The Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show and Other Nightmares

Toonstruck
is a big-budget production that centers around a frustrated cartoonist named
Drew Blanc (Get it? Har har!), played by Christopher Lloyd. Drew has created a
very successful children’s cartoon show called (and this one actually is funny)
“The Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show.” As the story opens, Lloyd’s boss (the
always-amusing Ben Stein) orders him in no uncertain terms to go create more cute,
cuddly, unthreatening bunnies or he’ll get fired. Drew, of course, dreams of creating
a more hard-edged cartoon starring his favorite character, a purple blob named
Flux Wildly. After his dispiriting interview with his boss, Drew retires to his
studio to ponder his fate. Within moments, I’m sure you will not be too shocked
to learn, our hero has been inexorably sucked into the actual cartoon world!

Hey,
Anybody Got a Can of Dip Around Here? I Have a Toon I Need to Dispose Of

There,
to his great surprise, Flux Wildly actually exists, and he is indeed a purple
blob … and an extremely irritating purple blob at that, voiced by Dan Castellenata,
of Homer Simpson fame, doing his best Charles Fleischer/Roger Rabbit impression.

The plot involves some mildly amusing nonsense about an evil bad guy who’s
built an infernal device that he is using to take all of the cuteness out of the
kingdom of Cutopia (yes, that’s “Cutopia”).

The game is on two
disks and neatly divided into two chapters. In the first, Drew and Flux are collecting
items to help build a “Cutifier” to counteract the bad guy’s machine.
Flux, I’m sorry to report, is Drew’s companion for the first half of the game,
which is a traditional “find the right inventory item and use it in the right
place” scavenger hunt. There are some entertaining characters on the way,
such as a cow who’s into S&M, a gay scarecrow (oh, excuse me, “carecrow”),
and obnoxiously cute Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun herself.

The
problem with this part of the game is that it’s extremely conversation-heavy,
and the conversations are only funny about 10 percent of the time. And even
when they’re funny, they suffer from a peculiar problem: very bad timing. This
is supposed to be a comedy, after all, and in comedy timing is everything. Unfortunately,
many of the would-be witty exchanges between characters are completely undone
by a stultifyingly slow pace. I’m very confused as to how a mistake this fundamental
could have been made.

After the “Cutifier” is completed, the
game has a 20-minute cutscene, and the second half of the game is actually a bit
of fun. It involves Drew attempting to escape from the bad guy’s castle. This
part of the game actually involves avoiding danger, as well as some very creative
solutions to problems. It’s also immeasurably helped by the absence of Flux Wildly,
who’s offscreen until near the very end.

Terrific Production Values

I
have to say that the animation is absolutely first-rate, and the wildly colorful
backgrounds have a deranged charm. Hardcore animation fans and fans of cartoon
games in general will admire the craftsmanship that went into Toonstruck.

Tooned
Out

Unfortunately, craftsmanship is not always enough to make a game
fun. I had a hard time getting Toonstruck, mostly because I simply didn’t
care about the plot. Particularly in the first half, my “mission” seemed
silly and uninvolving. Plus, the deadly pace of the endless conversations drove
me crazy. I wanted to have much more fun playing this game than I ended up having.
Call me a killjoy, but I wanted to tune out Toonstruck.

In
Conclusion

I’d give this one a pass unless you’re simply a rabid animation
fan … like I am.

Final Grade: C

System
Requirements:486/66
8 MB RAM
2X CD-ROM drive
SVGA–local
bus
Mouse
Sound board
DOS/Windows 3.1/Windows 95