19 interesting facts about the animated series "Miracles on Bends" (24 photos)

The animated series "Miracles on Bends", telling about the adventures of the bear Baloo and his young partner Keith, won the hearts of young viewers in the 90s.





1. Disney management has long had in mind to create a project similar to Indiana Jones, but about pilots. Well, after the success of the animated series “DuckTales” and “Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers,” the management firmly decided that it was necessary to create an animated series on this topic.

Initially, it was even planned that the main character would be the would-be pilot Zigzag from DuckTales, who was so loved by the audience. It was he who was supposed to become the pilot of a seaplane that would deliver cargo.



But in the end, the authors decided that Zigzag was ideal as a secondary character, but was in no way suitable for the role of the main character. True, he was not left aside either. Zigzag was nevertheless sent to another series - "Black Cloak".

Then the creators decided to resort to the same model that was used in the animated series “Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers.” For those who don't know, the rescue team was originally supposed to consist of original characters, but in the end, the producers took the well-known chipmunks from the short films of the 40s and 50s, but completely changed their character.





We decided to do the same with “Miracles on Bends”. After thinking about which famous characters could be taken, the authors chose the character Baloo from the cartoon “The Jungle Book”, all from the same Disney studio. Some other characters, such as Louis the orangutan and Shere Khan the tiger, were also brought in there. True, the authors immediately warned that these heroes have nothing in common (except for appearance and names) with the heroes of The Jungle Book. Let's assume that this is another parallel universe.

They even wanted to hire actor Phil Harris, who voiced the bear in the cartoon “The Jungle Book,” to voice Baloo. But due to his age (85 years), he had to refuse.

2. As for the idea and plot itself, they were inspired by the unknown series “Tales of the Golden Monkey,” which also tells about a former military pilot who flew a seaplane, and whose boss is a woman.



Tales of the Golden Monkey

3. Although such a character as Screwtape (the mechanic) was not based on any character from The Jungle Book, he was not invented from scratch. His appearance was based on a character named Puma Pete from the Looney tunes.



4. Localizers translated the title of the animated series as “Miracles on Bends.” In the original, the animated series is called "Tale spin". And in fact, this combination can be translated in absolutely different ways (Tale - fairy tale, tale, history; Spin - rotation, “corkscrew”, twist), for example “Tale about rotation”, “Tales from a corkscrew” (talking about aerobatics) , "Revolving Tale" (some kind of nonsense), etc. So "Miracles on Bends" is a pretty good option.

But, it is also worth considering that in English there is an idiom “Spin a tale”, which can be translated as “To compose a fairy tale” or “To tell a fairy tale”. Perhaps this is a reference to this particular idiom. Well, okay, I won’t go into this jungle.

5. Despite the fact that the age of the main characters is not indicated in the cartoon, at the creation stage the authors prescribed a specific age for the characters. So Baloo is 35 years old, Rebecca is 32 years old, Kit is 12 years old, and Rebecca's daughter Molly is 5 years old.



6. Within the framework of the animated series, there is a certain country “Tembria”, which is inhabited by wild boars. This country was made as a parody of the USSR.



Thembria itself was rarely shown, but the Thembrian Colonel Spigot and his henchman Sergeant Dunder were shown quite often.



But according to the original plan, Tembria was supposed to be inhabited not only by wild boars, but also by lions, lynxes and other animals. But then the authors decided to leave only one type of animal. True, due to the fact that the bosses ordered accompanying merch even before the series was completely ready, official coloring books entered the market, where we seecompletely different animals in the role of Colonel Spigot and Sergeant Dander, namely a dwarf lion and a lynx.



7. A total of 65 episodes were filmed. And if you've read my previous articles on Disney animated series (such as Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers), then you know that this was the minimum number of episodes required for television in the United States in order for the series to be shown for a period of time. 13 weeks on weekdays.



But "Miracles on Bends" was dealt with in a very strange way. Initially, only a pilot series consisting of 4 episodes was shown on television, after which they began to wait for the audience’s reaction. And only when the audience was delighted with the episodes they watched, it was decided to show the remaining episodes.

True, in our childhood we could see less than half of the episodes, since in the 90s we were shown only 26 episodes on the RTR TV channel. The remaining episodes were shown on television only in the early 00s.



