The Fox Cubhouse
The Fox Cubhouse is an American preschool children's television series that aired weekday mornings on Fox Kids from 1994 through 1996. It ran for 234 episodes within two seasons. The show was an anthology series comprising several children's series. Initially starting with only "Jim Henson's Animal Show", "Johnson and Friends", and "Rimba's Island", a different series was shown every day of the week. Production history. In 1992, Jay Rayvid and Donna Mitroff of WQED in Pittsburgh (the PBS member station known for producing "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood") entered into an agreement with Film Australia  to attempt to get "Johnson and Friends" onto television in the United States, specifically PBS. Unfortunately, they were not able to secure funding from PBS to produce a pilot due to the sheer traffic and number of submissions, despite their interest. In 1994, though, FOX began to show interest in "Johnson and Friends". At this stage, 26 episodes (the first two series) had been produced and the latter 26 episodes (series three) were in post-production - all 52 episodes were available to WQED for distribution. FOX Children's Network committed to "Johnson and Friends", thus "The Fox Cubhouse" was created . WQED and Fox teamed up and implemented "Johnson and Friends", "Rimba's Island", and "Jim Henson's Animal Show" into this concept. The latter two series were specifically produced for the Cubhouse, but were also shown independently in many other countries. In addition, the "Fox Cubhouse" itself was shot at WQED. The series featured a woman named Rosie (played by Nancy Mura), who with several puppet animal characters, introduced and served as the exit for the programs within. "Johnson and Friends" was heavily revised for the Cubhouse series, the voices were redubbed for the most part, but Peter Browne was  retained as Alfred's voice actor; due to master recording issues, however, all of his dialogue had to be rerecorded. Several additional songs and music tracks were written by Chris Neal and his son Braedy, who had previously composed all of the music for the original version of "Johnson and Friends", as FOX felt that some of the earlier episodes were "too quiet" and did not fit the atmosphere they wanted for the series. Instrumental versions of pre-existing "Johnson" songs were also used. As the series was broadcast as a segment rather than a standalone program, the credits were  featured at the end of the Cubhouse itself, and each "Johnson" episode ended with the final chorus of "Toys, Toys, Wonderful Toys" from the "Johnson" album, re-recorded by the US cast. Minor cuts were also occasionally made, along with adjustments to John Patterson's scripts, by WQED executive Casey Brown, to remove Australian terminology and slang. These changes are generally frowned upon by many of the original "Johnson" and "Cubhouse" crew, as well as people who grew up with the series. "The Fox Cubhouse" became a short-lived success, and FOX commissioned an additional season of 26 episodes of  Johnson and Friends for the" Cubhouse's" second season. Series director Ian Munro maintained a level of creative control over the American version of the program and was involved with voice direction for this run of episodes. These episodes were also shown in Australia, dubbed by the original voice cast and marketed as the fourth series of the program, two years after production, in 1997. David Flick, who had provided the American voice of Diesel, was replaced by Doug Scroope, Diesel's original voice, and several episodes of the first season of "Cubhouse" were also revised with Doug Scroope as  Diesel, this change was actually present in late reruns of the first season of "Cubhouse". New episodes of "Jim Henson's Animal Show" and "Rimba's Island" were also present in this second season, as well as repeats of the old episodes. However, the second season was a complete revamp and the characters, setting, and the entire premise were changed. Only the programs within the "Cubhouse" remained the same. Two new shows, "Magic Adventures of Mumfie" and "Budgie the Little Helicopter" were also added to the series. While previous "Cubhouse" episodes featured two episodes of "Johnson and Friends", the second  season sometimes paired a single episode with an episode of" Budgie the Little Helicopter" or "Magic Adventures of Mumfie" (because all three programs had a running time of 10 minutes). Some episodes, however, still featured two "Johnson" episodes. Shortly after the broadcast of the final second-season episodes in 1996, "The Fox Cubhouse" was taken off the air, and the American localisation has not been seen since. Many of the master tapes of the US version are thought to have been wiped, but several master copies are known to exist. "The Fox Cubhouse" was also shown in the US overseas  territory Guam on KTGM.