easter. They live in an underground warren and bear a bit of a suspicious resemblance to Bugs Bunny
  Bugs Bunny
  Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
  
  .
• Lester is a Cajun
  Cajun
  Cajuns are an ethnic group mainly living in the U.S. state of Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles...
  
   alligator
  Alligator
  An alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. There are two extant alligator species: the American alligator and the Chinese alligator ....
  
   who lives in nearby Crystal Bayou
  Bayou
  A bayou is an American term for a body of water typically found in flat, low-lying areas, and can refer either to an extremely slow-moving stream or river , or to a marshy lake or wetland. The name "bayou" can also refer to creeks that see level changes due to tides and hold brackish water which...
  
  , which is where Bearbette and her family lived before moving to Chucklewood; Lester is a close friend of the family.
• Franklin the Owl
  Owl
  Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...
  
   is the cubs' teacher, who sometimes turns into a rap
  Hip hop music
  Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
  
   singer to make the lessons more interesting.
• Freddy the Raccoon
  Raccoon
  Procyon is a genus of nocturnal mammals, comprising three species commonly known as raccoons, in the family Procyonidae. The most familiar species, the common raccoon , is often known simply as "the" raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and are...
  
   is a friend and classmate of the cubs, introduced in School Daze, who tends to be a troublemaker.
• Turner the Turtle
  Turtle
  Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...
  
   is another friend and classmate of the cubs, who was introduced in What's Up, Mom? and sometimes appears to be wearing a bow tie.
• Claude the Coyote
  Coyote
  The coyote , also known as the American jackal or the prairie wolf, is a species of canine found throughout North and Central America, ranging from Panama in the south, north through Mexico, the United States and Canada...
  
   is a trader who'll stoop to underhanded means to make a deal; he was introduced in the episode An Eye for a Tooth. His voice is modeled after that of W. C. Fields
  W. C. Fields
  William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...
  
  .

Specials

• The Christmas Tree Train (1983)
• Which Witch is Which? (1984)
• The Turkey Caper (1985)
• A Chucklewood Easter (1986)
• The Adventure Machine (1991)
• What's Up Mom? (1992)
• Honeybunch (1992)
• 'Twas the Day Before Christmas (1993)
• School Daze (1994)

Season 1 (1997)

1. Mudcats Galore
2. Chucklewood Cousins
3. The Salmon are Running
4. The Big One
5. No Cave Like Home
6. Mother Nature's Missing
7. An Eye for a Tooth
8. The Mystery of the Sneaky Snacker
9. Anything You Can Do...?
10. Raging Rivers
11. Scenter of Attention
12. Timeout
13. Family Feud

Season 2 (1998)

1. Winter Wonder
2. The Creature from Chucklewood Lake
3. Where Did I Come From?
4. Nora Know it Owl
5. Spring Eternal
6. The Gram who Came to Dinner
7. The Wishing Stone
8. Smile Please Lester
9. The Lone Pony
10. Unidentified Furry Object
11. The Treasure of Chucklewood, Part 1: The Search
12. The Treasure of Chucklewood, Part 2: The Rescue
13. Arrival of the Fittest

Voice cast

• Barbara Goodson
  Barbara Goodson
  Barbara Goodson is an American actress known mostly for her versatility in voicing original and dubbed cartoons. She is voted one of the ten best women to do the voices for young males in cartoons...
  
   - Buttons, Christie (Which Witch is Which), Frisky
• Kathy Ritter - Rusty, Rosie (The Christmas Tree Train/Which Witch is Which/The Turkey Caper)
• Mona Marshall
  Mona Marshall
  Mona M. Ianotti is an American voice actress. She is often cast in the role of young boys. Her roles have included parts in not only Japanese anime, but also in American cartoons as well. Mona Marshall has recently lent her voice to the talking bear Koby the Study Buddy...
  
   - Rusty, Bearbette, Bluebell
• Alvy Moore
  Alvy Moore
  Jack Alvin "Alvy" Moore was an American light comic actor best known for his role as scatterbrained county agricultural agent "Hank Kimball" on the television series Green Acres....
  
   - Abner (The Christmas Tree Tain/Which Witch is Which/The Turkey Caper/A Chucklewood Easter), Santa (The Christmas Tree Train)
• Morgan Lofting - Bridgett (The Christmas Tree Train/Which Witch is Which/The Turkey Caper)
• Oceana Marr - Bridgett (A Chucklewood Easter)
• Bill Ratner
  Bill Ratner
  Bill Ratner is an American voice actor. He is best known for being the voice of G.I. Joe's Flint. He is the movie trailer voice for Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory, Kung Fu Panda, Tenacious D, Mike Myers's The Love Guru, Monsters vs...
  
   - George (The Christmas Tree Train/Which Witch is Which/The Turkey Caper)
• Robert Axelrod
  Robert Axelrod (actor)
  Robert Axelrod is a U.S. actor who has been in several movies and lent his voice to countless televisual shows including Digimon, having started vocal acting for the English versions of Japanese cartoons in 1980...
  
   - George (A Chucklewood Easter/What's Up, Mom?), Easter Bunny (A Chucklewood Easter)
• Bill Boyett - Ranger Jones (The Christmas Tree Train/Which Witch is Which/The Turkey Caper/A Chucklewood Easter)
• Dan Roth - Skipper (A Chucklewood Easter), Marty (The Turkey Caper), Toy Dept. Manager (The Christmas Tree Train)
• Doug Stone - Lester, Skeeter
• Steve Bulen
  Steve Bulen
  James Steven Bulen , better known as Steve Bulen, is an American voice actor. He has been doing voices for many animated films and television shows for Walt Disney Animation Studios and Hanna-Barbera as well several video games and anime titles such as Doomed Megalopolis, Giant Robo, Outlaw Star,...
  
   - Franklin

Additional Voices

• Bobby West
• Shane Margolis
• Shifra Margolis
• Standley Gurd, Jr.
• Dan Smith
• Jan Carole
• Brock Richards
• Marsha Jones
• Joyce Roberts
• Hal Ventura
• Ann Green
• James Curtis
• R.T. West
• Susan Clark
  Susan Clark
  Susan Clark is a Canadian actress, possibly best-known for her role as Katherine on the American television sitcom Webster, on which she appeared with her husband, Alex Karras.-Personal life:...
  
  
• Bill Kerns

Availability

Most of the holiday specials were released on VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

 videocassette, but these are now out of print. More recently, the entire series and all the specials have been made available on a four-volume DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

set but as of now, the DVD set has been discontinued by its publisher (Platinum Disc) and practically, out of print

External links

Series and specials:

• Stephen's UnOfficial Chucklewood Critters Home Page

Specials: