The Donkey Kong Country Cartoon: Canada's Greatest Achievement 

whoever hired Benedict Campbell to play K. Rool deserves a retroactive raise

As a long-time genuine fan of this show, it was so refreshing to hear a video essay on it that was so positive and loving towards it - not to mention it was EXTREMELY well researched, I learned so much and now I'm diving down the rabbit hole of Nelvana music looking for DKC soundtrack bits, haha. Great job with this dude, so much respect.

I know everyone rags on this show so much that at this point theyre beating dried blood splatter on the ground that was at one point a dead horse, but honestly it's still a good time. Even if you aren't watching it ironically there are actually a lot of genuinely funny jokes. Plus the voice-acting for everyone is fantastic (my particular favourites being Ben Campbell as K. Rool and the late Aron Tager as Cranky, those are the canon voices as far as I'm concerned) And cmon... it has Leo Luster, you cant beat that.

11:17 I remember him as the Conductor from Dinosaur Train as well as Master Chen and Skales from Ninjago. The guy's done a ton of kids shows,even more controversial ones like the CGI animated Pac-Man series. He's also the Father of Claire Corlett,who's the VA of Sweetie Belle from MLP:FIM. ALSO DID YOU JUST SAY THAT THE SINGER OF THE FUCKING KING DICE SONG IS YOUR COUSIN!?

So glad you praised the music! Always thought it was great haha

I still think that the best way to understand Candy Kong in this cartoon is to have worked double shifts in a factory that doesn't even respect your lunch hours. No one can have a good mood by working 16 hours a day straight without rest for more than a week. Donkey is a saint. One of my favorite things was Inka Dinka Doo then I found out it was a ref to Jimmy Durante. By the way, one of the writers of this cartoon appeared in Critters as the sister of the family, the voice actresses of Candy and Dixie have curious careers and the voice of Diddy in Japan is a VERY important actress. In Latin she also had voice actors very well established in the medium. I'm not sure if the same thing happened in other languages.

Oh, yeah, no wonder Erika Strobel's name looks familiar to me; she wrote during the golden age of Total Drama Island, writing 6 episodes. which makes the slight 6Teen connectoin here even funnier. She unforutnately passed away in 2017, so rest in piece, Erika.

god. I feel super old when you listed all those teletoon shows. watching this gave me a huge wave of nostalgia. thank you so very much for doing this retrospective.

In all honesty, I'd love to see the return of Bluster Kong. He could be an interesting anti-hero who could perhaps help or harm DK depending on the context. If Illumination makes a Donkey Kong movie, it'd be great too see him make a cameo or even a large role. Hopefully the afforementioned film can carry on the legacy of the show and improve its concepts.

Be sure to share your memories with the show, if you've got any. Banana slamma and all that.

How does this don't have more views? THIS IS FANTASTIC!

You’re always on the money with these DK videos, man. I envy the enthusiasm you give out with your voice. Something I would like to mention, in terms of fan content around the show, are the old Annotated Episodes you can find on RU-vid. The community behind them, currently dubbed “Annoverse”, is a very active community surrounding the riffing and mocking of old children’s entertainment, with a focus on video game adaptations. Donkey Kong Country: The Annotated Series is one of their finest works, and was even cited by Alex Henderson as something he had fond memories of watching.

Im gonna disagree with the Bluster Kong take. He's a peak character and you can't change my mind!

Well, technically, Dixie is not the only DKC2 character that made it into the show. Technically, also Skurvy, because his design is based on Kannon, an enemy type from DKC2.

I rented this as a kid on VHS and man.. I remember mostly just being confused as to why Candy is so mean when on the contrary, she just blows you kisses in DKC itself lol

one of my favorite differences between Teletoon and Télétoon is how Ren & Stimpy aired on daytime for kids on Télétoon and aired at nights for adults for Teletoon

I KNEW Sterling Jarvis sang Zooboomafoo. And Pure West... The score for Zooboomafoo, and DKC need more praise. And for my generation, Wild Kratts also had both of these aspects. Thank you for this video, and you now have a new subscriber!

It makes sense that the episodes that originally had racist and sexist writing had a very mean Candy Kong

Criminally underrated review honestly. Also facts,the songs were absolute bangers.

4:23 to be fair, K. Rool is usually depicted without a tail in the games. Especially the early ones.

