Happy Family (1992 TV series)

Title card for Seasons 1-3

Happy Family (The Happy Family in the UK) was a Film Roman and CiNAR cartoon series which aired on Fox Kids from 1992 until 2002. And Ion Television from 2002 -2003 It was based on the American book series *The Happy Family* by Marc Brown which features a Korean family. It originally aired for one hour of programming time in its first season, then it was expanded to 90 minutes for the following seasons until 1998, when it returned to its original one-hour show length. It spawned a 30-minute syndicated version of the show called *Happy Family Adventures* in 1993,

The cartoon describes poverty and difficulties in the Korea of the 1960s. The main characters are Jeung Choi and his little sister Kim Choi, a preschool student. Even though they are poor, Jeung Choi and Kim Choi always live happily and have fun. however, A new member, Otto is staying over in South Korea, The episodes of the siblings and family arouse nostalgia and memories about the past in many older Korean viewers. *Happy Family* is considered one of the successful saturday morning animated series beating The Smurfs. The show is known to tackle serious issues like Autism and Child Abuse.

## Plot

Set in the 1960's, The series focuses on the Choi family that lives in Seoul. In the 60s, South Korea was still a developing country with many of its citizens living in poverty. Because of this, there are a lot of references to that time period such as the street vendors and the school bread deliveries.

## History

In 1988 after the 1985 series ended, Seo Young-hoon the CEO of KBS, who saw Happy Family Books while travelling in America, entered into an agreement with Daewon C.I. Inc and Marc Brown, acquiring Korean and other rights to the characters. Subsequently, Hoon launched Happy Family in South Korea in association with a South Korean book company, Daewon C.I. Inc whose Books became a hugely popular success.

In 1989, Micheline Charest and Ronald A. Weinberg signed a deal wih Film Roman Bill Melendez Productions, Lee Mendelson Productions, and Hahn Film AG to make a Happy Family TV Series

When the cartoon show was in development, Marc Brown vetoed any extreme changes made to the setting and character designs of Happy Family. He did not want the later 18 episodes to be set in the 1950's, forbidding activities like Poverty. A notable example of a design he vetoed was Jeung Choi and his family in rags. As Marc Brown could not understand Korean, Seo-Young-Hoon served as his translator for the initial meetings between him and the studio. During said meetings, Marc Brown was told about basic changes that needed to be made for an American audience, such as toned down violence (with expections in a few episodes) and the altering of concepts from the books that could be interpreted as having racial connotations or a possible reference to drugs.

In April 1990, Haim Saban, signed a deal to air Happy Family on Fox Kids

In August 1990, CiNAR and Film Roman hired various animation companies, Fil-Cartoons (Philippines) AKOM and Big Star (South Korea), Mr Big Cartoons, (Australia)

Multiple times during production, Marc Brown, Bill Melendez, Lee Mendelson and CiNAR received drafts by the animators at Film Roman. He made corrections on tracing paper to send back to the studio, but by the time they received them, the episode in question would be practically finished due to an extremely tight production schedule. Due to these complications, Marc Brown's involvement with the series was usually limited to approving or vetoing production material, providing character designs or ideas, and having discussions with the studio in person or through letters.

Marc Brown, Bill Melendez, Lee Mendelson, CiNAR and Film Roman's relationships became more and more rocky over time, coming to a standstill when he learned the anti-child abuse episode, "The Shivering Wind", was made despite his disapproval. In retaliation, Marc Brown then refused to approve any further material he received, causing an abrupt pause in production and panic for the studio. It was only after Hoon and Melendez spoke with Marc Brown that production resumed as normal. Due to the creation and the success of the Arthur TV Series, Marc Brown soon lessened his protective grip on Happy Family and allowed Film Roman a bit more creative freedom, leading to the approval of Season 4, where the series' usual premise was switched to that of around-the-world.

Happy Family secured their place in South Korean pop culture on September 25th, 1992, when the Saturday-morning cartoon premiered on Fox Kids and aired from 1992 to 2002. And Ion Television (2002-2003) The show became a major success for the network, spawning television specials on an almost yearly basis. Happy Family was nominated multiple times for Daytime Emmy awards, and won Outstanding Children's Entertainment Series in 1993–1998. The television show enjoyed continued success up until the fourth season, which brought about change that greatly displeased viewers. On September 7th, 2002, after a decade of success, Fox Kids moved the show to ION Television,

Roughly two weeks after the Season 5's premiere, Otto was featured in the "non-canonical" anti-abuse special *Cartoon All-Stars Say No To Abuse* along with Jeung Choi, who had one speaking line in the beginning which was "What's going on?." Though Kim Choi is present on the cover of the poster and VHS release, she is the only cartoon character and Choi family member to not have appeared at all in the special. Ms Choi, made a small cameo as the Happy Family book was flipping through pages.

