The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin

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Come dream with me tonight!

The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, a Sixty-Five-Episode Cartoon based on the popular toy, follows young Teddy Ruxpin as he leaves his home on the island of Rillonia with his best friend Grubby to follow an ancient map which leads him to find a collection of crystals on the mainland of Grundo. With the help of their new friend Newton Gimmick, Teddy and Grubby discover the magical powers of what turns out to be an ancestral treasure as well as an organization with ambitions to use it for evil. Along the way, Teddy learns the long-lost history of his species and clues to the location of his missing father.


Tropes used in The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin include:
  • Absent-Minded Professor: Newton Gimmick
  • All That Glitters: Justified in that the Seven Crystals were far more valuable than the hoard of treasure.
  • Exclusively Evil: The Gutangs and the Mudblups.
  • And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Tiffany Brissette appeared on camera to deliver a safety message at the end of every episode.
  • Baseball Episode: "Win One For The Twipper". Also happens in "Teddy's Birthday"
  • Beach Episode: "The Surf Grunges" and "On the Beaches"
  • Beware the Nice Ones: For nearly the entire series, Teddy is portrayed as patient, soft-spoken and calm. When his friends turn against him, however, Teddy is able to take on an entire room of bad guys alone and win, as seen in "MAVO Costume Ball". This could also double as Teddy's personal Crowning Moment of Awesome.
    • Also Wooly, whenever he gets angry.
  • Big Bad: Quellor, the Supreme Oppressor.
  • Big Eater: Grubby.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Wooly.
  • British Accents: Prince Arin, King Nogburt, and Queen Lillibet all have British-inspired accents. Strangely, Princess Aruzia doesn't.
  • Brutal Honesty: Grubby, sometimes.
  • Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Teddy Ruxpin is not a bear, he is an illiop. Similarly Gimmick is a Perloon, and the monkey creatures in the masks with the planes are called Gutangs.
  • Christmas Episode: "Winter Adventure"
  • Cool Airship: The Airship, of course! And a Cool Boat came later in the form of the Subwater Boat, a submarine that was much cooler than it sounded.
  • Deadpan Snarker: L.B. definitely, and Grubby frequently has his moments.
  • Disappeared Dad: Teddy's missing father. Later it's revealed that the reason he hasn't returned is that Quellor erased his memory. Once his memory is restored, he returns to his family. Tweeg's father is this as well.
  • Disney Death: Happens to Wooly. Even Teddy gets one of these.
  • The Dragon: Several M.A.V.O. members can make this claim, most notably Bognostraclum and Mrs. Maggotheart. L.B. is Tweeg's Dragon.
  • Embarrassing First Name: To Tweeg, anyway; his first name is actually Jack. We never do find out what the "W" stands for, so it is possible he also has an Embarrassing Middle Name, particularly with his mother's personality..
  • Evil Chancellor: The Understander of Knowledge
  • Evil Counterpart: Not for one of the characters, but the Airship itself gets one. M.A.V.O. steals the plans to the ship from Gimmick's house while everyone is away, and create the suped-up war machine, "Eclipse".
  • Evil Overlord: Quellor
  • Five-Bad Band: The main members of MAVO:
  • Five-Man Band: Whenever the Trio's allies adventure with them.
  • Freudian Excuse: Tweeg sings about his in the song "Mommy". Though possibly subverted in that he seems proud of and happy about it.
  • Freudian Trio: Teddy = Ego, Grubby = Id, Gimmick = Super-Ego.
  • Friendly Enemy: L.B. and the Trio. He seldom is directly mean to them, and even helps them occasionally or is otherwise what passes for friendly from him.
  • Gentle Giant: The Wooly Whatsit
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: On several occasions, but especially "Win One For the Twipper" and the Wizardweek arc.
  • Hate Plague: The primary goal of MAVO is to spread a stormy darkness over Grundo that causes plants to start withering and bring out the worst in the population of the land. They succeed, at least for a while.
  • Hot-Blooded: Prince Arin tends to be impulsive and impatient at times, and his default setting seems to be "enthusiastically energetic bravery", to the point where Teddy and the others have to rein him in occasionally.
  • If My Calculations Are Correct: Newton Gimmick's Catch Phrase.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Tweeg can't hit the broad side of a barn with his cannonballs. (And what's funny is that he seems to know it—why else would his cannonballs be stamped with the words "Return to Tweeg"?)

Gimmick: Oh, don't worry. Tweeg is, without a doubt, the world's worst shot. If he's firing at us, this is probably the safest place in the valley to be.

