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Histeria! is an American animated television series of the late-1990s, created by Tom Ruegger (who also created Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, and Road Rovers) at Warner Bros. Animation. Unlike other similar shows by Warner Bros., Histeria!'s purpose was not simply to entertain, but to also attempt to teach history as well, a residual effect of the network having to meet the FCC's recently implemented educational/informational requirements.
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Quotations
Heeey! You're not ________________!
Hi-yo!
I'm not happy.
The year, ___________. The place, ____________.
We're walkin', we're walkin'..
WHAT A GROUCH!!
Encyclopedia
Histeria! is an American animated television series of the late-1990s, created by Tom Ruegger (who also created Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, and Road Rovers) at Warner Bros. Animation. Unlike other similar shows by Warner Bros., Histeria!'s purpose was not simply to entertain, but to also attempt to teach history as well, a residual effect of the network having to meet the FCC's recently implemented educational/informational requirements. A regular cast of characters would visit a different period or event in history and explain the event in a humorous skit or short segment. Frequently things were made into songs, historical figures had celebrity personalities, and various segments parodied contemporary entertainment (i.e. singing a song about Theodore Roosevelt in a parody of the Ghostbusters theme song).
Histeria! aired on Kids' WB from 1998 to 2001. It was to be WB's most ambitious project since Animaniacs. Like the aforementioned, there were 65 episodes that were originally going to be made, but due to being $10 million over budget, only 52 episodes were completed before being canceled in November 1998. More recently, the show has been in reruns on Toontopia TV (part of In2TV), first from March to July 2006, and then returning in October. In January 2009, all of the episodes were taken off the site. No DVD set has yet been announced.
Histeria! may have been influenced by 1978 French TV series Il était une fois l'homme (Once Upon a Time... Man). The French series featured the familiar series cast reappears as the contemporary figures of every historical time. Another possible influence is the 1988 miniseries This is America, Charlie Brown, which featured the cast of Peanuts interspersed within various events in American history.
Histeria! has since became a cult favorite, gaining a modest fandom; fan-creations can be found on the Internet and at fansites.
Characters
- Aka Pella, voiced by Cree Summer, is an African-American member of the Kid Chorus who uses sassy lingo, often delivering comedically-timed insults to whoever she is currently hanging out with.
- Big Fat Baby is the sidekick to Father Time, frequently accompanying him as he introduces the sketches. He is known for the foul odor he carries, caused by his constant pooping in his diaper, which is constantly stated to have been unchanged since ancient times.
- Bill Straitman, voiced by James Wickline, is the straight man to the rest of the characters.
- Charity Bazaar, voiced by Laraine Newman is female lead of the Histeria! Kid Chorus, and her main personality trait is that she is usually depicted as being very depressed, as shown by her catch phrase, "I'm not happy."
- Chit Chatterson, voiced by Billy West, is an eccentric commercial salesman.
- Cho-Cho, voiced by Tress MacNeille, is a little Chinese girl who is more devious than she looks.
- Father Time, voiced by Frank Welker, is the 'host' of Histeria, allowing the cast 'travels' through time.
- Fetch, voiced by Frank Welker, is Loud's aptly-named dog, who loves chasing tennis balls and frequently asks the historical figures if they want to play catch with him. He appears to be of the same breed of dog as Hunter from Road Rovers. He is voiced by Frank Welker.
- Froggo, voiced by Nathan Ruegger, is a boy from the Kid Chorus who he has a low, frog-like voice.
- Loud Kiddington is young boy noted for the extremely loud volume in which he talks. He is voiced by Tom Ruegger's son, Cody Ruegger, and the character's personality is based on Cody because he "has the tendency to be the loudest kid on Earth".
- Lucky Bob, voiced by Jeff Bennett is a boy with a very noticeable overbite. He tends to speak with a dim-witted drawl. He usually only speaks when agreeing with something another character has said, using Ed McMahon catchphrases such as "You are correct, sir," "Yes now," and "Hi-yo!".