Ian Jones-Quartey asked Sterling Jarvis to be in OK K.O. because of his singing on DKC. Source: The What A Cartoon Podcast

I have fond memories watching this show with my friend on discord and we had a fun time watching it together. Not to mention this show got me through my the latter half of my high school years. Not to mention I own a storyboard from the show as a prized possession. And I got to ask Ian James Corlett about it and he said the show was a pain to write for because of computer limitations for the characters.

I have honestly been so excited for this video! I love the DKC cartoon, and getting more Canadian tv rep'd is 🔥😤😤

This was an amazing video to watch. I’ve watched the show multiple times and never knew the outside popularity it had! I just knew it was infamous in the US for its animation and storytelling. But I always enjoyed it!

"I shower you with coconut cream pie" lmao

It's a guilty pleasure looking back, especially in the first season but as a huge Donkey Kong fan it has its moments like the banter between the villains and some fun songs. Learning about the behind the scenes and where everyone went afterwards is amazing! :) Sad that one of Rare's allumni isn't a fan of this K.Rool, but this show was necessary for a lot of great things in the future. I hope Illumination brings back the cast for the Donkey Kong spin-off movie even if Seth Rogen still voices the ape.

Heck yaaaa!!! I remember the summer this premiered on YTV I was so fkn PUMPED, already a massive DKC fan and now we’re getting a cartoon?!?! It might not be the best cartoon in the world but it has a special place in my heart 🥰

When i was a kid i watched this show in one of our TV channels in Brazil that airs Woddy Woodpecker up till this day, it was a blast seeing these characters when i had a Super Nintendo and a DKC3 cartdrige, this link with the series is a very childhood memory, the Dub wasn't great because of the lyrics being adapted and all but even so a great achievment to the themes having this "DK vibe" from the games... Thx for the review🙏

This show was really my introduction to Donkey Kong as a character and not just a thing I’d see on t-shirts and being referenced in other media. At some point someone gave me and my brother the Legend of the Crystal Coconut VHS when we were kids, and we watched that tape religiously. We’d never seen anything like it before, and I’d say there’s never truly been anything like it since! It’s always gonna have a special place in my heart.

It's nice to hear both an objective and positive outlook on the show. All the reviews I have seen of it have been very harsh considering the dated animation, but it was one of the first too. And to this day, the NO! part of "Eddie Let me Go Back to My Home" has been a staple in my streams. Wish it got to Israel like many of Nelvana's offerings but alas.

Very happy to see someone talk about the show without making fun of it... it's a huge special interest of mine - Donkey Kong in general, really, but the show especially! I helped preserve some of the Dutch dub and have some rare promotional/unreleased material of it. There's some stuff here that's new to me, so that's very cool to see! I'm also pleasantly surprised to see you bringing up how the first few episodes felt super clunky because of its weird development, I always thought I was the only one to notice that. Some of the middle-time episodes of the first season(s) (depending on who you ask, the show has either 2 or 3 seasons...) are genuinely pretty great, good stakes and fun stuff, and the songs are a lot of fun, probably an influence to my interest in comedy music. When I was really into it, some episodes were really hard to find, notably Speed and Baby Kong Blues. They showed up one time in really poor quality and the very small fanbase kinda dealt with that for a while. I spent a lot of afternoons trying to find Any sort of way to watch them in better quality. So I'm super glad it's now freely available on RU-vid. My goodness, I could ramble about this silly show all day... thank you for this video! I see a lot of people I remember in the comments as well, so it's nice to see a celebration of it for once. Alex Henderson is my hero.

Ahhhhh that Teletoon logo!! Memories! My siblings and I still adore this show to this day, even if for just how bonkers it is XD We love the songs the best and we still quote Leo Luster back and forth haha! Such amazing talent and innovation went into this gem! I learned new things thanks to your video, so mad props and thanks for sharing your take! ^_^

You're right. Especially Candy's design. Love all her various looks, but this one was always nice to me. And of course songs go hard.

I remember getting up at like 5am just so I could be ready for it's debut which was at 7am. I waited and waited and finally it came on. I was so excited to watch the first episode and then my dad said we had to go somewhere and I didn't get to watch it. I was so mad at him for that. But now years later I realize he was inadvertently saving me.

Here he comes.. BANANA SLAMMA!

That was a deeper dive than I was expecting, great video. Also long time fan my man

I wonder how racist and sexist he early scrips were. This is the 90s we are talking about. Nowadays characters such as Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba, if we want to stick with games, created by Rare, are considered very offensive by people. I can not image how insulting the stuff was these writers came up with in that time.