  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Tweeg
  • Insane Troll Logic: In "Beware the Mudblups", while eating the slop the Mudblups serve the heroes while they're held captive, Gimmick says that there's at least one consolation: "Anything that tastes this bad has to be good for you."
  • Insistent Terminology: Grubby is fond of reminding people that the appendages normally thought of as his hands are actually two of his eight feet.
  • Intrepid Reporter: While Louie works for a wizard instead of the press, he otherwise acts just like an old-fashioned news reporter, adventuring out and getting footage of any and every noteworthy event.
  • Inverse Law of Sharpness and Accuracy: Prince Arin's sword and the Gutangs' spears and arrows. Sometimes they'll be used to damage non-living things or knock people out, but naturally never get to be used to cut or stab anything living.
  • Last-Name Basis: Practically everyone calls (Newton) Gimmick, (Jack) Tweeg and (Ickly) Bognostraclum by their last names.
  • Lethal Chef: Grubby cooks food with roots in them. Given new meaning when his famous root stew is actually weaponized by King Nogbert's kingdom to fight the Gutangs.
    • What's really cute is that Teddy and Gimmick are far too polite to point out to Grubby that he's a horrible chef.
  • Meaningful Name: Grubby is called an Octopede. (eight feet)
  • Mineral MacGuffin: The Seven Crystals
  • Musical Episode: Kinda of, in that almost all of the episodes will have at least one scene with the characters breaking out into a song related to the situation (and occasionally dance as well). A few specific examples:
    • Crowd Song: Several, but particularly King Nogburt's subjects singing a welcoming song for the trio in "King Nogburt's Castle".
    • Dark Reprise: In "Beware of the Mudblups", the trio sing cheerily about how singing makes mining coal for their airship feel like it goes faster. Later on, when they're captives of the Mudblups and forced to mine coal, they sing the same song again, but in an angry/sarcastic tone, and with Arin adding on a mournful verse worrying about being captive forever.
    • "I Am" Song: Wooly gets one sung about him in "Through Tweeg's Fingers", while Gimmick gets his own sung about him in "Gimmick's Gizmos and Gadgets".
    • I Want To Be Song: Tweeg gets several of these, particularly "I Want to Be Rich" from "Escape From the Treacherous Mountains".
    • Musical Chores: "Two Hands Are Better Than One" in "The Faded Fobs".
    • Villain Song: The Gutangs get one in "In the Fortress of the Wizard", and MAVO has its own in-universe official anthem with a similar theme in "The New MAVO Member".
  • Nebulous Evil Organisation: MAVO (Monsters and Villains Organization)
  • My Name Is Not Durwood: LB and the other Bounders can never get Tweeg's name right, which annoys him greatly. (LB, however, seems to be doing it on purpose just to elicit this very reaction).
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Played headscratchingly straight on many, many occasions, usually with Tweeg in the disguise. Even amusingly Double Subverted at least once, when Gimmick recognized two Mudblups were really Teddy and Grubby in disguise as a prank... but not because of two Mudblups mysteriously having furry feet or eight legs, rather because Mudblups hate daylight and these two Mudblups were out in daylight without sunglasses.
  • The Power of Friendship: While it's played straight with the main cast for the vast majority of the series, it notably gets averted once. When MAVO succeeds in collecting all the crystals, the dark sides of all of Teddy's friends' personalities are brought to the fore, causing them to abandon him when he needs them most. This results in Teddy having to go on a mission alone (and also leads to a Crowning Moment of Awesome for him as well).
  • Power-Up Food: The Grunges like to cook with VitaminZ, which makes most species slightly stronger, but is addictive. However, if an illiper eats it, they become an armored giant with super strength and go into a berserker rage until they come in contact with enough water.
  • Psycho Electro: Quellor attempts to gain this for an episode or two via a convoluted set of wires and a portable electricity generator. It doesn't end very well.
  • Punch Clock Villain: LB is arguably this. Despite being a member of MAVO, he's likable enough that half of Grundo showed up for his wedding.
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad: Drudge, Sludge, Trudge
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Fobs, Wogglies, and Nothings/Anythings
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Prince Arin and Princess Aruzia. King Nogburt and the Queen occasionally join in the adventuring and other hands-on things, as well.
  • Shape Shifter: The Nothings/Anythings
  • Signature Team Transport: The Airship is this for the Trio.
  • Single-Episode Handicap: "Sign of a Friend"
  • Smug Snake: Tweeg
  • Speech Impediment: Newton Gimmick has a stuttering problem. It's said that most of his race, the Perloons, have this issue.
  • The Starscream: Tweeg during one episode. It is fairly short lived.
  • Super-Powered Evil Side: Do not feed Prince Arin vitamin Z... or any Illiper for that matter. It is not pretty.
  • Surfer Dude: The Surf Grunges
  • Wacky Racing: The subject of a five part plot arc that happened later in the series. Whilst the trio used their Airship (modified to sail on the land), some of the other vehicles we get to see are a giant hamster wheel, a toy car, a motorbike, and a skateboard.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The terrifying Mudblups intensely dislike bright light.
  • Wedding Day: "L.B.'s Wedding"
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Grubby's fear of the sea, which is revealed in "Octopede Sailors".
    • LB is terrified of Fobs. You know, those cute little rainbow-hued fluffy guys? That's like being afraid of a declawed kitten.
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