![]() ![]() The difference, though, is how good-natured it is! Sam is never annoyed by Max’s crazy antics and find it endearing. We see his brain sticking out of his skull. In one episode, Max’s head getting opened up by a monster. Sam & Max is a little tamer, it does cross the simila lines. I kept thinking about Ren & Stimpy, and how that show made gross-out humor OK for kids. As such, the violence inherent in the franchise is toned down, including removing Sam and Max’s guns, and the characters do not use the moderate profanity that they use in their other appearances.”Īfter watching the show, I want to put a “Citation needed” tag on the gun part. ![]() I was also slightly dispirited by this portion of the Wikipedia entry: “The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police was aimed more at children, even though some humor in it was often directed at adults. “Not my Sam & Max,” I would say with arms folded and a stern look on my face. ![]() It’s one gag stacked on top of another, and it gets a little exhausting. The cartoon, on the other hand, rarely gives you a moment to breathe. So, when you get to a more action-packed scene, it feel a little more earned. The most action you get is the cyclical animation during the gameplay portions. It’s all about things not moving that much. The LucasArts SCUMM system made an art out of the limitations of the point-and-click design. Still, Sam & Max sounded too cartoony for my tastes.Īnd then there’s the pacing. The actors were working toward different media. (This was his first voice role.) I admit the comparison is unfair. (Atkin’s most prominent voice role is probably as King Koopa from the Super Mario show.) Rob Tinkler voice for Max was a little reminscent of Roger Rabbit. Harvey Atkin sounds less gruff and more like Robert Wuhl in his Knox role on Tim Burton’s Batman movie. The cartoon voices are a bit more, well… cartoony. Bill Farmer and Nick Jameson give our two characters relatively deadpan voices that contrast to their silly designs and the crazy retro 60’s kitschy world around them. A huge, huge part of that was because I was such a big fan of the video game. I remember when Sam & Max first aired and being a little put off by it. I already had some preconceived biases from playing the game, which at its core was an interactive cartoon. I was a little concerned jumping into this show. The block was already on the ropes, though, when Warner Brothers pulled their properties to Kids’ WB and the Cartoon Network… and that was partially because Fox Kids was giving valuable air time to live-action shows like the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.) (Fox Kids would end 4 years later, a victim of the parent company’s focus to allocate money to buy NFL airtime rather than to animation. As promising as a Sam & Max cartoon sounds, the show couldn’t be helped but be lost in the shuffle, especially with the formerly formidable Fox Kids programming block at the beginning of its decline. It was a veritable era of peak animation. We’re talking of the era of Dexter’s Lab, The Powerpuff Girls, Rugrats, Doug, Recess, and Animaniacs. Seriously: Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network, and Warner Brothers were constantly trying to one-up each other around this time with original properties and fresh new animation styles. Sam & Max showed up during an amazing animation boom in the late 90’s. formerly Canada’s Emmys) for Best Animated Series. This was four years after the LucasArts game and (maybe more importantly) six years after Ren & Stimpy … the cartoon defined the 90’s and slipped subversive humor into a buddy cartoon about two anthropomorphic animal pals. The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police appeared on Fox Kids in 1997. Recently he was on the senior creative team of Coco and Incredibles 2, and he provided the voices of the creepy ventriloquist dummies in Toy Story 4.īut somewhere in between there was an animated series. Currently he works as an animator at Pixar. Purcell followed up with a well received episodic game series from Telltale Games. The point-and-click adventure would be loved for its oddball humor, it’s lovely art, and its unique take on Americana. It was then that Sam & Max went from an obscure indie comic to a video game classic with Sam & Max Hit the Road. Someone at LucasArts (namely, art director Gary Winnick) saw potential in this duo of vigilante freelance police (and Purcell’s skills as an artist). Sam & Max, on the other hand, was destined for a more blessed fate. Fish Police was picked up to be an adult primetime cartoon to compete with The Simpsons. Fast forward about six years and we see an odd diverging of fortunes. ![]()
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