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The Cranky Weasels is an American animated television series created by Mitch Schauer for GoAnimate Network. The series revolves around Kenny and Herbert Beaver, two young weasels brothers who have moved out of their parents' home to become bachelors in the forest near the fictional Veilstone, Idaho. The show premiered in the United States on April 19, 1997, and ended on June 24, 2004. The series has also appeared in syndication on GoAnimate Canada. The complete series has also been released on DVD in Region 1 by Shout! Factory.

The Cranky Weasels



 * Kenny Douglas "Ken" Weasel (voiced by Eddie Murphy): The younger brother of Herbert by four minutes. Energetic and childish, Kenny has a habit of over-the-top and sensitive emotions, as well as a well-known trait of name-calling and mispronouncing words. He shares with his brother a typical brotherly love-hate relationship, helping and abusing his elder sibling as his mood requires.
 * Herbert Templeton "Herb" Ferret (voiced by Jeff Bergman in the pilot, Matt Frewer in the series): Kenny's friendly older brother by four minutes. Articulate and well-read, Kenny is a highly opinionated ferret who acts as the voice of reason and straight man to his younger brother's insane ideas. He is very lazy, and very patronizing towards Kenny. He can be quite selfish at times, and tends to bully, insult, and take advantage of his brother, which usually backfires.

