If you were a kid in the early 1980s, then perhaps you remember a time when Poochie wasn't this cartoon dog in sunshades who epitomised everything pandering and misguided about committee thinking and was instead a completely different cartoon dog in sunshades designed to entice you into buying dolls, stampers and other similarly gaudy plastic products. The Poochie to whom I refer was a fluffy pink-and-white poodle created by Mattel in the early 80s, whose big shtick seemed to be that she lived the kind of ultra chic lifestyle that preteen girls are encouraged to want to emulate. Poochie's likeness adorned a variety of toys, stationary and vanity products targeted at the aforementioned demographic, some of which can be glimpsed in the commercial below:
Poochie's career peaked in the summer of 84 when she received her very own one-off animated television special, courtesy of our good friends at DiC, which was later released on home video as part of the Children's Video Library series. I haven't been able to uncover a huge deal of background information on this special, but the loose story threads and open-ended nature of the ending make it super obvious that this was the pilot for a proposed TV series that wasn't picked up for whatever reason. As with all discarded pilots, there's that big "what if?" question that looms over it and makes it a fascinating oddity in its own right, so let's dig in and get a sense of the Poochie toon that might have been had fortune swung in the pretty pup's favour.
The plot of the special is vaguely similar to Disney's 1977 film The Rescuers, in that it involves Poochie (voiced here by Ellen Gerstell) receiving letters from children in dire situations and setting out on globe-trotting adventures to lend them a paw. If you're wondering how these kids happened to get hold of Poochie's address in the first place, in her regular occupation she's the agony aunt of a popular New York-based magazine, World Now. Poochie got the job because she's the pet of the magazine editor, E.G., a man so reclusive that the rest of the World Now staff have never actually seen his face and just go about their business on the assumption that he's still scribbling dutifully away in his office on the top floor. In actuality, E.G. left a while ago under extremely vague circumstances (we're told that he's off "doing important stuff"), leaving his pet poodle to run the enterprise in his absence (what self-respecting eccentric millionaire would do otherwise?). The World Now staff are also unaware that Poochie is anything other than an ordinary (albeit heavily privileged) canine, as that's all she behaves like in their presence, and just assume that it's really E.G. who answers the letters in the Dear Poochie column. The only beings who know the truth about Poochie are her two artificially intelligent assistants, Hermes (Neil Ross) and Zipcode (Fred Travalena). That's right, Poochie has a couple of robot buddies in this special. How...random? Or how transparently an attempt to ride on the coattails of the Star Wars mania that was still very influential in 1984? Hermes in particular has a strong C-3PO vibe, in that he's a golden humanoid, enormously uptight and tends to look down on the less sophisticated Zipcode. I suspect that these Star Wars-esque robots may have been added in to broaden the appeal of the cartoon somewhat, in hopes of making this brand targeted exclusively toward girls a bit more accessible for boys (I've long assumed that Spike the dragon was conceived for My Little Pony with a similar purpose in mind). For what it's worth, I do like the robots. They definitely feel like a product of their time, but they're a quirky, colourful touch, and Hermes' fussiness provides a nice contrast to Poochie's calmer disposition.
The special opens, in true Rescuers fashion, with our young human waif Danny (Katie Leigh) fleeing from his potential captors through the streets of Cairo, Egypt, and managing to stall them for long enough to drop a stamped addressed envelope into a mailbox. "Help me Poochie, you're the last chance I have," he pleads plaintively as he sends the letter on its way. We get a very clear glimpse of the address on the envelope, so viewers at home could, in theory, have sent their own mail to Poochie. I wonder how many letters with this address were sitting in dead letter offices in the mid-1980s?
We then cut straight to New York, where Poochie is heading up to the top office of the World News building to continue her letter-answering duties. We get some reference to a "Poochie translator", implying that Poochie isn't actually capable of human speech and some babel fish device is translating her yips and growls into a language everyone else can understand. It's never really explained where the vast array of space age technology that Poochie has access to came from, but I guess the implication is that E.G. is some of kind of technical whizz who designed all this stuff in between his regular job of managing a magazine.
Zipcode reads out the first letter of the day, which consists of typical nondescript agony aunt fluff:
"Dear Poochie, I like the boy next to me in class. But he is shy and I am too. How can I start a conversation with him? Signed Susie"
Poochie's advice:
"Dear Susie, write a little note saying something funny and nice to him. Stick it on his locker so he sees it. It will help you both get started. Signed Poochie."
With the next letter, we go from 0 to 100 real quick:
"Dear Poochie, my dad is an archeologist. We were deep down in a pyramid when all of a sudden my dad disappeared. I searched everywhere for him but he's nowhere. I'm still looking. I don't have money. I'm hungry too. And some strange looking men are chasing me! Please help me! Help me! Signed Danny Evans. Letter postmarked Cairo, Egypt. No return address on envelope."
