The Scooby-Doo franchise has already provided me with a couple of Beekeepers to review. The Bee-Man of Alcatraz and Mr. Wilkins and Brittany have all been Beekeepers who have met the Gang either as friend or foe. But none of those were the first! Unless I’ve missed something quite obscure, the chronologically-earliest Beekeeper to meet Scooby-Doo and friends is one Nathan Stinger.
In a lot of ways, Nathan Stinger is very impressive. His name is “Stinger” for goodness sake! And he lives in a town called Honeydale! This is all excellent Beekeeper Branding. Plus, I’ve mentioned before that I like when Beekeepers are also scientists, well, to spoil the ending to his episode, he secretly works for NASA helping create and protect a supply of rocket fuel which is coveted by spies from other nations.
Stinger’s bees are similarly notable. We’re told that there are 95 million bees in Honeydale and presumably most of them are Stinger’s. Indeed, he has a very large operation. And the bees are smart too! They have that cartoon bee power where a cloud of them can come together and form into a shape like a hand or a fly swatter or something. It’s all quite good. The bees even help out in the fight against the baddies in the end.
But that’s the thing. The baddies. No matter how impressive Stinger and his bees are, we’re still meeting them in a typical Apiarist In Distress situation. The episode is about spies (posing as renegade giant killer bees, of course) attacking Stinger’s farm to steal that sweet, sweet rocket fuel. This greatly hurts Stinger’s business and they even kidnap him at one point. The show belongs to Scooby and the Gang, so they have to be the heroes. That’s just the facts. Under some other circumstances, maybe Stinger could rate higher, but as depicted in this episode he’s just a little above average.
Three Honeycombs out of Five. In Scooby-Doo monsters are more likely to return than supporting cast members, but let’s make an exception for Nathan Stinger, why not?
This is definitely a review I didn’t actually need to do, but in the interests of being thorough I need to do it. A conundrum. So I did it.
The Beekeeper who appeared on the show Rugrats doesn’t actually even appear on the show Rugrats. The man in the picture is not the Beekeeper in question, that is Chas. Chas is the father of one of the titular Rugrats. He is a widower and, at this point in the show at least, he’s dating a lot, trying to find someone to have a relationship with. In this episode he goes on a series of bad dates, one of which is a beekeeper who wants to give him a tour of her hives. Chas is a nervous sort, so he brings a first aid kit on the date with him, in case of being stung. After we see Chas leave for this date we don’t see him again until he’s being set up with a different woman, with us seeing nothing of the apiary or the woman in question. So we know almost nothing about this Beekeeper.
She’s willing to date a single father, which is nice, but for a first date she just brings him to see her hives. Does this prove she cares about her bees so much that she’s showing them off? Or at least that she puts so much work in that she can’t take the time away to go elsewhere for this date? Does the date go horribly wrong with the bees attacking Chas? Does it go wrong because there’s simply no chemistry between the two? Or does it go right, but she decides she can’t be with Chas because of her devotion to the job? There’s so many possibilities and I just don’t have any evidence to go on. It’s almost like this is a character I’m being ridiculous by reviewing at all!
From what I can tell by looking at descriptions of the series, I don’t think that true supernatural stuff is commonplace in the world of Rugrats, so I can’t give this mystery woman the benefit of the doubt of maybe being a magical Beekeeper. Maybe she’s good at fighting and adventures, but we simply don’t know. Gonna have to go with a “normal beekeeper” rating.
Two Honeycombs out of Five.
Reviews like this one I can really point to when I want to prove I’m the world’s foremost reviewer of Fictional Beekeepers. Plus they’re really easy to write.
Nothing against Pete and Jeremy, but it bugs me to see nothing but Phone Guys going up on the site. For a while we had that thing were my Twitter posts would come here, but that’s busted I guess. Ah well, I’ll just have to actually post something to break things up momentarily.
Life continues about average for me. Financial struggles continue to govern my life, but at least I’m making good progress on several projects (because, as always, I am unable to focus on a single project at once). Here’s some updates:
Surrounded By Danger: The game I am making has gotten to a point where I feel like I would be realistically able to finish it within this calendar year. But the thing is, as it is right now, it’s a game about characters I created for SecGov Robots and the Beekeeper Chronicles. I love that cast and am enjoying making a sort of “Choose your own path” Story Mode game with them, but that is complicated and they’re not exactly universally known. So what I’m gonna do is restart the whole concept and make a Zombie Mode version of the game. Since the beginning I’ve been aware that the mechanics of the game are pretty good for simulating a fight against zombies. This should, if I don’t mess it up, allow me to create a version of the game without a Story Mode that can be put into production and actually get into the world while I go back to working on the Beekeeping version of the game.
The Many Monsters of Mackestry Manor: Another project I am working on is a franchise about a bunch of little monsters who live in a house. This one is aimed at very young children. I’d love for it to progress to the point of being a series of little adventure games, but that feels unlikely. What I am working on now is a colouring and activity book starring these monsters. That’s a much easier scale for me, and I honestly think I can have it complete by some time in October. Once that’s done I’ll begin work on a book that tells more about the monsters and see where we can go from there.
So while I’m toiling away on these and other projects, I’m sorry that the Phone Guys have the whole place to themselves.