Supporting and recurring characters

 * Stump: A giant sequoia stump who is the best friend of Herbert and Kenny . He frequents many of the weasels' social events, forming an integral part of their inner friendship circle. When Kenny first met Stump, he was jealous of him but Stump brought Herbert and Kenny closer together. In "Stump Looks for His Roots", he journeys off in search of his real family. Herbert and Kenny almost ate Stump while they were in a cave. Stump is apparently alive, although he is never seen doing anything on screen, and he does not talk, at least out loud.
 * Dorothy (voiced by Hynden Walch): Herbert's main love interest who is a hippie ferret with many jobs outside the forest. Dorothy was once in a relationship with Herbert during the "Bummer of Love" episode. She is on good-terms with Herbert after she starts dating Damien, although Damien only cares about his truck. Dorothy was also Muscular Weasel's sidekick, Goody Good Gal. Her careers include elevator songwriter, championship snowboarder, superhero and firefighter.
 * Jeremy (voiced by Victor Wilson): An annoying talkative lizard who hangs out with Herbert and Keny. Bing went through a breakup in one episode. Herbert and Kenny also fought over him because he told all the other creatures that they were both constantly ditching him. Bing has a tendency to talk fast. Jeremy is able to camouflage himself to blend with his surroundings, suggesting that he is a chameleon. Jeremy has a girlfriend named Rachel.
 * Ben Bear (voiced by Patrick Warburton): Herbert and Kenny's disco/funk-loving grizzly bear friend, whose voice and personality is modeled on Ben Black. Ben is a vegetarian and obsessed over honey despite being a bear. He once made a disco album after everybody got sick of Weasel Fever. In one episode, Ben felt awkward around Herbert because he was acting like Kenny. There was also an episode where the weasels thought Ben was going to eat them (a lie that Timmy Hayes made up).
 * Damien (voiced by Mark Klastorin in most appearances, Phil LaMarr in "Ken's List"): A truck-loving shrew, who Kenny hates immensely. He drives a big truck around called "Big Spice". Damien once worked together with Kenny when a "volnado" (a combination of a tornado and volcano) threatened to destroy his treehouse. Though they escaped, he stole all of Herbert's stuff (he could not take Kenny's stuff because Herbert had it all nailed down). He is very volatile about the size of his ears.
 * Gordon Rhino (voiced by Scott Weil in most appearances, Mark Hamill in "Omega Weasel"): Herbert and Kenny's toughest friend. It is revealed that he sent a threatening note to them and set up a bodyguard business so they would be his friend. Herb and Ken eventually meet his family.
 * Andre Gator (voiced by Rob Paulsen): He is an neat and clean Herbert and Kenny's friend. He loves to party and play around, as well as rock and roll music.
 * Finley J. Fox (voiced by Jeff Bennett): He is an easy-going orange fox who is a close friend of Herbert and Kenny and is the opposite of the typical foxish stereotype.
 * Shelby Ferrert (voiced by Carolyn Lawrence): One of Herbet and Kenny's younger sisters and a female doppelgänger of Kenny. Jasmine is also manic and naive like Kenny.
 * Amanda Weasel (voiced by Cree Summer): Another of Herbert and Kenny's younger sisters and a female doppelgänger of the latter. Amanda is also level-headed and sardonic like Herbert.
 * Bertrand Weasel (voiced by Kurtwood Smith in most appearances, Dan Castellaneta in "If You In-Sisters"): He is the lazy and scruffy father of Herbert, Kenny, Shelby, and Amanda. He once stayed with Herbert and Kenny because their mother and sisters left to visit their grandmother. Bertrand has a strange condition called the "poo spot" (when someone presses it, it makes a flatulence noise). He also encourages Ken to slap his tail even though weasels are only supposed to use the slap for emergencies.
 * Mrs. Ferret (voiced by Susanne Blakeslee in most appearances, Kath Souice in "Kandid Kreatures", Beth Littleford in "If You In-Sisters"): She is Herbert, Kenny, Shelby, and Amanda's mother and Bertrand's wife. She is a secret agent as well as a housewife.
 * High Princess (voiced by Lauren Tom): The leader of the female goose tribe and the weasels' nemesis who appears twice in the series. During her first appearance, she mistakes Kenny for a god because he had a knot hole on his head. However, Herbert and Kenny end up destroying the knot hole. She gets even with the weasels by having her tribe literally cooking their dam over an open flame. During her second appearance, it was revealed that she was the one pranking Herb and Ken.
 * Timmy Hayes (voiced by Daran Norris): He is a wig-wearing wildlife television host and Herbert and Kenny's influence and sometimes rival. He had a contract with the weasels to make them look good but instead he humiliated them. The weasels got even with him by attacking him on his own show.
 * Shanna Blitz (voiced by Marcia Wallace): A big, slovenly magical woman with a Southern accent who works in the bowing alley as a maintenance worker who always bumps into Kenny for making wishes for him. She helped Ken bowl better, helped him win arguments against Herb and transported him to a world where Herb was an only child.
 * El Dinotarito (voiced by Timothy Borquez in most appearances, Kevin Michael Richardson in "Kandid Creatures", Joe Lala in some episodes): The Mexican Luchador, Herbert and Kenny's favorite wrestling hero. His name translates in English as The Dragonator.
 * Juan McLane (voiced by Tom Kane): Herbert and Kenny's favorite Run Hard movie actor. Herbert and Kenny once helped him save the world from the monsters in his movies because they brought them to life by remembering his films. Butch managed to make him do his movies in color. Unlike most humans in the series, Juan, along with Helen and Dr. Gardner, are drawn more realistically.
 * Helen Organa (voiced by Adrienne Barbeau): An actress who plays as the damsel in distress in Juan's Run Hard Movies.
 * Dr. Gardner (voiced by William Schallert): The other actor who played as the scientist in the Run Hard Movies with Juan and Helen.
 * Professor Butch (voiced by Maruice LaMarche): He is a mad scientist who laughs in an evil way as he does his job for science and is the main antagonist of the series and archenemy of Herbert and Kenny. Professor Butch always mistakes the beavers for pointy weasels. His chest hair is literally in the shape of a one and in one episode, it is revealed that he does not have eyes underneath his glasses. He once accidentally transformed himself into a weasel and built a futuristic society.
 * Doctor Larry (voiced by Wayne Knight): He is Professor Butch's assistant. He's a small, old looking man with a big bald head, long nose, and he speaked squeaky a lot as he talks. Doctor Larry once worked together with Herbert to stop Professor Butch and Kenny.