Poochie suggests that they make an imminent trip to Cairo to look for Danny. Hermes is reluctant, insisting that E.G. is counting on them to run the magazine in his absence. Poochie reminds him of E.G.'s exact instructions by hitting a button and activating a hologram of E.G., announcing that he left Poochie in charge of his business and worldly goods with the expectation that she uses them to help others in need, just as he would do. We learn E.G.'s real name (Edward Gregory Prince) but next to nothing else about him. Note that when I mentioned earlier that there are some loose story threads in this special, the deal with E.G. (or lack of) was more-or-less what I had in mind. In addition to the incredibly vague reasons given for his absence, there's a moment where Poochie asks if there's been any recent communication from E.G. and is informed by Hermes that there hasn't. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I get the impression that we're meant to think there's something amiss there; that something has happened to E.G. and that his whereabouts and reasons for leaving would have been subjects for subsequent episodes. The world will never know.
Poochie and Hermes board a private jet to Cairo, with Hermes disguising himself as a human by pulling a mask over his head (Zipcode has to sit the adventure out, presumably because his non-humanoid design would make him too conspicuous). We also see Hermes tinkering with a dial on his wrist and declaring, "this time I'll use my normal British accent." There's the implication here that Hermes has a diverse range of voices and personas he could switch to any time by modifying his controls, and that we might actually have gotten to see this in action had the pilot been picked up for a series. Too bad. As it happens, the closest we get to seeing Hermes putting his vocal modification powers to use is when he attempts to communicate with a native Egyptian dog about Danny's whereabouts, only his animal translation device is unfortunately set to "cat" and it doesn't go too well for him.
Shortly after arriving in Cairo, they meet up with Poochie's local contact, a scruffy mongrel named Ali. We know he's her Cairo contact because he randomly introduces himself as such to her after Poochie is shown to have gotten fully acquainted with him, giving us the distinctive taste of weird and clunky exposition. Ali states that he'll lead them to the pyramid of Nikniknoton (I really hope they made that name up; otherwise I just butchered the spelling of an actual historical Pharaoh's moniker), uttering cryptically that he hopes it's not too late "to save them from the curse of the Pharaoh". Ali leads them to the pyramid but will go no further - actually, it's never made clear why Ali believes that taking them to the pyramid will help them find Danny (he certainly never said anything about a Nikniknoton in his letter). Poochie and Hermes head inside and find a sarcophagus (which for some reason they insist on calling a "mummy case", presumably on the assumption that the target audience wouldn't know what a sarcophagus was). Hermes picks up a signal indicating that something is hiding inside the "mummy case", which Poochie insists they open. Although Poochie and Hermes have a very amicable relationship for the most part, occasionally Hermes will be reluctant to go along with Poochie and she'll angrily remind him that he's technically her subordinate; this happens when Hermes is nervous about opening the "mummy case" and Poochie tells him it's an order. Inside, they find Danny, who's initially confused that this pink and white poodle and weirdly robotic man happened to be wandering around the pyramid, but quickly deduces who they are.
Danny explains that he was exploring the pyramid with his father and had turned his back for a second while his father was reading some hieroglyphics (thankfully, the special gives its viewers enough credit as to actually use the word "hieroglyphics") only to turn around and find him gone. Hermes twigs that there's a button concealed among the hieroglyphics which activates a revolving door; behind this, they discover a secret passageway leading to the underground city of the Nikites, an ancient civilisation who've dedicated the past few millennia to protecting the Pharaoh and his pyramid. Turns out that they don't take particularly kindly to intruders, as Hermes and Danny discover when they get separated from Poochie and are captured by the Nikites, who confine them to a cell along with Danny's father. Danny has a happy reunion with his pop, informing him that he received help after sending a letter to Dear Poochie, which Mr Evans apparently doesn't see unlikely or bizarre enough to question. Instead, he breaks the really bad news - the Nikites are so dedicated to preserving the tomb of the Pharaoh that all intruders are mercilessly disposed of via sacrificial ceremony.
The Nikites are led by a young high priestess named Koom (Jennifer Darling, whom you might recall was also the voice of Muffin the basset hound in Hound Town) who actually feels bad about killing people and wants to reinstate an old procedure where intruders merely had their memories wiped with a mystical flower. Her council are reluctant, advising her that the flower has not been used for a very long time and bringing it back now would be deemed too risky. Conflicted, Koom turns to a statue of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead, and implores him to show her the way by giving her a sign (actually, in this special, Osiris is incorrectly identified as a goddess for some reason). She sees Poochie gazing down at her from atop the statue of Osiris and is uplifted, thinking that this strange pink and white dog is the sign from Osiris, but when she attempts to point this out to her underlings immediately discovers that the dog has vanished into thin air. They turn and casually walk away like they were listening to the ramblings of a deluded lunatic. Evidently having a sound mind isn't a top requirement in being high priestess of the Nikites.
