The Fight for the FoxBox

The Fight for the FoxBox

Original Air Date: August 31st, 2003

You probably thought I was done talking about the English dub of "Sonic X" but I have more bit of programming to discuss here. I spent a lot time recently criticizing 4Kids Entertainment, the New York City-based licensing company that brought "Sonic X" to the U.S. But in the early 2000s, 4Kids – which got its start in the eighties as a toy licensing company and would co-create "Thundercats" – was massively successful. They helped make "Pokemon" a global merchandising juggernaut. In 2001, 4Kids obtained the TV and toy rights to "Yu-Gi-Oh," which proved to be another massive hit. Say what you will about 4Kids' treatment of "Sonic X" but the company's reach and power at the time helped make the show an international success.

In 2001, News Corp would sell its Fox Kids Worldwide division to the Walt Disney Company. This would mean the end of the long-running Fox Kids programming block, which left a huge gap in Fox networks' Saturday morning time slots all over. Flush with cash, 4Kids Entertainment would sign a deal to fill that gap. They would create the Fox Box, a new Saturday morning programming block that 4Kids had complete control of. The Fox Box would begin broadcasting in August of 2002, with "Sonic X" as one of its flagship shows. 

But the story of the Fox Box is really the story of the decline of Saturday morning cartoons in America. Saturday mornings used to be when all the hottest cartoons, that were extended advertisements for all the hottest toys, would air. The rise of cable would threaten Saturday mornings' dominance of the kid market though. Why should kids wait around until Saturday to watch their favorite shows, when they can flick over to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and be entertained any day of the week? This, combined with other factors, meant a lot less money was flowing towards broadcast TV. This meant increasingly smaller budgets for their kids divisions to spend on programming. This is why groundbreaking shows like “Batman: The Animated Series” and “DuckTales” would, as the nineties ended and the new millennium began, be increasingly replaced with shows purchased from overseas. After all, it had worked for “Pokemon” and “Digimon,” so why shouldn't that work for everyone else?

And this is why, in my eyes anyway, the Fox Box – the name of which would eventually be changed to 4KidsTV, which sounds less like a seventies softcore porno – would proved to be a fairly lackluster endeavor. Almost all of its programming were toyetic shows designed to chase fads or copy other popular programs, produced in Japan or Europe, that 4Kids had simply dubbed and recut for American audiences. Of the Fox Box's launch programs, the only ones that weren't dubbed were a new iteration of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” a franchise in its third decade by this point, and an animated spin-off of “Stargate,” a sci-fi universe that was too nerdy even for a giga-nerd like me. 

Almost everything the Fox Box aired in its first few years was an attempt to ride the coattails of some other successful show. 4Kids licensed video game based anime like “Kirby: Right Back at Ya!” and “Sonic X” because “Pokemon” was a huge hit. They aired an “Ultraman” show because it would appeal to kids who liked “Power Rangers.” “Ultimate Muscle” was picked up because it vaguely looked like “Dragon Ball Z.” “Shaman King” and “Fighting Foodons” were clearly in the mold of “Yu-Gi-Oh!” Imitation was 4Kids' guiding principal and would continue to be all throughout the Fox Box's existence. So even if the 2003 version of “Ninja Turtles” is regarded as one of the best, and “Sonic X” is a fairly beloved show, there wasn't a lot of other reasons to stick around. Unless you really wanted to watch a butchered version of “One Piece,” an Italian rip-off of “Sailor Moon,” and yet more shows based on video games.

So why am I talking about any of this? In August of 2003, 4Kids would put together a 32-minute special designed to promote their slate of shows for that season. “The Fight for the Fox Box” would apparently air in prime time in a lot of markets. It was also distributed as a promotional DVD through magazines and newspapers, in an attempt to draw more eyeballs to the Saturday morning programming block. The special would combine footage from “Ninja Turtles,” “Ultimate Muscle,” “Shaman King,” “Kirby,” and “Sonic X” with more perplexing programs. So, yes: Sonic, Kirby, and the Ninja Turtles once co-starred with a bunch of other characters nobody gives a shit about in a half-hour, prime time special. 

