Toy Girls - Catalogue Series 180: Pepper Ann

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Good evening, my dear audience! It’s me, the Master of Cuteness, mcikeyelric11, and here I present you a new sweet work for Toy Girls’ Catalogue Series. Please, remember you can always support me by giving me a pink brick in my Patreon Account. Also, don’t forget either my Donation Pool or the Official Toy Girls Facebook Page. Also, please, follow me on Twitter. Use the hashtag #CutenessShallLast

            Even if I complain so much about them, not all Slice-of-Life Cartoons suck. I have said before that it seems like a waste that one of the Favorite Genres to pick at the time of creating an animated series is just follow the daily life of a normal person, especially when your target audience is children. You know: the protagonist is a normal kid, most of the time is spent on school, we have as episodes the same boring and cliché plots, and there’s really no fantasy, sci-fi or action scenes. I mean, many people use media as a escape from reality, and the last thing a kid would like to watch on cartoons is a bad copy of their real life. However, in my opinion, any genre can be good as long as you develop interesting and fresh stories, and you write likeable and deep characters. For example, this cartoon is still beloved until this day, and brought us a very particular protagonist. For this Saturday:

            Pepper Ann Pearson, from “Pepper Ann”, a request for the user

    When I finally got Disney Channel, this show was one of the first series I enjoyed, and that’s why it brings me so many sweet memories.

    It’s the story of Pepper Ann, a Middle School girl who loves rollerblading, gets in problem after problem in school (normally always getting Detention everyday), and have many misadventures with her friends, the shy and smart Nikki, and the cool-dude Milo.

    Yes, nothing spectacular here: it’s just a preteen girl having to face moral dilemmas, getting in troubles for her own recklessness, tries something new, etc. There’s no fantasy, superpowers, bloody battles, and, yes, there’s a lot of stories focused on school. The most fantastical aspect on this show can be Pepper Ann talking to herself projected on her environment; something pretty cliché on this kind of shows.

    Basically, “Pepper Ann” has a practically equal format as other shows like “Doug”, “Recess” and “Arthur”. However, again, this show is beloved until this day, and it even managed to gain a lot more of popularity than other works of its time like “The Weekenders” and “Lloyd in Space”; since it even managed to have a cameo in “House of Mouse”. But, why? Again, this show not only had to face with other show with better premises on Disney Channel, but also on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Why did it achieved fame? Well, let’s check it out:

    Before anything, piece of trivia: “Pepper Ann” was the very first cartoon of Dinsey to be created by a woman, Sue Rose; you know, the idiot which also brought “”Angela Anaconda”. And it was the only one until Daron Nefcy’s “Star vs. the Forces of Evil”.

    OK, first, the animation. Yes, at difference from “Doug”, “Recess” or “The Weekenders”, here the style, created by Mr. Warburton, the same genius behind “Kids Next Door”, had a more wonkier design, and even more energetic movement, instead of being simpler and more realistic as the formers, making it pretty attractive in the eyes of a child, and highly memorable. Yeah, a good advantage of this animation is how memorable and colorful it made the protagonists and secondary characters: a cool-dude with a stripped ski hat, the most handsome boy in school wore sunglasses and braces, we had a chubby German kid, a kid with pink eye, a little sister we all thought it was a boy, etc.

    Also, the wolrd it was built on, even if it was a daily-life city, it was pretty memorable too, with its arcade, pizza parlor, the house of the protagonist, the school, and the new places we visited were never dull.

    Then, the stories were real-life problems, but they felt fresh, new, and even sometimes they took risks. For example, we had chapters of: our hero offending a Native-American Family with a stereotypical dinner, our hero wanting a bra, our protagonist falling in love with a Renaissance Fair, our main character making the feuds between twins 10 times worst for trying to follow the ideas of a sitcom, the best friend getting her first detention, the mother is in a very prejudicial trial against a teenager, GMO Foods, Addiction to Internet, wanting to unmask an “evil company”, getting traumatized with an actually scary Horror Film, the little sister not being too feminine, a musical episode, etc. Yes, some of them were pretty basic plots of Kids Cartoon, some of them did things no other cartoon dared to do, some created very harsh criticisms, and almost all of them tried their best to not be boring, and that was the main strength of “Pepper Ann”: it knew that, whatever it wanted to do, it had to be as fun as possible.

    Like I have said, I used to watch this show all the time as a kid, and never got bored, especially with the cool intro I remember until this day. However, I admit I never tried to rewatch it since I felt it a little corny back then, but, who knows, maybe I’m just an idiot, since I still remember chapters I loved like the Renaissance Fair, Pepper Ann trying to make Moose more feminine, the Spanish Class and the Native-American Heritage Episode.

    So, what about Pepper Ann herself?

    This show was smart enough to fulfill the first rule in any work of fiction: make a great protagonist…which is way harder in Slice-of-Life Shows than it looks. Normally, you either create a very bland avatar, or a very despicable bastard. In this case, Pepper Ann was what she was supposed to be: a tridimensional protagonist which felt new and wasn’t perfect, but always likeable.

    Pepper Ann is a very sassy, quirky and unpredictable kid which always has to face new predicament in each episode, which will carry a lot of mistakes, embarrassment and new lessons. It’s the normal gimmick of many protagonists in Slice-of-Life shows, but Pepper Ann manages to be memorable.

    First, Pepper Ann has a very interesting design and personality. I mean, even wearing glasses, she is not a geek or a well behaved kid: she gets detention all the time, gets in a lot of troubles, and can be pretty hard-headed. Like Malcolm, she normally learns her lesson in the worst way.

    Also, she even manages to do very cool stuffs, like rollerblading and being good at arcade games.

    So, when I finally get the chance of drawing the legendary Pepper Ann Pearson as a Toy Girl, I said “Hell yes!”

    At first, I was thinking of drawing her little kid avatar from a flashback episode, but then I realized that her present self is actually 12 years old, so I decided to draw that.

    To make the scene funnier, and to reflect part of her personality, I drew her rollerblading. She looks pretty cool.

    It was kind of hard to replicate her glasses, because of the way I draw the eyes on Toy Girls, but I think I made a good job.

    I should really give a second look to this show. It gave me so many good memories, and it maybe is as good as it was back in its day. Also, who knows? Maybe I can draw another character from there as a Toy Girl, because “Cuteness shall last”Well, this was a lot of fun, but here we close…the first part of today. However, what is awaiting us next Saturday? Get a lot of this: another request from my Favorite Preschool Show of All Time. Man, this really improves my mood, but, sadly, I really don’t have a good clue this time. Sorry! Sometimes I’m as creative and slow like a turtle! Kumenasai!

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