- Lydia Karaoke, voiced by Nora Dunn, is an employee for The WB who has been assigned as network censor for the show, and given the show's nature, this can be quite a hassle for her. Often, she interrupts the sketches to complain that what is about to be or has just been shown is inappropriate for children's television.
- Miss Information, voiced by Laraine Newman, is an aptly ditzy tour guide who leads a group of tourists through various moments in history, as if the world is her own personal museum.
- Molly Pitcher constantly offers refreshments in the form of water.
- Mr. Smartypants, voiced by Rob Paulsen, is a shy genius who wears exceedingly large pants and spouts various tidbits of knowledge.
- Pepper Mills, voiced by Tress MacNeille, is a hyperactive teenager, who is driven to adoration for any and all celebrities.
- Pule Houser, voiced by Frank Welker, is an overweight kid in the show's cast who takes most of the abuse.
- Sammy Melman, voiced by Rob Paulsen, is a spoof of the smarmy and desperate television executives.
- Susanna Susquahanna is a little Native American girl with beady eyes and a large gap in her front teeth that gave her a gigantic lisp.
- Toast, voiced by Tress MacNeille, is a clueless teenager whose name comes from the idea that his brain is fried like toast.
- The World's Oldest Woman, voiced by Tress MacNeille, is a very old woman who claims to have dated every historical male in history.
Most of the real-life historical figures in Histeria were portrayed as caricatures of real-life celebrities from the modern era. The intent was to make analogies to contemporary individuals in terms of personalities and attitudes. These include appearances of Napoleon voiced by Jeff Bennett, Attila the Hun, Benjamin Franklin voiced by Billy West. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, both voiced by Maurice LaMarche. Nostradamus, voiced by Paul Rugg often predicts the future for the cast and predicts the next segment.
Episodes
- Inventors Hall of Fame - Part I
- Inventors Hall of Fame - Part II
- The U.S. Civil War - Part I
- The Attack of the Vikings
- The Wild West
- The American Revolution - Part I
- More Explorers
- The Know-It-Alls
- The Renaissance
- The U.S. Civil War - Part II
- Really Oldies But Goodies
- The American Revolution - Part II
- A Blast from the Past
- China
- Tribute to Tyrants
- The Montezuma Show
- Loud Kiddington's Ancient History
- Great Heroes of France
- The Terrible Tudors
- The Wheel of History
- When Time Collides
- Around the World in a Daze
- Histeria Satellite TV
- General Sherman's Campsite
- Return to Rome
- Megalomaniacs1
- The Russian Revolution
- The Thomas Jefferson Program
- Hooray For Presidents
- The Legion of Super Writers
- Return to China
- Writers of the Purple Prose
- History Of Flight
- Presidential People
- Histeria Around the World I
- When America Was Young
- Super Amazing Constitutions
- Better Living Through Science
- The Dawn of Time
- Music
- World War II
- The Teddy Roosevelt Show
- Communuts!
- Histeria Around the World II
- Americana
- 20th Century Presidents
- The French Revolution
- North America
- Histeria Goes to the Moon
- Heroes of Truth & Justice
- Euro-Mania
- Big Fat Baby Theatre
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1 - Two versions of this episode exist: a sketch about Custer's Last Stand (in which the kids mistakenly believe he's running a custard stand) replaced a sketch depicting the Spanish Inquisition as a game show called "Convert or Die" after a complaint from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who claimed the sketch "[taught] children to reject Catholicism". It has since been restored on In2TV.
Cameos and cultural references
An integral part of the program was its use of popular culture to demonstrate historical events. Among the numerous pop culture references the show used during its run:
- The Looney Tunes characters made occasional cameos:
- In "The Wild West", Father Time is shown watching Animaniacs on TV. Also, in "Really Oldies But Goodies", the kids sing to the Animaniacs theme tune when introducing Alexander the Great, and the Pinky and the Brain theme music can be heard during an offscreen mummification, specifically at the point mentioning the removal of the brain.
