Fluppy Dogs

Fluppy Dogs is a one-hour animated television special which aired on November 27, 1986 on ABC. It featured five pastel-colored talking canines that traveled to Earth through a magical doorway.
==Plot==
The basic premise for the series is the story of a band of adventurous, cuddly, dog-like creatures who utilized a Crystal Key to open inter-dimensional doorways. They become lost between worlds while trying to find their way home and end up on Earth.
Mistaken for regular dogs, they are captured and placed in the pound. As their only means of escape, Stanley, the leader, manages to get a human woman to pick him as a pet for her son Jamie, with plans of returning to the pound to free the others. Jamie is disappointed at this new dog of seemingly unimpressive breed, but takes him for a walk. Taking the opportunity, Stanley escapes his leash and makes a break for it, but Jamie pursues him so as to not anger his mother for losing the new pet so soon. The chase leads to a construction site and Jamie finds himself in danger, forcing Stanley to reveal his intelligence and humanoid nature to save him. Meanwhile, Wagstaff, a rich collector of exotic animals, has recognized the Fluppies and vows to capture them.
With his secret out, Stanley explains the situation he and his friends are in and Jamie offers to help. Unfortunately, he only has enough money to purchase one of Stanley's compatriots, Tippi, and his mother won't let him keep her. Fortunately, Jamie's neighbor and nemesis, Claire, eagerly agrees to take her in. That night, as Jamie and Stanley sleep, the boy reflexively scratches the Fluppy's head which causes their bed to fly. Once they awaken and learn how to control the flying effect, Stanley resolves to break his compatriots out that night and pick up Tippi to do so, inadvertently revealing their nature to Claire in the process. At the pound, Stanley and Tippi manage to free their companions and barely avoid Wagstaff, who has had the pound opened to seize them.
The next day, the Fluppies depart to find another dimensional portal, but are forced to ask Jamie to cut school to help them access it. This portal turns out to be to a water world, and the group is flooded out and have to return to Jamie's home to dry out. Hiding in the basement, the Fluppies discover another portal in that very room, but opening it releases a large rambunctious hippo-like creature into the home It runs rampant, throwing Jamie's home into a shambles before they can bring it under control. Although the gang manage to put the house in order before Jamie's mother returns, she's upset at Jamie playing hooky and asks questions Jamie struggles to answer without betraying his friends.
Hoping to avoid ruining Jamie's life any more, the Fluppies continue their search on their own while the two youngest keep the alien creature hidden in the basement. Unfortunately, Wagstaff captures one of them, forcing Stanley and Tippi to ask for Claire's help. Jamie sees them depart in Claire's car and he and the youngest Fluppies ride on the creature in pursuit. Unfortunately, Wagstaff was expecting this and captures all the Fluppies in his home while threatening to call the police on the children for breaking and entering.
With a desperate plan, the Fluppies convince Wagstaff to let the children bid them goodbye and signals them to scratch on all their heads. The combined strength of this magic tears the entire section of Wagstaff's house into the air. As the occupants struggle to keep their footing with the violent jostling, the Fluppies sense another portal at the front of a public building and they crash land the building in front of it. As they struggle to open this portal, which happens to enter into the Fluppies' home dimension, Wagstaff and his butler Mr. Hamish find themselves knocked inside by the hippo creature while Stanley's group bolts to safety. Before Wagstaff and Hamish can exit, the door closes permanently, leaving Jamie and Claire alone in their own reality.
Months later, Jamie and Claire have grown to be close friends with this extraordinary adventure, but they miss the Fluppies dearly. However, Stanley and his companions return to Jamie's dimension and reveal that not only have they reopened the portal, but now hundreds of other Fluppies are using it as well to cross over, inspired by the travelers' example to explore the human world themselves.
==Cast==
*Carl Stevens as Jamie Bingham
*Jessica Pennington as Claire the Neighbor
*Marshall Efron as Stanley the Blue
*Lorenzo Music as Ozzie the Green
*Susan Blu as Tippi the Pink, Bink the Yellow
*Hal Smith as Dink the Red, Mr. Hamish
*Cloyce Morrow as Mrs. Bingham (Jamie's Mom)
*Michael Rye as J. J. Wagstaff
*Frank Welker as Falumpus
==Trivia==
* When Tippi tells the other Fluppies to hide their equipment, the binoculars around her neck were already gone.
* The special was referenced in the DuckTales episode, "Let's Get Dangerous!"
*The special's premise is a forerunner to the later live-action science fiction television series, Sliders.
==Story Bible==
According to a story bible by Haskell Barkin, the show would have included these details:
* The Fluppies would become invisible whenever they sneeze.
* Bink, Dink, and Ozzie would secretly occupy Jamie's treehouse (since Jamie and Claire could each only have one pet). They would enter through Stanley's doghouse, at the base of the tree, and go up an internal stairway to go up the treehouse, since the Fluppies can't climb trees. The exterior of the treehouse looks like a slapdash construction of scrap lumber, but inside is a jungle of extension cords, mechanical and electronic parts, weird gadgets, half-built inventions, tools, and blueprints.
* Despite being in the series bible, Jamie's father Arthur Bingham, an image-conscious insurance salesman, wasn't seen in the TV special. Jamie's mother is named Marge.
* Claire's parents, who don't appear in the TV special, are Ernie, a hot tub salesman, and Wanda Webster, who wants to be her daughter's best friend.
* Stanley, the blue Fluppy, is the emotional focus of the group due to his optimism and enthusiasm, although not the most intelligent of the five Fluppies. Stanley is a bit of a con man when circumstances call for it.
* Ozzie, the green Fluppy, is self-effacing, somewhat simple, and the group's voice of reason. Ozzie's nose can sniff out dimensional doors.
* Tippi, the violet Fluppy, is the assertive and level-headed unofficial leader of the Fluppies. Like Stanley, Tippi takes Ozzie at face value and doesn't pay much attention to his ideas.
* Bink the yellow Fluppy and Dink the orange Fluppy are hyperactive young twins and born tinkerers. Although Fluppy science and technology are at the 18th century level, the Twins sense the uses and potential of our world's mechanical and electronic artifacts, making inventions of Rube Goldberg proportions. Like most twins, they bicker a lot, which is their way of communicating with each other.
* The thousands of other Fluppies who entered our world each has the potential for magic and must pass as normal dogs to escape the harassment of human science and the press. During the day they act like household pets, but at night, they explore our world with their owners none the wiser. One semi-regular character is a pink girl Fluppy named Fanci, who lives with a human girl who is younger than Jamie.
* J. J. Wagstaff wasn't mentioned in the bible, but other antagonists were to include Susan Saccharine, the world's worst newscaster-reporter, and her incompetent cameraman, Lenscap; Professor Woolsey, chairman of an organization dedicated to capturing rare and unusual animals; and Wayne, a clumsy kid in Jamie's class. Whenever he spotted a Fluppy, Wayne would have to be persuaded that he didn't see it or bribed to keep quiet.
* The series was to have three general types of stories: the Fluppies complicating the lives of Jamie and/or Claire; the main Fluppies helping out other Fluppies who have come into our world; and stories featuring the dimensional doorways, in which our heroes would go through into a different world or something would come out into our world.
==Foreign Names==
German - Sprechende Hunde "Talking Dog"
Category:Television specials
Category:ABC
Category:Films about animals
Category:Fluppy Dogs