Last year, November, the user, imflameyyyyy (henceforth, Julien) and I (henceforth, Joshua) decided that we were going to set ourselves a task that hasn't gotten much attention in lost media circles: We would attempt to list, and archive The Garfield Shorts / Garfield Tout Courts. If you're unaware of what these are, these were a series of short-form content which would accompany episodes of The Garfield Show, and if you want a proper rundown, you can read about them here. Perhaps "Week 1" is contrary to the months we've spent searching, but what better time than now?
Now, the reason for this series of blog posts is simply that the volume of information that we've found, and at the rate it's been, is almost too much to add to the related wiki article. Already, I've had to change copious amounts of information on that page, and even now, it's in some form out of date to recent findings. Thus, we thought a more casual series on weekly findings and thoughts would be better-suited until things can be properly tied down.
This week's blog post is essentially to explain theories we've developed in our months searching and provide interesting things we've noticed.
This week is March 2nd, 2024 - March 8th, 2024.
General Information[]
Garfield Ho[]
Garfield Ho is not an inappropriate joke, but a channel run by Julien and me, of which we've so far uploaded most of what we've managed to locate. Now, not to toot our own horn, but our channel is specific in having been able to provide lots for The Garfield Shorts series.
- Of French, we've managed to upload S1, S2, a few S3, and a number of S4.
- We're the only channel to have uploaded season 4 shorts in ANY language, and not just one: Twenty-seven shorts, soon to be thirty this weekend. The way we found these shorts were through archives of Bandgee.com, which was essentially Dargaud's dedicated website for kids.
- Though unrelated to the topic, but interesting nonetheless, we're the only people to have found "Les Gaffes de Garfield", a video series of the outtakes featured in the extended S4 shorts. What's special about this is that there are no mentions of this series anywhere online.
Number of Shorts Theory[]
This is a good place to start. While we're 100% confident that there are 54 shorts in seasons 1 (26 shorts) and 2 (28 shorts), the later seasons leave a problem. We've changed our opinions so many times on how many songs there actually are, but currently we believe 79 or 80 songs were produced, which Mediatoon themselves have stated.
Now, we weren't originally sure if season 3 had twenty-six or thirty shorts. Turns out, neither. It's more. We've found evidence for thirty-ONE shorts in season 3, and so, we've theorized 34 or 35 in the season. We believe this works in tandem with a S4 number of forty-five.
One must ask why season 4 should have forty-five? It makes sense to ask since if you count the songs written on each title card, this would surely be forty-three. This is where the 'missing songs' come in. These were songs featured only in the 1 hour extended versions of the specials, and they're honestly little talked about. In total, there were four: 'Welcome (to Africa)' in Lion Queen. We have (un-uploaded) footage of the song in English, not to mention that the song can easily be viewed in French on YouTube. 'Just Me and the Dog' in The Mean Machine. Again, we have the un-uploaded footage for this song in English, and again, the French version is up on YouTube 'Maman maman' in Lasagna Tree. No footage exists, but the name was listed on Radio-Canada's website, and although admittedly anecdotal, I remember it clearly airing this way. It was about Vito and his mother. 'Les trois ratons' (translated as 'The Three Raccoons) in Into the Wild. For this, we have footage not only from the Mediatoon S4 trailer, but we have the entire song in French actually. Thus, this makes 47 songs in the season; However, Arbores Sunt is not a song per se, and Out in the Wild Final is an encore. Thus, that's 45.
And so, to finally bring it all together: 35 + 45 = 80; or 34 + 45 = 79. Thus, that's what we believe (at this point in time).
Production Order[]
The wiki's dedicated page to the shorts list notes that the shorts have a production order, and what we know at this point was found via Radio-Canada Télé's archived pages. Now, a huge breakthrough is that Radio-Canada Télé, who still actively airs the shorts almost daily, actually has a dedicated livestream of the channel, and one can watch that. While tuning in during the broadcast of the shorts, we found that some shorts contain for a split frame, a title that contains its production order number. The reason for this is Mediatoon not having cut the shorts properly, but regardless, this is huge information and further allows us to ascertain information we once thought impossible. So far, via this, we've been able to find that
- Réveil 4 = Short #4
- Réveil 5 = Short #5
- Araignée 3 = Short #8
English Availability[]
While it's a well-known fact that Season 3 and Season 4 shorts were never released on any English station (it even took us a while to find out that season 4 shorts even aired at all), there are two interesting things: One, some were archived on the English diary website, and two, the French Citel DVDs: Now, I happen to own Vol 11 and Vol 12, and these expectantly, don't contain English audio. HOWEVER, Julien owns Vol 14, which has English versions of the songs. Furthermore, Amazon reviews have reported that there is also English audio on Vol 13 and Vol 15, leaving us with a dilemma in that even though the season 3 shorts were never picked up by an English station, they do all still exist.
Discoveries of the Week[]
Summary[]
- Some things mentioned earlier: We were finally able to confirm more than 30 shorts for season 3.
- Using DVD reviews, we've found out that at least 5/6 shorts contained on the Citel Video DVDs are unique to our personal archive.
- We were able to find this week:
- One full short from the third season in French: Chaton trognon.
- An unfortunately cut short from the third season in French: Vito Vita Pasta.
- One full short from the fourth season (and first of Into the Wild): Nermal se Rebelle.
- Snippets of a short from the fourth season: Les trois ratons.
- For the first time known, we can confirm a third language: Czech. The shorts from season 1 and season 2 were dubbed into Czech, and were broadcast by Česká televize as 'Kraťasy s Garfieldem'. They were at one point hosted on iVysílání, the official streaming platform for Česká televize. In fact, you can still access the page that had them. In addition, Julien and I have managed to get 29/54 of the Czech shorts.
Of course, we're hoping to make more discoveries or expound on thoughts, but we'll leave that for next week. We already have some good measures set in place for locating new ones. Each new week will be published on a Friday to chronicle this lengthy search. Thank you for reading.