Mondo Go Papercraft For Happy Tree Friends Special: Cubtron Z

I can hear you all now: ” Why you writing about Happy Tree Friends, Vic? We know all about it, it’s great, hugely popular and everyone loves it, get back to your artsy goodness and British-ness”. “Well” I say with a smirk, “ look again, this is a very different episode of Happy Tree Friends, and it’s right up my street….”

OK, I’ll stop imagining I’m having a conversation with our loyal readership and bring you the rundown on this this new episode of the hit Mondo show, entitled Cubtron Z. This is a truly special episode of Happy Tree  Friends indeed, storyboarded and directed by Rob Shaw of Bent Image Lab, this Pop and Cub centred short is animated entirely with stop motion papercraft puppets, also designed by Shaw.

This brilliant one-off is a fond tip of the hat toward classic anime, Astro Boy, in which father of the year, Pop, rebuilds his newly deceased son, Cub, as a giant Robot. Shaw explains his thought process for the transformation in a “making of ” post on the Mondo blog:

“I love the story behind Astro Boy which is about this brilliant scientist whose son dies in a car accident, so he rebuilds him as a robot. It’s like a version of a Frankenstein story except in Astro Boy, the father is terrible and psychotic and the robot is innocent and heroic. In this, I thought it would be funny if Pop rebuilds Cub as this giant robot. I liked trying this reversal because most of the time its Pop just being a super shitty Dad and Cub gets hurt. In this, it’s actually Cub hurting others because Pop is such a terrible Dad. Part of this was worked out with the writing team.  They were trying to find different jokes about Cub just being a baby, but because he’s a giant robot he becomes extremely violent and destructive.”

Superbly animated and missing none of the trademark gore and disaster humour that HTF has become associated with, this episode shows why the series has managed to stay top of the heap in the crowded world of animated web-series;  utilising creative animation techniques and inviting fresh talents to direct episodes is a brilliant way to reel in the lapsed viewer. If you have taken Happy Tree Friends off your subscribe list I beg you to reconsider and watch this episode, a series that is able to completely reinvent itself, even if its just for a one-off,  shows great promise for the future: could guest directors be a regular initiative for Mondo and Happy Tree Friends? Based on the outcome of this episode, I hope so!

Don’t forget to subscribe to Mondo Media on YouTube for more Happy Tree’ shenanigans and check out the Mondo blog for more behind the scenes secrets from this special episode.