“You tossed the coke for nana?” “I’m not even real.”

I really enjoyed, it's pretty interesting to know how the show was done

Fun Fact: The Intro For the Japanese Dub Of the Show was in hands of BANANA ICE, wich By fun fact things, ALSO COMPOSED THE SONGS FOR THE JAPANESE CUTSCENE SONGS FROM CRASH BANDICOOT 3 IN JAPAN. That because after defeating a Boss in the japanese Version of Crash Bandicoot 3 (wich interestingly had His Plot somewhat changed From a Time travel adventure To a Global Troting adventure) Anyways, At the end of each of all of those Musical animated videos it is Showed that the People of Banana Ice Composed Those songs, And they Even Compose The iconic Japanese crash Bandicoot Song.

What a fantastic video! It's amazing that despite having made 2 videos detailing trivia of this show with the good ol' Iceberg format, I was still able to learn some stuff, namely just how prolific the voice actors for K. Rool's minions are. Surprised that you didn't mention Ice Princess Lily, a movie where Benedict Campbell voices a villain who gets his own song, and it's essentially a lost DKC song with how much he sounds like K. Rool in it. I'm so glad you found a different show that used some of the Tim Foy music because I tried my best to find something and came up empty handed (apparently one of the Cat in a Hat cartoons used Feel the Power's instrumental but I can't find that episode). It's also great that you got in contact with people who worked on the show to get some insight. This show is a guilty pleasure for me and there are episodes that are genuinely really funny. Totally get your point of the family being incredibly disfunctional in the show though. No wonder there's an episode where it's shown that without DK's positive influence, Diddy would straight up become evil!

I remember watching your channel over a decade ago! I'm glad to see you're still making videos. I wish I could see the original scripts lol

It aired at a bad time for me (like after I went to school or before I got home) so I didn't watch it on TV often, but I had the tape and watched it all the time to the point I could probably recite it from memory. Then my family video had the dvds in the free kids rental so I got them, and then about 5 years ago I watched the entire series on Tubi, and one of the episodes still had the production code card and 1 minute lead before it.

Big ups to Mike F for his input 👏 he a real 1 for that

Loved hearing more about this show. I only saw a few episodes as a kid but I remember loving the performances especially the musical numbers. DK's singing voice is sublime.

People love having such negative dialogue about pieces of media like this but forget how innovative the show was. It’s better for art to have weird experimental shows that are hit or miss than just copying the same equation over and over.

Fantastic video! I remember watching this show early in the morning and whenever I was sick and stayed at home from school. It's still a fun watch.

Great little overview of this show! I first happened upon it on Fox Family while mindlessly flipping channels on some random Saturday in the late 90s (the same habit that would lead to both my Pokémon AND Digimon obsessions), and it quickly became an unexpected favorite! Like, how had I never heard of a FULL CARTOON based on my absolute favorite platforming series?! Just stumbling upon that was NUTS! Of course, it sadly didn't last long, so I wasn't able to watch it live anymore. (My only way to see ANYTHING from it after it left TV was to watch and rewatch the Legend of the Crystal Coconut VHS. At least I still had Pirate's Scorn.) Cut to the late-ish 2000s, where I would COMB fansites looking for info on and encodes of all of these episodes I'd never seen before, slowly but surely assembling a complete collection (I think at least a chunk of them were Teletoon rips) and burning it to CD-Rs. It was one of my earliest "lost media" holy grails, and I was VERY happy to finally have it all. Of course, these days, everything's officially uploaded on RU-vid in fantastic quality, so it's great to see that this show is far from lost to time now, but man, things were decidedly rougher for anyone in the US who cared back in 2006/2007. As far as the actual show is concerned, I definitely agree with your point that the Kong "Family" could be pretty awful to each other at times, especially the others to DK. There's the obvious Kong for a Day, but I also love how in Hooray for Holly Kongo Bongo, the Kongs TOTALLY believe that DK stole the freaking coconut even though FREAKING K. ROOL WAS THERE POINTING THE FINGER. Like, hello?! Dude whose ENTIRE EXISTENCE was dedicated to stealing this thing?! "Oh, but DK's getting too into his villain ro-"SCREW YOU GUYS. That aside, it definitely seems like the non-medialab episodes had a LOT more fun with their premises. (Probably because they weren't as restricted.) Might not have looked as pretty texture-wise, but between an adorable Christmas-adjacent episode (love them making Klump and Skurvy related because it made me think of Kannon from off of DKC2) and the delicious insanity of stuff like Leo Luster and THE PAPER MACHE LILYPAD, I really enjoyed my time going through that particular batch of episodes for the first time back in the 2000s. Blows that those eps were never released on DVD in the States. C'mon, Nelvana, hook up with Discotek and give me some SDBD action already!

