Iggy Arbuckle

Set in a fictional national park known as the "Kookamunga" (or "the Kook" for short; the park's full name is likely a pun on the Cucamonga Valley in California), full with animals and creatures. The series follows Iggy Arbuckle, a pig forest ranger. He is accompanied by his beaver friend Jiggers, who is the only other canonical Pig Ranger in the show. Iggy's nemesis is Stu, a catfish, who is always trying to use the Kookamunga to obtain wealth with the ferret brothers. Most of the stories revolve around Iggy and Jiggers' efforts to save the park's ecosystem from Catfish Stu. ==Recurring locations==

The most prominent locations in the park include a volcano called Mount Kaboom, which Jiggers is constantly afraid will erupt, despite Iggy saying it has been dormant for centuries. The first story in the debut episode focused on this matter. Three other recurring places are a lake called Gottalottawatta, in which character Catfish Stu frequently dwells, an Iceland called Brainfreeze and a town called Mooseknuckle. ==Production==

Iggy Arbuckle began as a comic strip entitled Iggy Arbuckle: Nature Freak! that premiered in National Geographic Kids in the June 2004 issue. To date, this was the only issue of the comic strip; in which the characters Iggy Arbuckle, Jiggers and Zoop made their first appearances. The plot involved Iggy and Jiggers trying to find an acorn so Iggy could make an acorn squash pie for Zoop as a birthday present. Series creator Guy Vasilovich (director of ''Kangaroo Jack: G'Day U.S.A.!, writer for Moville Mysteries and production designer for Hey Arnold!: The Movie''), based the series loosely on his childhood experiences while living in Tomahawk, Wisconsin. On April 11, 2005, Oasis International, Blueprint Entertainment and Teletoon announced that they were co-producing an animated series based on the comic. The series would be targeted at children ages 6 to 11 and feature twenty-six episodes each comprising two eleven-minute sub-episodes. The animation was done entirely in Flash, with over 100 workers involved in the series' creation. National Geographic holds the distribution rights for the series in the United States, while Blueprint holds the global rights. The series was licensed for US broadcast by Animania HD, and is currently licensed for distribution in a total of seventy territories. ==Characters==

The characters in the show are drawn as animal species, including many types of mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, and even insects. Rather than referring to the male characters as "men" and the females as "women" in the appropriate contexts, the characters refer to each other by their species (though the words "lady/ladies," "gentleman/men," "girls," and "boys" exist in their vocabulary). The wild animals and the anthropomorphized characters understand each other quite well, and the wild ones seem quite intelligent. A gag in the series is that whenever a character gets conked on the head, bluebirds start flying around their heads. When the character comes to, they fly away. ==Episodes==

Iggy Arbuckle has been received well in Europe, with Jetix Europe receiving strong sales on the show. In the United Kingdom, its biggest timeslot is among young male viewers. Awards and nominations As of March 2008, the sub-episode "Petition Impossible", of the episode "Yawny Come Lately/Petition Impossible" was among the finalists of the children's programs nominated for the 2008 Canadian Screenwriting Awards. On April 14 the award was given to writer Kenn Scott for the Children/Preschool category. The episode "Idle Worship/There's Something about Berries" won a Gemini award for Best Writing in a Children's Series, during the 23rd anniversary of the Gemini awards. Jonathan Wilson and David Berni, the voices of Iggy and Jiggers, respectively, received a Gemini nomination for Best Individual or Ensemble Performance in an Animated Program or Series, for the same episode, although it lost to Gordon Tootoosis, Raven Brass, Trevor Cameron, Lorne Cardinal, Taylor Cook, Eric Jackson, Andrea Menard, and DerRic Starlight, for The Guardians. Merchandise On November 1, 2007, an online game based on the series, The Great Kookamunga Challenge, was launched. Hosted on the Teletoon web site and created by Zinc Roe Design, the game was an online race in which players explored the Kookamunga National Park in search of 115 "checkpoints." At each checkpoint, they could earn points by playing games, answering trivia questions about the series, or completing group activities. The first players who completed the entire challenge won real-world prizes, including a digital camera and items from National Geographic Kids. The game ran for six weeks. The first 13 episodes of Iggy Arbuckle were released on DVD in 2007 in Australia. In 2011, Entertainment One began to release all 26 episodes of the series on DVD in all five volumes, available in Canada, and it is spoken in English and French. ==References==