La Banda dei Cuccioli / The Contest / Puppies and Kitties
I'm compiling everything I can find out about this "lost" cartoon. At this point, only the English dub is still missing.The cartoon was produced by Italtoons (an Italian animation studio) and SSR/RTSI (a Swiss televsion station) in 1982. The copyright date of the French dub (the only video that has credits) is 1986. It seems like the cartoon was a pilot that was pitched to North American television networks at some point. The English dub aired on Nickelodeon's Special Delivery programming block on May 8th, 1988.
The Italian title, La Banda dei Cuccioli, means something like "The Little Animal Gang" ("cuccioli" can mean "puppy", "cub", or any baby animal). IMDB has the English title as Puppies and Kitties. The cartoon was called "The Contest" when it aired on Special Delivery.
Some clips from La Banda were reused for the 1999 Italian television series, I Cartoni Dello Zecchino D'oro, which featured music videos for children.
Story Summary
A group of four cats and four dogs attend school together in an old train car. Before class starts, the two groups argue and play pranks on one another. During class, they get into an argument about whether cats or dogs are better. Their teacher, a goose, encourages them to do some research about the history of their respective species. The kids leave class and visit a museum and a library. On their way back, the cats discover a park and attempt to claim it for themselves by planting a flag, only to discover the dogs are trying to do the same thing. The kids decide they will race to the top of a building in order to determine who gets to keep their claim on the park. In the middle of the race, one of the cats falls down an elevator shaft and gets stuck. Both the cats and dogs work together to rescue him. Upon returning to class and telling their teacher about the rescue, he commends them for putting their differences aside and using their individual strengths to rescue their friend. However, the kids are soon fighting again. The teacher decides to take them on a field trip to the park that they have been fighting over. When they get there, they see some humans sneaking around the subway entrance next to the park. The teacher tries to get closer to see what they are up to, but he is caught and the humans take him prisoner. The kids decide to save him. The cats sneak into the subway tunnel by a secret entrance they found on their earlier visit to the park while the dogs distract the humans by barking. The cats free their teacher and discover that the humans are criminals running a counterfeiting operation. One of the cats convinces the rats in the subway tunnel to eat all of the counterfeit money. Then the rats flee the subway with the criminals chasing after them. A short time later, we see a flag representing both cats and dogs flying over the park.
The Search
My parents randomly recorded the Special Delivery airing of The Contest on VHS. I had watched it at least a few more times over the years. The last time I remember having the VHS is when I was in high school, and I was practicing drawing some of the characters (see right). I don't know what happened to the tape after that, but I've looked for it and never found it. It was probably recorded over at some point.I tried looking for more information about the cartoon on the internet, but there was no trace of it. For a time, it seemed like my couple of drawings were the only evidence that it even existed. I started a thread at Retrojunk, and after a few years I heard from a couple of other people who remembered it. We still had no idea who made it or when. I wasn't even sure about the title.
Then a big breakthrough came when someone identified it as an Italian animation that was at some point called "Puppies and Kitties", directed by Guido Manuli. Following that lead, I found some mentions of the cartoon on Italian websites, and some additional credits. Then I found the website of Ernesto Paganoni, one of the animators, which had a short clip. I found a thread on a message board where someone had asked Mister Paganoni about the English version, but he said he didn't know anything about it. Finally, on another Italian website, I found a video with a sampling of various animations by Guido Manuli, including the first half of La Banda (in Italian).
A few years after that, an IMDB page for the cartoon had gone up, and someone had uploaded the French dub of the entire cartoon to Youtube (see the links, below).
Credits
Directed by Guido ManuliCreated by Guido Manuli and Maurizio Nichetti
Animation: Silvio Pautasso, Ernesto Paganoni, Mario Moraro
Backgrounds: Giorgio Forlani, Paolo Albicocco
Layout & Animation: Giovanni Ferrari
Camera: Angelo Legramandi, Ivano Gorla
Editing: Rita Olivati, Robert Clampett
Music: Dario Farina
Executive Producer: Giuliana Nicodemi
English Dialog: Robert Clampett
English Voice Actors: Joan Gardner, Ed Janis, Will Ryan
An SSR/RTSI and Italtoons Corporation Co-Production
- These credits are from the French dub, but for some reason the credits are in English and mention the English voice actors. Maybe they started with the English version and then dubbed over it in French. I couldn't find any videos of the Italian version with the credits, so I don't know if they are different.
- Guido Manuli is a prolific and well-respected Italian animator, and an associate of the probably even more famous Bruno Bozzetto, director of Allegro Non Tropo.
- Note the "Robert Clampett" in the credits. Interesting, but I don't think there's any way that's the Bob Clampett. From what I understand, he had pretty much retired by the end of the 50s.
Characters in the English Version
(The English dub is still lost, so this information is from memory, either my own or others.)- The brown cat with the stripey tail is named "Piccolo". I always thought he sounded kind of like Marvin the Martian, but maybe they were going for Sammy Davis Junior. In the French and Italian dubs, he occassionally breaks into operatic singing. In the English version, he's more into jazz.
- I think the orange sleepy cat is named "Snoozer", but it may be "Dozer" or "Doozer". He has a sleepy voice that sounds like he's always in the middle of a yawn.
- The white girl cat may be named Sasha.
- The black and white cat who likes movies talks like a beatnik.
- The yellow dog may be named "Pervis", "Fergus", or something like that.
- I think the girl dog might have had a southern accent?
Links
- The French dub of the entire film on Youtube, in two parts: Part 1 / Part 2. The French title is Petits Chiens et Petits Chats.- My original thread at Retrojunk, via the Web Archive.
- Website of Ernesto Paganoni, one of the animators who worked on the film.