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You know you really wanted to visit this page first. We understand. Confess it and be healed. You're a giant fan of giant pandas. You knew panda bears really were bears long before intellectual government zoologists spent millions of YOUR tax dollars coming to the same conclusion. You googled giant pandas and got a link to Pandapolis. You want pandas, not some L.A. human's personal stuff. You clicked on PandaMania and your oriental ursine anxieties have been relieved. It's only natural I'd have a page at Pandapolis just about pandas. Chauncey wouldn't have it any other way. So check out these fun links to all things panda. Giant pands are like the Borg from Star Trek—resistance is futile. But like Seven of Nine, pandas are quite rightly amiable chaps and chapesses when you get to know them. Especially if you call on them at their homes with a gift basket full of bamboo shoots. > > cartoon pandas Po the Panda Lately, the best known cartoon panda has been Po the Panda from the 2008 DreamWorks Animation theatrical film Kung Fu Panda. Voiced by actor-comedian Jack Black, Po is an overweight, noodle-loving, lazy panda who is prophesied to save the Valley of Peace from an evil tiger by becoming a kung fu master. If you haven't seen the movie, that's all I'm going to say about the plot. IMDB it if you want to spoil it for yourself. What I will say is that Kung Fu Panda's wild box office success is because DreamWorks pulled out all the stops in making it memorable. The animators employed Chinese art and mythology for its unique character design and backgrounds, painstakingly integrated camera movement native to Japanese anime and Hong Kong martial arts movies in the numerous action sequences, and seeing an overweight giant panda making lightning-quick moves like Bruce Lee is hysterical! Andy Panda Andy Panda, the first cartoon panda, was created in the 1940's by Walter Lantz, best known for Woody Woodpecker. Lantz was inspired to create Andy after he and his wife Grace Stafford (best known as the voice of Woody) saw a group of giant pandas on loan from China at the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Andy has a girlfriend named Miranda Panda. For years I thought it was Amanda Panda, but nope, it's Miranda. Ping and Pong Ping and Pong were twin pandas from outer space on The Brady Kids, an animated spinoff of the family sitcom The Brady Bunch, produced by Filmation studios and airing on ABC from 1972 to 1974. They spoke in a mock Chinese garbled jibberish, and together with Marlon the magic bird and Mop Top the dog (a clone of The Archies' Hot Dog) they were comic relief for the Brady kids as they went on magical adventures through time and space.
In the 1980's there was Pam the Panda of the Shirt Tales, a gang of cute shirt-wearing animals from Hallmark Cards that the Hanna-Barbera studios made into a Saturday morning TV show on NBC from 1982 to 1984. On that show, they were cute shirt-wearing superheroes. I remember their battle cry "Shirt T-T-T-Tales!" Why H-B gave these characters who were clearly geared toward women and girls a superhero spin I don't know, but they did, and it worked. For the record they are, clockwise from the top, Rick the Raccoon, Kip the Kangaroo, Tyg the Tiger, Bogey the Chimp, Digger the Mole and Pam the Panda. Hanna-Barbera created Kip as a junior Shirt Tale in the show's second and final season. Comic impressionist Fred Travalena gave his dead-on Humphrey Bogart impersonation to the chimp's voice, and a young Nancy Cartwright voiced Kip before landing her best-known gig: Bart Simpson. Ay caramba! Pandamonium In the 70's and 80's, Hanna-Barbera was the Wal-Mart of kidvid animation, the dominant player of the genre. After all, they invented it. At the same time as Shirt Tales they produced Pandamonium,, which involved clumsy pandas, an evil New Age spirit, some kind of magic crystal, and the pandas somehow saving the world. Not surprisingly, the bizarre and incomprehensible plotline was probably its undoing, lasting less than one season. > > other famous pandas Eddie and Tom Tom Eddie and Tom Tom are the mascots for Panda Express, a Los Angeles-based chain of Chinese fast food restaurants. They are named for co-founders Eddie and Thomas Cherng. They appear in the resturant's TV commercials played by real giant pandas who talk and make goofy faces through computer animation. Tom Tom, the smaller panda, is the comedian while the bigger Eddie is the serious one and the foil for all the jokes. Mister Rogers' Pandas Panda and Purple Panda were two magical pandas with monotone robot-like voices on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood who hung out in the Land of Make-Believe. Purple Panda, a friendly visitor from the Purple Planet, used "thinking travel" to magically teleport from place to place like Samantha did on "Bewitched". Fred Rogers himself provided their voices. And on a personal note, I've always had a sweet spot for Fred Rogers' gentle, easy-paced demeanor; he was that way in real life as well as on TV. He could also laugh at himself; he reportedly got a kick out of Eddie Murphy's satirical "Mister Robinson's Neighborhood" routine on Saturday Night Live. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister and considered the TV show his ministry. And that's perhaps why Mister Rogers is still in reruns on PBS, even after his passing in 2003. San Diego Pandas Hua Mei was panda born at the San Diego Zoo in 1999. She was moved to China in 2004 to help preserve the endangered panda population back home. Her name in Chinese can mean either "China/USA" or "Beautiful Flower". Pandas sounds a lot like Padres, but as far as I know, the ones at the zoo don't play baseball. ©2009 by Rich Rodriguez |
Pam the Panda