I haven’t thought about this show since Uncle Al’s DKC cartoon abridged. I’ll give the show this, it makes for great meme fuel. Especially the songs

I’ve never noticed the fact K rool didn’t have a tail. Now I can’t unsee it.

You might not be the first person I have seen talk about this show but you are most certainly the first person I recall talking about the show that went into full depth and detail about it. Right down to the behind the scenes.

I had a huge smile on my face the whole time, great work!

This is a very good video on this show and makes me smile bc I love this show sm!! And it’s insane how you connect to the show with the guitarist working at your school and a FAMILY MEMBER KNOWING THE SINGING VOICE FOR DK! That’s so cool!

Honestly I would totally be fine with kenan thompson playing Funky Kong in future Mario or DK movies.

I can’t confirm any of this, but those 2D illustrations taken from storyboards? Remind me of the story art from Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids.

I saw this cartoon back when it aired on teletoon in 2002. I was five. In 2006 I watched recorded episodes on RU-vid and the rest is history. I went from loving this show to hating it, and now back to loving it. This show is bad compared to the games but as an animated series it's actually quite good. Not to mention it made history as being the first TV show that's entirely motion captured and even won awards too. Though it may not be a good show for gamers it's great for the kids. Great video malik

Klump and Krusha are the best henchmen in all of history.

I wanna to Thank you for talking about 'Dog City' in your previous video. I really enjoyed the show when I checked it out a few weeks ago. I love puppetry and 2d animation so it was a win, win for me.

Thank you for this video! I loved it! I actually rented the Crystal Coconut VHS tape from my local video rental store as a kid, then a little later bought that same tape when they were selling it. Still have it, I believe.

Dude, I was hit with so much nostalgia watching this video. Seeing someone speaking of this show in a positive light over a negative reminded me of the weekends I'd watch this show with my Dad on Teletoon. Such a different time compared to now. Really enjoyed this video, it was great.

Canada's, Nelvana's greatest animation achievement was *Rock and Rule* But I like the DKC series overall

I always avoided the show as a kid because I thought it was a bit scary looking but it was fun to learn about the history of it from this vid! If I remember correctly it aired in the states around the same time as that one Voltron CGI show no one seems to remember, Fox had a very varied lineup lol

If I recall correctly, the people behind Return to Crocodile Island wanted to get in touch with Sterling Jarvis (since they got most of the cast for their song), and you have your cousin who's friends with him, why not... you know, relay to him that wink wink nudge nudge

15:38 That reminds me of how some of the original Digimon show's dub used music from Saban's Masked Rider. I didn't learn that until a few years ago.

So many memes and banger songs you Canadians never disappoint

I remember my brothers went to Blockbuster while I was at a friend’s house. When I came home, they showed me a Donkey Kong Country VHS they rented. I was FLOORED that a DKC cartoon even existed! After that, I started watching episodes on my grandpa’s laptop

Huge fan of the show as well. As a little tidbit if you watch the show again. You may notice how there would be only five models that would move and any more would more or less be T posing. You can easily spot it in episode 2, and the episode about the time capsule. There's plenty of scenes like it. 😂

"Canada's Greatest Achievement" that title belongs to Beast Wars: Transformers.

Canada's greatest achievement? The Geneva convention entered the chat

I just picked up Crystal Coconut on vhs from a local trade in shop about 3 weeks ago. I am 30 and have tons of memories from middle school watching the tape with my friends. I now share it with my current friend who never heard of it. Great laughs

Great job on this video! Learned a ton I didn't know about the series. The troubled start and re-work of the first run of episodes was especially interesting. I remember as a kid seeing promos for this show before it aired on Teletoon. My initial excitement was through the roof! I had played so much DKC with my dad prior to this. The joy of seeing those video game characters and objects brought to life in glorious early CGI is hard to properly articulate. I was born in 91 so I would have been 6-7 when this aired. The prime age for it probably. That being said, even as a kid I eventually thought the show kinda sucked, maybe even found it annoying. But still an interesting moment in Canadian television history. I actually work at Nelvana now. Have done for the last 5 years and have even worked with Mike Fallows on a couple of shows (I think maybe he is retired now) so it was kinda surreal to see him pop up in this haha. Banana Slamma!

