Happy Tree Friends

Happy Tree Friends is a Flash cartoon series by Mondo Mini Shows, created by Kenn Navarro, Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo and Warren Graff. Since its debut the show has become a popular internet phenomenon and has won a cult following. As indicated on the official site, the show is "not recommended for small children". Notwithstanding the cute appearance of its characters, the show is extremely violent, with almost every episode featuring blood, gore, and violent deaths. The show is so violent, it was banned in Russia! - While the violence of these deaths is comparable to that of The Itchy & Scratchy Show (the short cartoon featured on The Simpsons), the portrayal of death in Happy Tree Friends is more graphic and anatomically correct, depicting bloodshed and dismemberment in more vivid, exaggerated detail. The show is nearly free of dialogue; however, when the characters do speak, their words are severely garbled. Though it is obvious what each character's reaction is, their words can barely be understood, the exceptions to this are Pop and Lumpy; they have garbled speech as well, but can actually be understood on most occasions. According to the website, the idea for Happy Tree Friends was conceived by Rhode Montijo when he drew a yellow rabbit, slightly resembling the character Cuddles, on a piece of paper and wrote "Resistance Is Futile" underneath it.

Beginning
While working on Mondo Mini Shows, Rhode Montijo drew on a little piece of scrap paper a character who would later become Shifty. He then drew a yellow rabbit that bore some resemblance to Cuddles on a piece of paper and wrote "Resistance Is Futile" underneath it. The drawing (of Cuddles) made several employees laugh. In 1999 Mondo gave Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo and Kenn Navarro a chance to do a short for them. They came up with a short named Banjo Frenzy which featured a dinosaur (an earlier version of Lumpy) killing three woodland animals (earlier versions of Cuddles, Giggles, and Toothy) with a banjo. From there Mondo gave them their own internet series, which they first named it Star Wars, only to be changed to Happy Tree Friends for obvious reasons. They got new writers and animators to work on the show.

Success
Shortly after its internet debut in 2000, Happy Tree Friends became an unexpected success, getting over 15 million hits each month, and being shown in film festivals. In some countries, the episodes can be seen on television. They can be seen on the French, Dutch, German, Polish, Filipino, Brazilian, Lithuanian, Italian, British and Latin American MTV channels, the Greek Mad Music Channel, the Russian 2x2 channel, Canadian television channel Razer, American television channel G4, and on the Australian Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) network. On June 10, 2005, the shorts were shown during "Attack of the Show!". A series, Happy Tree Friends and Friends, began to air on August 29, 2005, as part of the late night Midnight Spank block, owned by G4. The series also features Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Retarded Animal Babies and Angry Kid. The series has been reformed into its own show, rather than as a part of a compilation as before. Happy Tree Friends has also gained a collection of Audibles and an "IMVironment" for Yahoo!'s instant messenger. It is featured on many websites on which flash cartoons can be watched, such as Newgrounds, YouTube, Atom Films, Purple Twinkie, Albino Black Sheep and the official Happy Tree Friends website. On select 2007 Ozzfests, some Happy Tree Friends episodes were shown on the big screen. + Shortly after its internet debut in 2000, Happy Tree Friends became an unexpected success, have appeared on YouTube. Encouraged by the show's success, its creators have released four DVDs (First Blood, Second Serving, Third Strike and Winter Break) containing the episodes shown on the website and others that have not been released. A collection consisting of the first three DVDs and five bonus episodes, Overkill, has also been released. Two episodes, Stealing the Spotlight and Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya!, are only available in the Happy Tree Friends: Winter Break DVD. - Happy Tree Friends is currently one of the most downloaded iTunes podcasts and over 1,000 fan-made videos have appeared on YouTube.

TV Series

 * Main article: List of Happy Tree Friends Episodes

Happy Tree Friends gained the own TV show in 2006 and It was first shown at Comic-Con with some of the segments were shown on the website a few weeks, the show's premiere for the Happy Tree Friends TV series premiered on September 25, 2006 at midnight on G4 Network about each half hour episode of the TV series contains three 7 minute 39 segments have been aired of making 13 full episodes for Season 1 that pictures of the first 6 episodes can be seen on G4's website of the Canadian channel Razer currently airs the show in syndication for the show is also broadcast on MTV in Europe and Latin America and it has also shown on Paramount Comedy 1 in the UK from May 11 2007 for a short time and on MTV One in the UK from September 7 2007 and according to the writers a second season is planned over but it is unknown when or if it will air.