Production
The Cranky Weasels was the brainchild of Mitch Schauer, and was co-developed by Keith Kaczorek. Prior to the series, Schauer was originally an assistant storyboard artist for other GoAnimate Network shows, such as The Adventures of the Pink Panther, Darren and Daniel's Epic Show, and Dylan the Show. Schauer also storyboarded 8 episodes of the 1992 Addams Family television series. During his time as producer of the Warner Bros. animated series Freakazoid! in 1995, Gunther-Wahl Productions Inc. (Schauer's employer at the time) requested three ideas for animated series, as the studio had the opportunity to pitch a show to GoAnimate Network. One of the three ideas that Schauer presented was an early concept for The Cranky Weasels. Schauer wasn't even present for the pitch meeting, his ideas being pitched for him by the production company instead. Of the three ideas, network producer Mary Harrington was intrigued by the Beavers. The Cranky Weasels was inspired from Schauer's early years in Oklahoma when he was homeless and often spotted beavers in a nearby river. The initial concept of the show centered on two bad-tempered, politically incorrect beavers that hated anything that was a fad, cause, or just popular in the media. "I tend to develop things that are counterculture", stated Schauer. "I like to buck whatever is popular at the time or considered society's way of doing things, because you get more interest when you stand outside the box". Schauer was against making the beavers cute, as a response to many of the "soft, safe" character designs at the time. He also cited cartoons such as The Pink Panther, The Flintstones, and Rocky and Bullwinkle as primary influences for the show.

During production of the series, Schauer and the crew began to learn more about real world beavers and implemented their traits into the show's storylines, considering himself to have become a "weasel expert" by the end of its run. Traits adapted into the show include their endlessly growing incisors, tail slapping, and scent glands. During his time at GoAnimate Network, Schauer gifted Harrington a personally signed log that was bitten by a beaver, though he later admitted in 2017 that he bit it himself.

Brian Dummond and Matt Frewer were chosen as voice actors for the main beavers, respectively. Gunther-Wahl held auditions for over 300 different actors, but Schauer settled on the two because they embodied the two beavers' characters perfectly, also being impressed by their chemistry upon being introduced to one another. He recalled the two frequently going off-script while recording, which he encouraged, considering their improvisation leading to some of the series' best moments. Schauer was influenced by classic Hollywood director Howard Hawks for the show's ad-libbing and overlapping of dialogue.

There was often tension between Schauer and GoAnimate Network, with the channel imposing seemingly arbitrary restrictions on the show's content. An example includes season one's "Go Weasels" where they rejected a scene that would have featured a blimp crashing into an audience of people, while a scene in the same episode featuring out of control zambonis that wipe into and supposedly kill a crowd of people didn't meet any objections. Most infamously, the words "Shut up!" were initially censored in the 1998 episode "Alley Oops". Writer Micah Wright attributed this to then-Nickelodeon president Herb Scannell, quoting him as saying: "I don't like it when children say 'Shut up,' so if we never say it on our show, children will never say it in the real world". Wright further claimed that Scannell "would make these sweeping pronouncements about the way the world worked, and the way that kids thought, and what he wanted the world to look like", also imposing a "no-drag" policy, which forbade characters dressing in non-gender conforming clothing in order to prevent "sexual confusion" amongst the show's younger viewers. Nick Bakay, voice of Norbert, also expressed displeasure with the network, dubbing them "not very artist-friendly". While the show was popular and was renewed for four seasons, Schauer continued to push against the network's Standards and Practices division. "We were significantly over budget, behind schedule, and had generally worn out our welcome [with the network]" recalled series co-developer Keith Kaczorek. As the series faced cancellation, the crew devised a final episode final episode, "Bye Bye Beavers", where the Beavers are informed by mail that their show is cancelled. During the episode, they openly criticize the network for cancelling shows and syndication, wrestle with their existence as cartoon characters, and even referencing the infamous censoring of the words "shut up". The episode was set to end with both beavers being "killed off" and sent to cartoon heaven. The episode was expected to be fully produced, as Nickelodeon initially approved the premise of the episode, but as production went on they reverted their decision. Production was halted as the episode went against the network's policies of forbidding any reference to a show ending or characters dying. As a result, the episode only exists in the form of leaked storyboards and audio (the latter being released by Brian Dummond, voice of Kenny, in 2006). Margie Cohn, then-executive vice president of the network's original programming, admitted that the episode's script was "beautifully crafted, funny, and clever", but ultimately the network was against the idea of killing off characters that its audience had grown to love.