Hermes, Danny and Mr Evans are brought out for sacrifice and discover that the process involves being mummified and sealed in a tomb in order to join the Pharaoh on his journey through eternity. Here, the mummification process apparently consists of little more than wrapping the subject up in bandages - in real life it was, of course, quite a bit messier, but obviously there are limits as to what you can show in a kids' cartoon (all the same, they missed a great potential scene where the Nikites attempted to remove Hermes' vital organs only to find nothing but gears and circuits). Anyway, long story short, Poochie comes up with a plan to set them free and then has Hermes fire off some lasers from his finger tips, creating an impressive and awe-inspiring light show as she stands atop the Nikites' temple (is that close enough to a fireworks factory for you?). Poochie declares herself to be a messenger of Osiris and proclaims that Osiris wants a stop to the sacrifices and for the Forgotten Flower to be used in their place. Koom, who recognises Poochie as the mysterious dog she saw earlier, is only too happy to oblige.
As Koom is all poised to use the Forgotten Flower on Danny, he asks, regretfully, if he will lose all memory of her. "Yes", says Koom, sadly, but she assures him that they will see each other again in their dreams. This exchange is a little weird, since it implies that Koom and Danny have formed a kind of emotional connection which is never even hinted at earlier on in the special (outside of Koom expressing particular unease at the thought of sacrificing Danny due to his age). Danny takes a whiff of the flower, which knocks him unconscious, and the Nikites place his motionless body aboard a boat, ready to be cast adrift on a river that will transport them back to the outside world, then do the same with Mr Evans. Hermes reminds Poochie, who has concealed herself aboard the boat, that the memory-erasing gases of the flower will have no effect on him, so she advises him to fake it. Later, Danny and Mr Evans awaken to find that they've washed up on dry land along with Poochie and Hermes. Danny remarks that he had a dream about a girl and discovers that he's wearing a strange pendant with hieroglyphics around his neck; Mr Evans checks it out and translates the message as, "Someone somewhere will remember you forever, signed Koom." Again, there's this emphasis on Koom and Danny having formed this deep and powerful bond which never actually received any onscreen development. Furthermore, Ali's mention of "the curse of the Pharaoh" was never exactly clarified - the threat the Nikites posed didn't actually have anything to do with a curse, so was a reference this some local superstition used to explain why people who entered the pyramid were prone to disappearing? Now that I think about it, there's a lot about Danny and his Egypt adventure that doesn't quite add up...presumably, he'd escaped from the pyramid at the start and the Nikites were chasing him, but how did he then wind up back inside the pyramid and inside the sarcophagus? Did the Nikites catch him and put him there? Did he he purposely go back and hide? And how did Ali know where to find him? I honestly do like this special and think that it has a number of strengths, but airtight plotting definitely isn't one of them.
Their mission completed, Poochie and Hermes head back to New York to answer a whole new batch of letters. Hermes hopes that they won't receive any more urgent ones which require them to head off on another jet-setting adventure, but the gods of agony aunt correspondence don't appear to be looking on him too favourably right now. The special ends, much like The Rescuers, with our heroes receiving yet another plea for help (also like The Rescuers, we never actually learn the details of the second plea) and taking to the skies yet again to aid those in need. Sadly, this was the last the world ever saw of Poochie in animated form (bar maybe a few toy commercials). Maybe she and Hermes didn't make it back this time around.
The Verdict:
So...why the hell wasn't this pilot picked up for a TV series? It's awesome! Okay, the plot has that distinctively 1980s cheese-coated tang about it, in that it's somewhat moldy and riddled with holes (it would've been nice if we'd actually gotten to see Koom and Danny bonding, for example) but if you're willing to leave your brain at the door for twenty-odd minutes then there's a whole bounty of charmingly goofy pleasures to be mined from here, and Poochie and Hermes are surprisingly fun and likeable characters. It frustrates me no end to think that there's a parallel universe somewhere where kids were able to enjoy a full series of weekly adventures with Poochie, Hermes and Zipcode and I'll never be able to get there. Then again, maybe it's the same universe where Hound Town became a long-running series and The Simpsons was immediately cancelled when the producers got a glimpse of how the initial animation for "Some Enchanted Evening" turned out. Sometimes you're better off with what you've got.
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