I recall seeing this show a few times when I was a kid. Over the years I would occasionally VHS copies of The Legend of the Crystal Coconut in several Goodwill stores and Swap Meets. It wouldn’t be until the early 2010s when I began getting into RU-vid that I would find episodes of this series, either in full or separated into parts, that would I would really begin to enjoy this series. A lot of the jokes were funny and a lot of the songs were really catchy, some of my favorite songs being Nobody’s Hero, The Road to Success and Metalhead. I even enjoyed the Japanese intro theme, and while I don’t know the name of the song, I think the group that sang it was called Banana Ice (correct me if I’m wrong). Fun fact about the Japanese dub, Cranky in that dub is voiced by Ryusei Nakao, the Japanese voice of Frieza from Dragon Ball Z.

I still remember this show after watching it some Saturday mornings back in 99 lol it huants certain corners of my mind only because it was so odd but interesting lol plus I was a huge fan of DKC 1 and 2

I first heard about this show when cjszero01 did a countdown on songs from the show and since then, I've been a fan.

Actually Kongo Bongo island is ask island and the Klump is called General Klumpy!

Part of me makes me wish they made a Banjo-Kazooie CGI cartoon 😂

I remember enjoying this as a kid. Not my fave or anything, but I was happy to see the Country Crew on TV.

I saw this show only via a single vhs at my local video rental

I was in elementary school watching this after school at my gmas faithfully

BANANA SLAMMA !!!!

the DK cartoon is a classic.

A lot of cool information! Also, Krusha’s “smart” voice sounds like J. Peterman from Seinfeld to me, lol.

This show holds a special place in my heart 💛🍌

can't believe you haven't already made a video on this lol

This has gotta be one of the first shows I ever remember watching up there with the last remnants of TMNT reruns lmao it always bugged me that K.Rool didn't have a tail coming from somebody who didn't touch a DK game until years later so I thought that's just how he was supposed to be

I Seen The DK Cartoon Clips On RU-vid and Its Was Pretty Weird and Amazing At the Same Time and Also Love How Medialab and Nelvana Are Stepping Into The Achievement Of Evolauizing Animation And Just One Little Nippik Here (3:09) You Said Something About Medialab Working On Stickin Around? Like Did They Do Anything Like Helping With Funding Or Helping With Out Production (Also Quick Side Note: I Love Stickin Around It Was Fun, Somewhat Trippy & So Weird) (Also Also Side Note: I Watch Stickin Around Via RU-vid Because I Am From The US & I Was Born After Stickin Around Ended Via 2005) Maybe You Can Talk About Stickin Around Someday.......Someday

I liked this show, but mostly because I LOVE the games.

Cool I like hearing other takes on this show 😊 4.11.23

I'm so jealous that everyone outside the west got all that extra media for this show.

The Monkey Kong joke is so good if you understand it

I can't believe I forgot about teletoon

Where did you get the “anyone can dance” instrumental at 16:36?

Feature Length.

Getting canned because you were hired to write the Donkey Kong cartoon and the script you turned in was incredibly racist is a _fucking nuts_ backstory for this show, and something I didn't know about before; it sounds like a Nick Mullen joke. Really unironically love the Donkey Kong Country cartoon, though. Compared to stuff like the OG Super Show, where it felt like the showrunners had no idea how to adapt the Mario characters into a narrative format, all of the DKC characters feel so richly characterized and well-acted. I couldn't pick a more perfect VA for Cranky if I tried. (Also, cool hearing Ruby Gloom mentioned. Glad people still remember that show.)

I wonder what’d happen if the DK of the games swapped places with his cartoon counterpart.

Is there a plan to make a history of nelvana video any time soon?

I kinda want to see those lost racist and sexist scripts

I genuinely love this show. Maybe because i grew up with it. But hey, glad to se esomeone praising it instead of criticizing it

For some reason I preferred season 1 of the show

this cartoon is no doubt flawed however in retrospect, i'm kind of glad it exists since i got into donkey kong in my childhood i always wanted a donkey kong movie or TV show of some sort so this show is basically an answer to prayer...now with the success of the recent super mario bros movie chances are we MAY get a donkey kong country movie....but if it's anything like the mario movie then i probably shouldn't expect much from it