The word “co-starred” comes with a pretty big caveat though. “The Fight for the Fox Box” cooks up a wildly incoherent plot to roughly combine these eight different cartoon shows. A mysterious voice summons Eggman, the Shredder, King Dedede, and the villains from “Cubix” and “Ultimate Muscle.” All these characters are seemingly aware of their status as TV show characters that air on something called the Fox Box. The omniscient voice has the programming code for the Fox Box and distributes it in parts among the villains. If the bad guys can keep this number from getting out, they will retain control of the programming block. The heroes from each respective universe rally to defeat the baddies and grab the parts of the code. The viewer is then encouraged to type the code into a special website to further ensure the safety of the Fox Box, though how exactly that works with the rest of the special's plot is never made entirely clear.

On one hand, I almost have to admire whatever poor bastard had to assemble “The Fight for the Fox Box.” 4Kids easily could have just presented promotional clips for their shows side-by-side, to tease kids with what was coming and remind them of what happened last season. Instead, what I can only imagined was some extremely beleaguered editors, writers, and voice actors were tasked with combining eight unrelated shows into some sort of narrative whole, all while fulfilling the purpose of advertising the line-up. That certainly couldn't have been an easy task and I assume the team probably had little time or resources to accomplish this. 

As much sympathy as I may have for the corporate drones stuck making it, the fact of the matter is “The Fight for the Fox Box” is almost unwatchable. This must be among the most inanely plotted programs I've ever seen. Very little attempt is made to explain what advantage this program code gives the villains. Even more vague is how viewers entering different pieces of the code into the website will “Save the Fox Box.” The show can't even keep its details straight, as one scene says April O'Neil made the website while a later one says Donatello created it. Of course, I realize I'm the dumb one for trying to analyze the plot of a half-hour collection of clips meant to promote a programming block. But trying to follow the plot here is often exhausting. I looked away from the screen at one point, looked back and saw Kirby fighting a giant robot mole, and was completely lost as to why this was happening. 

The novelty of “The Fight for the Fox Box” is seeing these different franchises interact with each other... But they barely do that. I knew, going in, that this special was largely composed of archive footage from these different cartoons, hastily cut together to create the illusion of a crossover. I wasn't prepared for how half-assed that crossover is though. Generally speaking, each cartoon is isolated to their own universes. The Ninja Turtles talk about stuff going on in other shows but they never interact with them. Sonic and Kirby do not share screen time. Amy Rose and April O'Neil do not compare fashion tips. The only characters to actually meet in this special are the stars of “Funky Cops” and a supporting character from “Ultimate Muscle.” Otherwise, it's just clips from the various shows sandwiched together, with awkward new dialogue dubbed in and separated by graphics that say “Meanwhile, in [this other show's setting.]” 

And the sole, actual crossover in this special really highlights how dire the Fox Box's offerings were. What the fuck – or, rather, what the funk – was “Funky Cops?” It's apparently a French cartoon that ran for 39 episodes in its native country in 2002. It seems to be an exaggerated parody of “Starsky and Hutch,” as it follows a pair of 1970s San Francisco cops driving around the city in a muscle car while wearing bell bottoms and disco dancing. One has sideburns and the other has a large afro. I don't know why a series based in seventies pop culture would be targeted at children in 2002. I'm an adult actually familiar with seventies pop culture and I didn't find any of the gags on-display here very inspired. I can't imagine what a child must've thought. The character designs are ugly, the animation is uglier, and there's some hideous CGI inserted at times. 4Kids' attempt to bring this over must not have been very successful, as this is the first – and probably the last – time I have ever heard of this cartoon. 

