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What A Cartoon! - Capitol Critters "Hat and Mouse" (Patreon)

Published:
2021-06-14 04:00:02
Imported:
2026-06
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Chosen by premium Patreon subscriber Professor Gascan, this week we're covering one of the infamous prime time toons that came out in the wake of Bartmania, Capitol Critters! How did Hanna-Barbera combine with the Hill Street Blues creators to try and fail to make a politics-meets-talking-animals toon? How quickly was it canceled? We'll cover all of that and more with this forgotten piece of pop culture!

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Comments

crystalhearts

I knew this show from the tombstone but I'm glad to learn that they also solved racism

Angel Young

They really did air the State of the Union Address after an episode of Capitol Critters! LMAO!

Lorin Bernsen

This was a great choice!! Even though I never wanted to watch it (it looked awful to me), I remember the hullabaloo over how much of a bomb this show was when it first aired. This & Cool World share something, in that they’re both extremely ill-conceived. Both of them yearned to ride the then-current wave of “animation is red-hot” without really paying much attention to WHY popular animation of the time was suddenly more accepted by adults.

Joe Hodgson

I've remembered the name Capitol Critters for years, probably thanks to The Simpsons and the few times it has come up on Talking Simpsons, but I realized today I did not remember much of anything about the actual show. Just watching the opening credits caused a flood of memories (all right, more like a trickle of memories) to come roaring back mostly tied to the character designs. I think I watched the preview for this show on TGIF as a kid, and since I was a stupid baby, I actually wanted to see more, but I don't think I saw much more. It was a show that just went away and confused me as a result, but I definitely got over it fast, unlike fellow failed 1991-92 cartoon Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars. How I pined for thee. This show fucking sucks though. It looks okay, way better than I expected. I think it even looks better than the Hanna-Barbera network prime time specials that would follow like The Town that Santa Forgot and A Flintstone Family Christmas. There must have been a decent budget, and it's so sad to see it squandered on this misguided, at best, series.

AsterSupernova

I can't believe the Capitol Critters did not prevent the Capitol raid of Jan 6

KaiserBeamz

I have memories of watching this on Cartoon Network as a kid and I only remember tuning in because it had mice and I loved media with mice in it. Returning to this a few days ago was a frustrating experience. The dissonance between the pretty good animation and the C-tier sitcom jokes made this a chore to sit through. Mix in some of the standard, ignorant end-of-history politics that could have only come out of rich white Hollywood centrist boomers in the 90s and you got yourself a series that only gets more rotten with age. And yet part of me feels like that if this show was made now, it would be ten times as worse. It would be louder, uglier, crasser, more stiffly drawn and animated, and would just replace the 90s centrism with Seth MacFarlene-style liberal posturing about how offensive jokes are actually progressive.

Harry Thornton

Interesting animation connection from Silent Running: In that film, the gardening robots are named Hewey, Dewey, and Louie in an obvious Donald Duck homage. And that's not even getting into how Mario Odyssey's Wooded Kingdom is 100% based on Silent Running.

David Thomson

The version I watched was the German version (called "Mäuse an der Macht") but with the English dub. The only reason I bring this up is that when you mentioned the racist roach had a swastika on his hat, I didn't remember this during my viewing, so I checked. In the German version, the racist roach just has a black hat. I assume this was removed under "Strafgesetzbuch section 86a", which outlaws "use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations", which I believe caused many video games to be banned or altered in Germany.

Tashmon Dimps

I’ve literally never heard of this show until you guys announced that it’d be on the podcast this week. Now that I’ve watched the episode/listened to your show… I understand why XD No amount of surprisingly okay animation can distract from how putrid this script is. What a weird, fascinating mess, though

Christmas Ape

My family had a taped episode of this on VHS, which aside from the reference on The Simpsons, was my only evidence that this show was real. I really have no idea why my parents decided to preserve this garbage, though. Morbid curiosity? The thing I find the most fascinating about these early attempts to ape The Simpsons is how no one seemed to understand what made that show work. Both Capitol Critters and Fish Police relied on high concepts and references to adult subject matter, but couldn't be bothered to write real jokes or come up with likeable characters. Had these shows just been the product of Saturday morning cartoon lifers who were out of their element, that would be somewhat understandable—but as you pointed out, there are veteran TV people behind Capitol Critters, which makes it even more embarrassing.

littleterr0r

Google has Nat Mauldin's birth year as 1900 making him 121 years old.

Jay Gironimi

As I child I fell for every toy ad on tv, so I had one of those Squash-Em Muggle figures before the show premiered. I was probably slightly too dull to realize I was disappointed by the show at the time, but I think it says a lot that all I remember about it is the toy I got. I look forward to leaving a similar comment for Family Dog.