The Garfield Shorts, also referred to as Garfield Shorts and Garfield tout court in French, is a series that aired alongside The Garfield Show on Boomerang in EMEA regions. Eighty shorts were produced for the first three seasons, with the fourth season containing an unknown number. The first two seasons released them as short-form video content, while the following two seasons classified the shorts as songs. The shorts were aired in-between episodes of The Garfield Show, similar to the Garfield and U.S. Acres Quickies.
Production and airing[]
Current information[]
The series has been the source of much speculation due to the lack of easily-obtained information about it, which has often given rise to false information. As of March 2025, the true number of produced shorts remains unknown, as well as the whereabouts of many of the shorts themselves. Despite this, a number of difficult-to-find information sources have provided more accurate estimations.
While a full production order list is not available, the source code of archived Garfield Tout Court pages on "ici.tou.tv", ICI Radio-Canada Télé's official video-on-demand website that is unique in having hosted every short, has provided official episode numbers via the now-unavailable page names of each individual short[1]. In addition, this has given clues as to how many shorts were produced: 'Nermal se rebelle', the French title for a song featured in "Into the Wild", is listed from its page name as 'S2015E131' (episode 131)[2], suggesting that 134 shorts is a highly-likely candidate, a result of Mediatoon's provided format of "54 shorts" and "80 songs" combined[3].
As of 2025, many of the shorts are now either on out-of-print DVD releases, or are completely lost to the public.
All fifty-four French-language shorts from seasons 1 and 2 are currently available, with some sparse availability of season 3 and season 4 shorts. For the French-language shorts, ICI Radio-Canada Télé provides the most promise: In addition to being the only station to have aired shorts from every season, the station continues to regularly broadcast the series[4]. Since February 12th, 2024, Boomerang France has also begun to rerun shorts from the first two seasons. French DVD releases from Citel Video contain fifteen from twenty-six songs produced during season 3, and only three songs from the fourth season.
English versions of the shorts are likely to remain lost for a greatly-extended period. No station ever aired any shorts past those of the first season. As of March 2025, only one season 4 short in English has ever been found. On the American Vivendi and Cinedigm DVD releases, twenty-five out of twenty-six season 1 shorts, and twenty-five out of twenty-eight season 2 shorts were released, with no content from later seasons being released at all.
Production information[]
In season 1, twenty-six shorts[5] were produced, each short set into a grouping with a specific categorical theme. The season's copyright year is listed as 2008. Broadcasting rights are known to have been given to all EMEA stations of Boomerang, France 3, ICI Radio-Canada Télé[6], and the Belgian network, RTTBF. At one point, the season's shorts were also all available on both the American and French versions of Amazon Prime Video, and all versions of Netflix.
In season 2, twenty-eight shorts were produced[7], thematically serving as public service announcements. The season's copyright year is listed as 2010. TooNews, the official newsletter for Mediatoon's catalogue, lists fifty-two shorts in the ninth edition written during the season's production[8], highly suggesting that the increase to fifty-four was an executive change in production. Citel Video, as well as now-privated uploads from the Boomerang France YouTube channel[9] list the French title of the season's series of shorts as "Les Conseils de Garfield" (roughly translated as 'Advice From Garfield'). The only television stations known to have aired the shorts are French-language, those being Boomerang France, France 3, ICI Radio-Canada Télé[10], and the Swiss, RTS Deux[11]. Amazon Prime Video did not host any of the shorts in this season; However, Netflix hosted twenty-six of twenty-eight shorts until their removal.
Season 3 introduced songs as the new format for shorts, which would be retained in season 4. Season 3's copyright year is listed as 2011. Boomerang France and ICI Radio-Canada Télé are the only television networks to have aired this season's shorts. There are conflicting numbers on shorts produced, considered either to be twenty-six or thirty. This confusion stems from a description found on an archived version of Mediatoon:
"Enjoy 80 shorts of 40 seconds available for transmedia content plus 30 songs of 40 seconds"
As fifty-four shorts were confirmedly produced for the first two seasons, it would suggest that if to combine into eighty, twenty-six songs would have had to have been produced, contrary to Mediatoon's thirty songs[12]. However, a recent finding in the source code of aforementioned archives of "ici.tou.tv" lists "Le bon gars", a short with an easily-confirmed 2011 copyright year, as "S2015E83" (episode 83); an episode number only true if thirty songs had in fact been produced.[1]
Sources pointing towards twenty-six include that Boomerang France originally uploaded twenty-six songs to its YouTube channel on January 28th, 2013[9], as well as song material originally hosted on thegarfieldshow-diary.com and garfield-et-cie-blog.com that does not contain the The Garfield Shorts official copyright. Should the latter video sources constitute the extra four songs, it'd form a possible argument for twenty-six. Two examples of this are "Friday 13th"[13], and "Mardi Gras I"[14], two songs known to have been hosted on the aforementioned websites. Boomerang France's now-privated videos title this series of shorts as "Les chansons de Garfield" (directly translated as 'The Songs of Garfield').
The new source for season 4's information almost solely relies on ICI Radio-Canada Télé, the only station known to have officially licensed and still air the season's shorts[15]. As per the source code of the previously mentioned "ici.tou.tv", every song featured in the season appears to have had its own short, this including songs specific only to the extended versions of specials shown on Boomerang Cinema[16]. This would suggest between forty-seven to fifty shorts. Regardless, the official number of shorts remains unknown; Mediatoon did not update their websites' pages to account for the production of the new shorts, and the fourteenth edition of TooNews for Autumn-Winter 2012, the issue that most likely would have contained this information, is currently lost. A few season 4 shorts were uploaded to garfield-et-cie-blog.com[17], but the majority are lost.
Episodes[]
- Main article: The Garfield Shorts/Episode List
| Season | Number of Shorts | Copyright Year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 26 | 2008 |
| 2 | 28 | 2010 |
| 3 | 26-30 | 2011 |
| 4 | ~50 | 2013 |
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20161010085145/http://ici.tou.tv/garfield-tout-court
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20150915113102/http://ici.tou.tv:80/garfield-tout-court
- ↑ https://mediatoon-distribution.com/en/programme/garfield-shorts/
- ↑ https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/horaire
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20120130152950/http://mid.mediatoon.com/upload/news_pdf/Toonews_Fall08.pdf
- ↑ https://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/parents/accueil-parents/document/nouvelles/article/1926567/halloween-vampire-citrouille-fete-costume-deguisement-fantome,
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20120130155156/http://mid.mediatoon.com/upload/news_pdf/Toonews-11.pdf
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20120130141309/http://mid.mediatoon.com/upload/news_pdf/TOONEWS_9_MIPTV10.pdf
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 https://filmot.com/channel/UCJZ35DzvSPelEvLtFMQiOpw/17
- ↑ https://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/parents/accueil-parents/document/nouvelles/article/2032185/emissions-jeunesse-noel-fetes-programmation-films
- ↑ https://www.rts.ch/play/tv/emission/garfield-tout-court?id=5823555
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20131208195608/http://mid.mediatoon.com/upload/news/Toonews-recto.jpg
- ↑ https://youtu.be/Oi2lBQN79Yk
- ↑ https://youtu.be/u-cCxXQWERE
- ↑ https://ici.radio-canada.ca/jeunesse/scolaire/blogues/238/peur-humour-emissions-jeunesse-dessin-anime-enfant-halloween/blogue
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20150816011532/http://ici.tou.tv/garfield-tout-court
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20131005160414/http://www.garfield-et-cie-blog.com/?p=5197