The series currently airs in reruns on Universal Kids, and 26 selected episodes were aired in DiC Entertainment's syndicated programming blocks. The series is still being shown regularly on many channels throughout the world. The cartoon was formerly distributed by Saban Entertainment, Tribune Entertainment (for DiC) and Cookie Jar Entertainment (before DHX acquired it). The cartoon is now distributed direct from DreamWorks Classics; Dreamworks Classics is the current owner of all Entertainment Rights properties (now known as Classic Media), having inherited them in their 2012 merger with Dreamworks Classics.

Dreamworks. has released Season 1 of Happy Family cartoon series on two DVD volumes in the United States in 2013, with the original intention of later seasons following the same trend. However, only five episodes from Season 2 were released on three single-disk sets each in 2009 and in the following years. At present, most of the episodes from Seasons 3 to 6 are available for download and streaming by Netflix, Apple iTunes, and the Zune media service.

In October 2017, Dreamworks Classics and NBCUniversal has made a deal with ICONIX Entertainment in South Korea to digitalize and remaster the entire series in full HD and also cropped in widescreen for the official Happy Family YouTube channel. The "remastered" episodes presented are actually cropped into widescreen and sourced from the 1990s international restoration, as used on non-USA DVD releases. however the Digital ink-and-paint Seasons stay the same, As of January 31st, 2019, ICONIX took over the YouTube distribution services for the Happy Family Korean YouTube channel.

In 2020, the show's seasons were finally released in its original aspect ratio and full 1080p high definition on Peacock for the American subscribers.

## Broadcast

### Southeast Asia

From 1997-2016, the show was aired on Nickelodeon Asia, before moving to Dreamworks Channel

### East Asia

In South Korea, the show was first aired in KBS2 in 1991 before premiering in the U.S.A, then it later moved to MBC in 1999 as segments of the Korean kids program *Popopo*

## Controversies

In 1998, during the airing of Sir Otto, FOX Kids spotted the word, Guillotine, this was discovered by Hain Saban, FOX Kids pulled the episode from syndication until 2014, due to it's accidental airing on Cartoon Network

## Trivia

* Despite being co-produced by CINAR's animation department, the series is not part of the CINAR library. It was instead distributed by Classic Media (who co-produced the show as Sleepy Kid Company at the time). With Classic Media's folding into DreamWorks Classics in 2012. As of 2006, the Korean rights have been owned by ICONIX Entertainment (who also owns the rights to the 2006 Series) and Cookie Jar held the rights to the 1992 series, until 2012
* the 1992 series was originally the far greater offender of the two with only a very small handful ever released on VHS, Marc Brown willingly digitized the whole series and put it up on YouTube in 2008,
* An official boxset came out in 2019, only in the US and the UK.
* Allegedly the series was supposed to have "Jeung Choi and the Tribe" as an episode, but Marc Brown said no, likely due to racism.
* This series was so popular in the 90's that it reruns in Turner's syndication package — the episodes were noticeably sped up and even with that, they were often edited down considerably for time.
* In Cartoon Network, Boomerang, TBS, and TNT airings, all logos and references to Film Roman was deleted and replaced with the "Turner" logo, apparently as an attempt to make it look like Turner made it themselves (Turner previously licensed the rights- DreamWorks Classics now owns the rights).
* Phil Roman wanted the 1992 series to also have an episode about Jeung Choi losing his temper This actually frustrated Marc Brown but wasn't all bad. Hoon spoke up with Marc Brown at Film Roman, to make another episode about raging
* Production started in 1989, which was three years before the first airing of the series
* The Anti-Smoking episode "Jeung Choi and the Stinky Smoke" was never seen a proper VHS release (due to it being overshadowed by the more popular 1990s cartoon series). However, the English Youtube Channel for "Happy Family" featured a clip of the episode to honor the series' 50th Anniversary in 2019.
* The show has been dubbed into Māori in 2018 twice, once for the New Zealand audiences and another time for the Australian audiences
* In 1995 Marc Brown the creator of Happy Family, decided to adapt episodes into books entitled "Happy Family Emotion Books"
* This show was originally going to have 4 seasons but in 1999, CiNAR and Film Roman renewed the show a fifth and sixth season
* Sunbow Entertainment (The company behind G.I Joe and My Little Pony 'n Friends), originally wanted to make the series, but because Film Roman, CiNAR and Bill Melendez Productions producing the series, they couldn't produce it
* In 1991, the pilot episode was screened at Bill Melendez Productions
* Around 1993, and 1997, the show had attempted to use Digital ink-and-paint using Film Roman's Computer Ink-and-paint system, In 1999, it was finally used to the series