Happy Tree Friends | |
---|---|
Genre |
Black comedy Horror |
Created by |
Aubrey Ankrum Rhode Montijo Kenn Navarro |
Developed by | Rhode Montijo Kenn Navarro Warren Graff |
Voices of | Kenn Navarro Nica Lorber Rhode Montijo (1999–2005) David Winn Dana Belben (2000–2005) Ellen Connell (2005–09) Lori Jee (2009–present) Warren Graff Aubrey Ankrum Liz Stuart Jeff Biancalana (2002–2005) Peter Herrmann Michael "Lippy" Lipman Francis Carr Renée T. MacDonald |
Theme music composer | rj Eleven |
Country of origin | United States Spain-Philippines Indonesia Canada (television) |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 5 |
No. of episodes | 133 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) | John Evershed |
Producer(s) | Liz Stuart |
Running time | 1–7 minutes |
Production company(s) |
Mondo Media Fatkat Animation Studios (television) |
Distributor | Mondo Media |
Release | |
Original network | Mondo Media (internet) G4 (television) |
Picture format | Flash cartoon |
Original release | December 24, 1999 | – present
External links | |
Website |
Happy Tree Friends (HTF) is an American animated flash Adult cartoon series created and developed by Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo, Kenn Navarro and Warren Graff for Mondo Media. The show is cited as an example of achieving a cult following.
The action and adventure comedy is composed of simple drawings and cute forest animals with extreme graphic violence. Each episode revolves around the characters enduring accidental or deliberately inflicted events of bloodshed, pain, dismemberment, evisceration, and/or death. At one point, there was a warning given to the site "Cartoon Violence: Not recommended for small children, or big babies".
Happy Tree Friends features a variety of characters, each with varying appearances and personalities. However, almost all share identical Pac-Man eyes, boot-shaped feet, buckteeth, and pink heart-shaped noses; characters include Cuddles, a yellow rabbit, Petunia, a blue skunk, Giggles, a pink chipmunk, Toothy, a mauve-colored beaver, Disco Bear, a gold-orange bear, Flaky, a red porcupine, Flippy, a green army veteran bear, Handy, an orange beaver with amputated hands, Lammy, a purple sheep, etc.
While working on Mondo Media, Rhode Montijo drew on a piece of scrap paper a character who would later become Shifty. He then drew on a spreadsheet poster a yellow rabbit that bore some resemblance to Cuddles and wrote "Resistance is futile" underneath it. Rhode hung the drawing up in his workstation so other people could see his idea, and eventually the idea was pitched to and accepted by the Mondo Media executives. In 1999, Mondo gave Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo and Kenn Navarro a chance to do a short for them. They came up with a short named Banjo Frenzy, which featured a dinosaur (an earlier version of Lumpy) killing three woodland animals, a rabbit, squirrel and beaver (earlier versions of Cuddles, Giggles and Toothy) with a banjo. From there, Mondo gave them their own Internet series, which they named Happy Tree Friends.