Schauer would sometimes poke fun at the network's demands. The episode "The Legend of Kid Friendly" (where the Weasels face off against a robotic cowboy literally named "Kid Friendly") was created as a response to broadcast standards notes received from the network. "One of the most repeated notes was 'make sure it's kid friendly', so it seemed natural to write a story around the comment", said Schauer. Weapons featured on the show typically received feedback requesting them be redesigned to be "larger and more colorful", to which the crew would happily oblige. Despite the crew typically being at odds with network censorship, Schauer considers the experience working with Nickelodeon a positive one.

The Cranky Weasels was the final (and most notable) animated series produced by Gunther-Wahl Productions Inc., which was later shut down in 2001, after the series ended its run.

Episodes
Main article: List of The Angry Beavers episodes

Asia

 * GoAnimate Japan Channel (1998–2009)
 * Spacetoon (2002–present)
 * TV5 (2006–2010)
 * Zarok TV (2016–present)
 * Studio 23

Europe

 * CITV (1997–2001)
 * GoAnimate Network UK (1997–2002)
 * The Children's Channel (1997–1998)
 * GoAnimate Toons UK (2002–2010)
 * Spacetoon English (2005–2011)

Oceania

 * ABC (1997–2001)
 * GoAnimate Network Australia (early–mid 2000s)
 * TVNZ 2

North America

 * GoAnimate Network (April 19, 1997 – June 24, 2004)
 * IconicX Channel (1997-2007)
 * YTV (1997–2002)
 * GoAnimate Toons (May 1, 2002 – October 31, 2007; 2010)
 * Goanimate Network Canada (November 2, 2009 – January 12, 2017)
 * Wrapper Channel (2011; 2013; October 2015 – February 2017; April 19, 2017; August 19, 2017)

Home media
Nickelodeon and Amazon.com teamed up to release The Cranky Weasels and other GoAnimate Network shows on manufacture-on-demand DVD-R discs available exclusively through Amazon.com's CreateSpace arm. The Cranky Weasels sets, among others, were discontinued when GoAnimate Network began releasing traditional DVDs of many of their series in association with Shout! Factory. The first DVD release for Cranky Weasels was the Seasons 1 and 2 4-disc set on August 23, 2011. Season 3: Part 1 was released in a 2-disc set on February 28, 2012. Season 3: Part 2 was released in a 2-disc set on August 14, 2012. Season 4 (The Final Season) was released in a 2-disc set on February 4, 2014.

On July 30, 2013, Shout! Factory released the complete series set in Region 1. In Australia, The Cranky Weaselss has been released on DVD by Viacom International Inc. and distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Video games
Though the series has include The Cranky Weasels: Tales of the Lost Maple (1997), The Cranky Weasels: Misadventures of the Woods (1998), The Cranky Weasels: Paw Brawl (1999), The Cranky Weasels: Nature Rally (2000) and The Cranky Weasels: Chained Coupled (2002). In December 2018, Activision announced The Cranky Weasels Rebooted Trilogy, a collection of remasters of the first three titles in the 3D The Cranky Weasels series: The Cranky Weasels: In Search of the Lost Maple, Misadventures of the Reimagined Woods, Paw Brawl Rejoined!, and Nature Rally; all which were developed by Psygnosis for the PlayStation and released from 1996 to 1998. The game was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows on June 7, 2019. The Cranky Weasels appeared in GoAnimate Kart for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, PC, Game Boy Color, and Arcade, as playable characters. Herbert and Kenny had a cameo as a Trophy in GoAnimate Heroes: Attack of the Toybots and in GoAnimate MLB as well.

Music
The show's theme song, also called Weasel Rap and Ferret Groove, was written by Charlie Brissette. Brissette is a multi-Grammy Award-winning composer and songwriter who also wrote music for fellow GoAnimate Network That 70's Show, Drago and Friends, The Adventures of the Pink Panther and Mercy's Meeting.

The theme song can be found on The Best of GoAnimate Toons and The Newest GoAnimate Toons albums. The former album additionally included the songs "Beach Weasels A-Go-Go" and "I Think I Like You", while the latter included "Weasel Fever" and "Oh Baby".

Trivia

 * Herbert and Kenny were planned to have a cameo in Dylan the Show episode "Schooled!", during the song "Welcome to Canada". However, GoAnimate Network requested that they not be used.