For this Preschool TV program, are more robots actually play with you? Okey-dokey!
Rolie Polie Olie is a French-Canadian-American computer-animated television series that is produced by Nelvana and Sparx* in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Disney Channel. The show centers on a yellow robot boy named Olie Polie who lives in a teapot-shaped house in a geometric world named Planet Polie with his family.
Plot
The show focuses on the Polie Family, who live in a teapot-shaped house in a geometric world called Planet Polie populated by robot-based characters. The stories revolve around a young robot named Olie learning life lessons and going on wacky adventures (either real or imaginative) while growing up. These often include his little sister Zowie, his inventor father, his hard-working mom, his fun-loving grandfather Pappy, and his dog Spot. Although most of the main cast is composed of circular bots, other characters are featured in other shapes, such as Olie's friend Billy Bevel and his family, who are square-shaped bots from Planet Cubey.
Why It Rocks
- It was not only Preschool television's very first CG-animated series, but the very first Preschool-oriented animated sitcom as well.
- Adorable CGI animation, especially for the 1998 standards. For the later episodes, its animation is getting cuter.
- The theme song is very cute.
- It had some dark comedy moments, which are finally done-well for a Preschool TV show. For example, cute little Zowie made a very LOUD whistle, at the end of "Whistlin’ Zowie".
- It spawned into two movies like The Great Defender of Fun and The Baby Bot Chase which had very good framerate, similar to theatrical CG-animated movies.
- Impressive sound effects.
- It received the series of children's books, to promote the TV series, which is done-well.
- Great voice acting with Michael Cera as Little Gizmo and James Woods as Gloomius Maximus.
- The character designs are so adorable.
- Gloomius Maximus is a funny-looking anti-hero, as his character design is very silly.
- Cutesy, jazzy music.
- Has some good messages for kids about growing up.
- The show stayed 100% faithful to William Joyce's style.
- It became an inspiration for 20th Century Fox's CG-animated feature film, Robots, which is aimed to tweens and teens.
- This show pays homage to pop culture, especially the Star Wars media. For example, Space Boy is mostly based off of one of most popular Japanese characters, Astro Boy.
- Also, Willy and Wally Jolly are spoofs based on several famous cinematic swashbucklers like Robin Hood, Zorro and the Three Musketeers.
- Very likable characters like Olie, Zowie, Polina Polie, Percy Polie, Pappy, Spot, Billy Bevel, Pollie Pi, Space Boy, Space Dog, Uncle Gizmo, and mostly Screwy.
- Zowie is so cute and adorable, and so are Coochie and Coo.
- This show really promotes creativity and imagination.
- A lot of funny moments.
Bad Qualities
- There are some bad episodes like:
- Dingliedangliedoodle
- Treasure of the Rolie Polie Madre
- It's a Roundi-ful Life
- The Lie
- But Why?
- Cast Off
- Olie Unsproinged
- Beacon Blinkin' Day
- Despite being the most popular character of the series, Zowie didn't receive her own spin-off show.
- Despite being likable, Screwy is sometimes an unlikeable character, as he acted like an idiotic jerk and doing his utter stupidity.
- It only runs 60 frames per second, in a favor to the 128-bit video games on both of the most popular gaming systems: the Sega Dreamcast and the Microsoft Xbox. Luckily, both movies of this series solved this issue.
Reception
Rolie Polie Olie received mostly positive reviews and became a commercial success, due to being the very first preschool-oriented CG-animated television series. The success of Rolie Polie Olie leads most of major television animation companies to make more preschool-oriented CG-animated television shows.