- An episode spoofs the Justice League with Franklin D. Roosevelt as Batman and Truman, played by Loud Kiddington as Robin. Eleanor Roosevelt appeared as Wonder Woman, Winston Churchill as Superman. Joseph Stalin appears as the Incredible Hulk even though he is a Marvel character. The Freedom League theme has the same tune as the Spider-Man television show theme.
- Superman makes cameo appearances in "The Inventors Hall of Fame - Part 2" and "When Time Collides!" (In the former, his "S" emblem mistakenly has an "F" on it, though one fan commented that it may have been a reference to Freakazoid.)
- The Battle of Yorktown is covered like the Super Bowl, including commentary by John Madden.
- Washington's crossing of the Delaware is told as a poem to the tune of The Night Before Christmas
- In the episode The Russian Revolution Pepper Mills confused Lenin with John Lennon, a famous singer and Beatle, and made a joke about another Beatle, Ringo Starr. Additionally, Karl Marx is portrayed as a lampoon of Groucho Marx.
- A song about William Howard Taft is sung to the tune of the Theme from Shaft.
- The "Communuts" song is a parody of "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It" from Horse Feathers.
- A musical number about Theodore Roosevelt and his anti-trust campaign was sung to the theme of Ghostbusters. Roosevelt was depicted as a 'Trust-Buster' (complete with tan flight suit and proton pack) busting various analogies for trusts, including giant piggy banks.
- The show's theme music is the march, Manhattan Beach, by John Philip Sousa.
- Occasionally, the show's theme song is replaced by a parody of the theme song to another television show. Among those are the intros to Saturday Night Live, The Addams Family, The Simpsons and Mr. Ed.
- Loud Kiddington once spoofed Green Eggs and Ham with George H. W. Bush. In this sketch, Loud chases Bush with a plate a broccoli while trying to convince him to eat it (Bush: "I do not like that broccoli, now go away and let me be!").
- In "The Renaissance" episode, Leonardo da Vinci spoofs the 1960s Batman series under the alias "Renaissance Man".
- At the end of a sketch debating their existence, King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, and Sir Galahad opt to retreat, shouting out "Run away!" like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Also, in the Salem Witch Trials sketch in "When America Was Young", the characters paraphrase a portion of the scene from Holy Grail where a woman is accused of being a witch.
- A sketch based on the Boston Tea Party borrows wholesale from the Cheese Shop sketch from an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. In this sketch, a British soldier approaches an American running a "tea stand" in front of Boston Harbor, and every time the soldier asks if they have a particular kind of tea, an off-screen splash sound-effect is heard and the American running the "stand" says that they're "out" of it, meaning it has just been dumped into the Harbor.
- In "Return to China", at the end of the Great Wall sketch, when the man freaks out when he sees the kids, he quotes some sayings from Mr. Director from Animaniacs.
- In "The Russian Revolution", Charlie Chaplin makes a brief cameo appearance in the black and white film example as his signature character The Tramp. However, he is holding a bumbershoot instead of a cane.
- In a bit about Lewis and Clark, Clark Kent makes an appearance as Clark, and the character of Lewis is modeled after comedian Jerry Lewis. In the same episode, the film Deliverance is also parodied.
- In "The American Revolution of Abe Lincoln," Abraham Lincoln spoofs the show Seinfield called Abe-Feld with Allan Pinkerton as Cosmo Kramer, George B. McClellan as George Costanza, and Jefferson Davis as Newman.
- In "Hooray for Presidents", the song about Bill Clinton and how he became president was to the theme of The Beverly Hillbillies (Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton also appeared). In the same episode, there was a sketch about the Lincoln Bedroom that had several celebrity cameos from Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Bill Cosby, Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, Christopher Walken, Clint Eastwood, Ted Turner, and Bill Clinton.
- The episode "General Sherman's Campsite" is a parody of Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
- Larry King Live was spoofed as Barry Ding Live, complete with appearances by Kato Kaelin.
See also
External links
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