Smart Planet Advance/Reasons

## Trivia

* Great CGI animation, even for 1999 standards, which is very well animated by Sean Maynard and Philippe Jacques.
	+ In fact, what's more, is that the CGI animation was made in LightWave for the high quality animation and Softimage for the cel-shaded animation. Even The World of Discovery and Science segments were made in 3ds Max and Maya for the real-time animation as well.

* Awesome theme songs.

* Stays faithful to the television special it was based on.

* Memorable characters like Alex, Ilona, Sam, Ivy, Ken, and Mary. Again Giorgio, is one of the most forgivable examples of the typical “news reporter” trope, as he is shown to the deep conversation, and the things he does is usually related to the plots of the episodes in question rather than just for running gag jokes. In contrast to other news characters in general who are all abusive or otherwise neglectful towards their characters in their own respective ways.

* Memorable guest appearances like Nelly Nut (even though she's very cute).

* Alex and Ilona's inventions are pretty cool and clever like the Smart Cubes where the Olympics mascots came to life.

* Great voice acting for the Canadian English cast from Canada. It also uses teenage voices for the four Olympics mascots the right way.

* Clever writing.

* Hilarious jokes.

* The show manages to avoid coming off as a Pokémon rip-off despite similar premises.

* It had two made-to-TV movies with the guest stars.

* The World of Discovery and Science segments are awesome.

* The "Come To The Circus" song in the episode "The Circus Jamboree" is funny and awesome.

* The final episode in production order, “Our Memories”, was a good way to end the show despite plans for one more season that sadly got scrapped due to financial issues and failure of the next year's film, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. This episode would have also been a good way to end the franchise if it didn’t continue past that.

* It stays true to the original Canadian French version.

## Goofs/Errors

* The CGI animation can either look stiff or too fast. This is more evident in the first season, since the second season, the CGI animation is slightly improved.
	+ Heck, it even looks like an old PS1/N64 video game and also looks similar to the early episodes of VeggieTales, Elroy's Toy and Imaginit.

* It gets pretty mean-spirited at times, mostly towards Alex and Ilona.

* At times, Sam and Ken can be very unlikeable because they tend to take their abuse on Alex and Ilona a bit too far. However, it thankfully starts to gradually decrease during the later seasons when the writers began further developing her relationship with Alex and Ilona in a much more positive light.

* Some of the characters were very underused in this show. Giorgio is the main example because despite supposedly being the main antagonist, he only appeared in some episodes of the show.

* A few episodes are very weird, if not nonsensical, such as an episode from Season 2 called "Game Over", where Ilona puts peanut butter all over her face, but it looks like an amber colored face mask.

* Like the television special, some characters kind of look ugly.

* There were plans for a third season but due to the box office failure of the film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys, the show was cancelled. Many ideas of the third season included but not limited to: the four Mega Olympics mascot would've returned and officially defeated in the season premiere, the guest star humor would be kept to a minimum, Télétoon would've rejoined the main cast, there would've be an overarching story about the new planet for preschoolers called Happy Planet, the four Olympics mascots would've become the quartet, Giorgio and Nelly Nut would've been introduced and Alex and Ilona would've finally stopped pretending to argue with each other.

* There is no reason to buy this on VHS and DVD anymore. As you can find this television show on Dailymotion.