Not that the anime offerings were much more inspired. “Ultimate Muscle” was a revival of/sequel to “Kinnikuman,” a classic shonen fighting anime from the eighties that was also a parody of pro-wrestling. Here in America, that series is most famous for the toy line it spawned: “M.U.S.C.L.E” (which supposedly stood for “Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere”), which were little rubbery figurines of the show's bizarre characters. The original “Kinnikuman” never got broadcast over here so I don't know how close “Ultimate Muscle” was to the original's tone. But 4Kids' dub really doubled-down on the bathroom humor. Here, we see Kid Muscle, the strangely shaped hero, fly via high-powered farts. He also grapples with a character with a literal butt-head, who also fights via farts, and a villain who is also a giant toilet. (The main villain in this segment is a guy shaped like a remote/cellphone who talks with a Peter Lorre accent, so “M.U.S.C.L.E.” was all about making random objects into weird bad guys.) There's repeated references to diapers and pants-wetting. It's, uh, not very good. There's a certain grotesque creativity on-display in the character designs but, in the context of a scatological cartoon, they only make the thing more unappealing. 

Yet somehow neither of these programs are the ugliest, most desperate components of “The Fight for the Fox Box.” Among the team of villains is Dr. K, the bad guy from “Cubix: Robots for Everyone.” “Cubix” was an all-CGI Korean cartoon that 4Kids had previously licensed to the W.B. Network. There, the show aired in its entirety in 2001 without drawing much attention. But I guess someone at 4Kids really thought this one could be a hit, because they dug it back up for the Fox Box. I don't know why they thought that. The CGI animation is stiff and awkward. The character designs are exceedingly ugly. The environments are simplistic and the colors are drab. The voice acting is grating. The toyetic robots aren't very interesting looking. The title character, and the boy hero's main robot buddy, resembles a set of multi-colored dice stacked atop each other. It's somehow the most depressing cartoon of all the ones high-lighted here. 

But what about the “Sonic” content, ostensibly the reason I'm reviewing this godforsaken thing in the first place? Don't get too excited. “The Fight for the Fox Box” crams in most of the opening scene from the very first episode of “Sonic X.” New dialogue, awkwardly referencing this thing's dumb-ass plot, is inserted. If you really want to see Sonic referencing a defunct children's programming block from the early 2000s, give this a watch. Otherwise, it's not all that exciting. The “Ninja Turtles” segment similarly extensively recycles scenes from that cartoon that obviously have nothing to do with this storyline, despite the half-assed attempt to convince us otherwise. But at least both of these shows had decent animation, saving us from the ugliness of the rest of “The Fight for the Fox Box.”

Ultimately, there's just no getting around the fact that “The Fight for the Fox Box” is a work of promotion, not narrative. This becomes apparent early on when the Ninja Turtles have a lengthy conversation about the Fox Box and its new show, “Shaman King.” The heroes then sit down and watch a ten minute long promo for the anime, meaning this extended advertisement contains within it an in-universe advertisement for itself. (“Shaman King” looks like shit, by the way, with its hideous character designs and obnoxious voice-acting.) The “Kirby” scenes also have a long scene where King Dedede talks about the premise of his own cartoon, using a lot of advertisement-worthy buzzwords to describe what happens. Despite attempting to have a plot, “The Fight for the Fox Box” frequently pauses for extended promos like this. We get ones for “Ninja Turtles” and “Sonic X” too, along with the opening theme song for “Funky Cops.” It's pretty annoying when you're watching something that's pretending to have a plot, only for it to instead try and sell you something instead. 

This utterly asinine special then ends with a twist ending that's nothing but an advertisement for another Fox Box show. This one being “The Cramp Twins,” another very ugly looking French cartoon that 4Kids tried to turn into a ratings success. That so many of these shows were forgotten failures is unsurprising, as watching clips from them put me into a full-body cringe that took hours to walk off. Watching characters from good cartoons try and sell you bad cartoons is not, it turns out, a very rewarding experience. “The Fight for the Fox Box” is just a piece-of-shit promo quickly thrown together, a disposable nothing of a program that was designed to be quickly forgotten. Yet that purely mercenary purpose, when combined with the increasingly dire programs being promoted, results in one of the most unpleasant things I've watched for this blog. “The Fight for the Fox Box” is painful. I can't believe I wrote 2433 words about it. If you want to experience this thing yourself, it's on the Internet Archive. [3/10]