VOICES: Hal Sparks (Tak), Kari Wahlgren (Jeera), John DiMaggio (Keeko), Patrick Warburton (Lok), Maurice LaMarche (the chief), Lloyd Sherr (Jibolba), Dannah Feinglass (Zaria).Kids TV History Episode Lists Search for: Tak and the Power of Juju Nick Jennings, executive producer Roland Poindexter, executive in charge for Nickelodeon theme song and music by Guy Moon. Nickelodeon, tonight at 8, Eastern and Pacific times 7, Central time. O.K., so Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants has his own breakfast cereal. Call them multiple entertainment platforms if you want, but it sure looks like marketing. Get set: It’s also coming to Nick’s broadband site and Nickelodeon Mobile. “Tak” falls short in all three categories, although it’s probably great with a joy stick. The characters’ proportions - big eyes, huge heads and extremities, and small bodies - make them ideal for racing across a monitor screen in a tropical environment, dodging, well, Woodies, I guess.Īnimation in the “Simpsons” era demands a breathless pace, varied characters and whirlwind visual invention. The second “Tak” episode centers more on humans, but its climax, involving a rolling boulder, could easily be a game challenge. Tonight’s first episode involves an attack on the village by a herd of Woodies, colossal predators who arrive amusingly in a scene riffing on “Bambi Meets Godzilla.” Tak and his mates confront them, and even make Lok useful. Two seasoned voices round out the cast: Patrick Warburton (who played the hero in Fox’s live-action “Tick”) as Lok, the resident blustering egotist, and Maurice LaMarche (the voice of Brain in WB’s “Pinky and the Brain”) as the pompous Chief. Tak helps the tribe with the aid of his feisty friend, Jeera (Kari Wahlgren), and his slow-witted buddy, Keeko (John DiMaggio). Though he’s armed with an enchanted scepter of sorts, his magic works only sporadically. He communicates with the Juju, all-knowing but mischievous supernatural beings. Tak (voiced by the comedian Hal Sparks, a talking head on innumerable VH-1 productions) is a student shaman for the Pupununu tribe. (Over three million copies of the first three games have been shipped so far.) The show makes its debut tonight and tomorrow morning in a double feature before assuming its regular Sunday-morning time slot.
And now there’s Nickelodeon’s computer-animated “Tak and the Power of Juju,” first introduced by THQ as a videogame in 2003. Joe” and “Transformers” toys and cartoons, and in the ’90s, Sonic the Hedgehog implicitly hawked Sega video games in his two cartoon series. Or was it? More than 40 years later animated characters still pitch, but more subtly. (Both characters were created by the Ed Graham ad agency.) In 1969 the Federal Trade Commission banned TV shows based on selling a sponsor’s product, and that was that. Back in the mid-’60s you had Linus the Lionhearted, a mascot for the breakfast cereal Crispy Critters, with his own show on CBS (later on ABC), which also featured Sugar Bear, star of Sugar Crisp cereal. It would be nice to say that characters in kids’ animated television shows have only recently become pitchmen, but it’s a long tradition.
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