8. The air pirate Don Carnage and the orangutan Louie were voiced by famous voice actor Dmim Cummings. Damn, I mention him in every article. Well, what can you do if during his life he voiced a really huge number of characters, such as Fatpaw and Professor Nimnul from Chip and Dale, Black Cloak, Rasul (the guard from Aladdin), Shocker and Chameleon (Spider-Man, 1994 ), Tigger and Winnie the Pooh, Crazy and Lucky Pickel from the animated series "Crazy", etc.



9. Initially, the authors wanted to name Keith Luke in honor of the main character of the Star Wars film, Luke Skywalker. But then they changed their minds. Nevertheless, there is still a reference, because the name Kit Cloudkicker (Kit Windrunner) is similar to the name Luke Skywalker.



The same thing happened with Rebecca, who, according to the original plan, should have been called Laura. As a result, the authors named the woman Rebekah in honor of Rebecca Howe from the TV series “Cheers”.



Although, the film also contains references to other famous personalities. For example, in one episode there is a character named Owl Capone, whose surname clearly refers to the famous gangster named Al Capone.



Also, you can often see references to other characters, films or famous personalities, for example the whale Moby Dimple is a reference to Moby Dick, and the Tantamount studio is a reference to the Paramount studio.

10. Also, according to the original idea, Rebecca’s ex-husband was supposed to appear in the cartoon, but in the end the authors decided that her personal life should remain a secret, so that the audience would puzzle themselves over who Rebecca’s father was and where he had even gone: died, ran away, or something else?



11. In one of the episodes of the animated series "Aladdin" (this is my favorite Disney project, and soon it will be his turn) Genie, for fun, turns everyone into characters from the animated series "Miracles on Bends", including himself. It's funny that he gave the role of Louis to the monkey Abu.



12. As in the case of “Chip and Dale” and “DuckTales,” the animated series “Miracles on a Bend” has several episodes united by a common storyline, which can even be considered a feature-length film. We are talking about the first four episodes called "Robbery and Lightning", in the plot of which Baloo met the young air pirate Keith, and then they met Rebecca, for whom they began to work.



And by the way, it was this four-part episode that won the Emmy Award for Best Animated Series in 1991.

13. Baloo's plane, which he calls the Dive, was based on three aircraft, namely the Grumman Grumman G-21 Goose twin-engine flying boat, the Canadian Canadair CL-215 and the American Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter.



Grumman G-21 Goose

14. After the success of the series, comic books of the same name began to be published. PraYes, the comics themselves were not popular, so they stopped publishing after six months.

15. According to the original plan, Keith was supposed to be Rebecca’s son, but then the authors decided to give Keith a different role, and Rebecca was awarded a daughter.

16. According to artist Len Smith, the character of Keith was based on young actor Scotty Beckett from the series of old short films "Guns".



Also, Kit, as a character, is an allusion to Mowgli from The Jungle Book. He is also an orphan, also attached to Baloo and, just like in “The Jungle Book,” he calls the bear “Papa Bear.” But since a person in an animated series about anthropomorphic humanized animals would be clearly superfluous, apparently the creators decided to replace him with a bear cub.



Well, for “dessert” there’s one more interesting thing from our localizers. In the dub, Whale is voiced by Maria Vinogradova, who voiced young Mowgli in the Soviet cartoon.

17. In one of the episodes, the Wuble currency (money of the kingdom of Walla-Walla-Bing-Bang) is mentioned. Naturally, this is another reference to the USSR, namely to the Ruble.

18. Based on the cartoon “Miracles on Bends,” two video games were released.



I think many of you have played the game "Tale spin" (1991) from Capcom, which was released for the NES (Dendy) console. Most often it was found on the iconic seven-game cartridge.

A little later, another game "Tale spin" was released, but for the 16-bit Sega mega drive 2 and Turbo Grafx 16 consoles. This game was completely different from the 8-bit version. In addition, it could be played by two people.



19. And of course, I couldn’t help but mention the reboot of the animated series “DuckTales” (2017), where the creators constantly crammed characters from cult Disney animated series. "Miracles on Bends" was no exception.

In one of the episodes we can see Kit Windrunner and Molly (Rebecca's daughter) grown up. Moreover, Keith began to look very much like his friend Baloo.