Mud Squad

The premise for 'Mud Squad' is not an immediately appealing one in all honesty in my view. It has been done, either similarly or nearly identical more than once beforehand elsewhere, such as the Daffy Duck cartoon 'Quackodile Tears' (which is not a classic but has always been enjoyable to me despite the overbearing wife character), though similarities are not blatant. It is also a premise that can/could go either way, it could have been cute and amusing or it could have been too cheesy and too sugary.

'Mud Squad' is a bit of both and actually on first watch it was better than expected, something that stayed on rewatch. As far as the Tijuana Toads cartoons go, it is in the better end as it at least had amusing moments and didn't annoy me. Is it a particularly good cartoon? No. Is it watchable? Yes. Despite not caring overall for the Tijuana Toads series, none of the 17 cartoons in it are irredeemably bad in my view. Something that 'Mud Squad' most certainly is not.

Shall start with the good things. The baby alligator character Georgie is just adorable and is also surprisingly feisty, his treatment of the toads is quite amusing. The ending is the highlight and it was not expected either. The music is character filled and vibrant, with a great main theme.

Pacing is lively, it is cute without being too cutesy and there are more gags than what can be usually seen in the series, and ones not too badly executed.

None though are quite hilarious. Most are also predictable from having been done before elsewhere so the outcomes are never in question (not helped by that the series is already quite formulaic), a variation of the rocket gag for example was even seen in 'Never On Thirsty'. The story has energy but is very thin and derivative, couldn't help be reminded of 'Quackodile Tears' at some points.

Also felt that some of 'Mud Squad' is quite repetitive, not unusual for the Tijuana Toads series, which would have been solved with more material and more variety in it. The mother alligator is another very annoying and overbearing character that is reduced to very old material, thankfully she is not in it much. Neither El Toro or Pancho are either interesting or funny, though El Toro actually has his moments like his first encounter with Georgie. The dialogue tends to be awkward and the animation badly lacks smoothness and is too simplistic.

Concluding, watchable but fairly average. 5/10.