The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin

Illiop Teddy Ruxpin (Illiops being bear-like creatures) leaves his homeland in Rillonia with his friend Grubby, an octopede, in search of adventure. They meet up with an inventor named Newton Gimmick who accompanies them on their quest for the Treasure of Grundo. What the Trio unexpectedly find are six crystals with different meanings and powers. These crystals, however, also can enable the Monsters and Villains Organization (MAVO) to have absolute power over the land, and the leader, Quellor, wants to make sure that an Illiop never possesses the crystals. Elsewhere, a less pronounced threat also routinely besieges the Trio, which is the wannabe villain Jack W. Tweeg, a greedy Troll-half Grunge who has huge hopes for joining MAVO. The sixty five episode series, based upon the tape-and-book toy bear Teddy Ruxpin, unfolds gradually, as the Trio meet up with more and more interesting and often friendly creatures and visit intriguing lands.

Check out The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin on IMDb


Derek's Recollections:

At the time of Teddy Ruxpin, I was an animation writer where I’d written for The Raccoons, a couple of shows in Montreal and for a very dodgy company, which I can’t remember the name of anymore.

Teddy Ruxpin was done by a company called D.I.C. The acronym stands for, “Do It Cheap.” They did it out of Ottawa because Ottawa was an animation Center in Canada and D.I.C was a very exploitative company.

Although I only wrote one script for them, I’m listed on all 65 scripts. I had signed a standard writing contract and they didn’t want to change the credits so they just put everybody on it and it looks like I wrote 65 episodes of Teddy Ruxpin.

I’ve said this to so many people. In 1835, they had four year olds working in coal mines. That’s the mentality of the animation business and I’m sure most people who have toiled on this side of it would agree. It has changed though thanks to computerization among other things. It’s not quite the same as when you had people drawing 14 cells for every second of animation, they were sweatshops. It also
extended to the writing process. Writers got screwed heavily writing animation in Canada.


Derek's Role: Writer

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