I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

WEIRD UNTALKATIVE BUNNY NEWS...

So, I was doing my occasional search of Amazon.com, hoping to see if they have listed, at long last, a first season DVD box set of the woefully underseen (at least outside of Canada, Australia, and the Philippines) Untalkative Bunny. Not that there have been any announcements regarding Untalkative Bunny on DVD yet, at least not in Region 1, but, if such a set were announced, it's not the sort of announcement that would get a lot of publicity, so I could easily imagine that the first I would hear about it would be at Amazon.com.

Nada on the DVD front, but I did find something else that's rather interesting.

Untalkative Bunny: How To Be Heard Without Saying A Word
by John C. McGinely

It's a 112-page book that ships on May 31^st. I thought, from the title, that it may be a self-help book of some sort featuring the cartoon character as an inspiration, but it's being published by Big Tent Entertainment, which is a distributor of children's entertainment whose biggest brand seems to be Miffy, Dick Bruna's famous children's book character (who, come to think of it, is also an "Untalkative Bunny").


I don't know who this John C. McGinely fellow is... it can't possibly be the same John C. McGinely who is the actor who plays Dr. Perry Cox on Scrubs and who was Bob in Office Space, can it? Or has the actor, who became a father in 1997, dipped his toes into the world of children's books, creating a character who is coincidentally called Untalkative Bunny, possibly in much the same way that, in a freak coincidence, the British comic magazine, Beano, started publishing the adventures of Dennis the Menace (the nasty one with the dog, Gnasher) just one week after Hank Ketcham's comic strip, Dennis the Menace (the innocent blonde kid who unintentionally causes trouble for Mr. Wilson), first appeared in American newspapers? (EDIT: No, it can't be the actor, whose name is spelt John C. McGinley. Well, it's an amusing-enough aside that led to an interesting tangent about Dennis the Menace, so I'll leave this in.) (EDIT II (February 9^th): It IS from the actor. See this entry for updated info.)

Anyway, could this all mean that Big Tent Entertainment will finally be distributing the Untalkative Bunny series in the United States? While it doesn't directly affect me here in Canada, if this is true, this would almost certainly give what I fully believe to be the greatest TV cartoon in Canadian history¹ the big break it needs to be famous in the world's most lucrative children's television market. And, if it's popular with American kids (and, hopefully, a handful of adults, so I won't feel so alone), surely the Untalkative Bunny DVD sets will soon follow.

By the way, Untalkative Bunny was created by Graham Falk and animated right here in Ottawa by Dynomight Cartoons, but I can't seem to find Dynomight on the Internet anymore, though, except for this automobile dynamometer manufacturer that coincidentally has the same name and a Canadian-based website. Well, I hope that Untalkative Bunny hits it big in the United States, so whatever remains of the Dynomight studios' talent can continue to create more quality, non-cookie-cutter, animated productions.

¹ Yep, I like Untalkative Bunny better than Reboot. Deal with it.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 1:25 AM