Peep and The Big Wide World (found test animation for American-Canadian children's animated TV series; 2004)

The final show's logo.

Status: Found

Date found: 29 Nov 2021

Found by: Stephen Rogan

Peep and The Big Wide World is an American-Canadian children's animated TV series made by Kaj Pindal that originally ran from 2004-2007 on both TLC and Discovery Kids. The series about a small yellow chicken name Peep with his friends a small red robin name Chirp and a blue duck name Quack as they explore the world around them while teaching younger viewers about various things.

The show stared out as a black and white short film made by Pinda called The Peep Show in 1962. In 1988 he created an extended version in color under the current title. All of the shorts were produced and archived by the National Film Board of Canada.

1962 Short

The short looked similar to the final show aside from the more flipbook animation and voiceover. The short starts off with an egg falling out of a basket and hatching with Peep inside, she then learns how to speak and walk and ends up walking into a pond where Quack saves her from drowning. They both end up befriending each other and they both swam to the island where they meet Chirp who's not able to fly well to get off the island. Peep then gets Quack to help them off the island so all 3 of them can see the rest of the big wide world.

1988 Shorts

The shorts were split up into 3 10 minute episodes, with one of them being a remake of the 1962 version and the other 2 serving as a continuation of it, with the main difference with it being in color. The second short with the 3 attempting to leave the island, Peep finds halve and eggshell to use as a boat while Quack's able to swim, Chirps attempts to fly off the island with no luck so the other 2 try to find a way to get her of the island. Peep explores the woods to find a cat to help him push a log into the water to sail back to the island, when Chirp jumps on, the cat attempts to catch him only for them to fall into the water, chirp then trick the cat to climb the tree so they can safely sail off the island. The third one with them reaching land on a turtle they bumped into, they explore the world meeting various animals along the way. They eventually get spooked by their shadows thinking that there creatures that grew as the sun sets, they encounter a doghouse with a dog that lets them stay for the night and explain how shadows work and other questions they asked about the big wide world.

Test Animation

In the early 2000s, Pinda created a test animation to help get the show picked up as a TV series. The series was animated in Flash and originally made by a Boston animation studio called Soup2Nuts which served as an early version the episode "A Duck's Tale." The animation test was lost for many years until YouTuber NoParking Berry discovered the short on a 2004 Soup2Nuts demo reel in 2022 uploaded by one of the animators Stephen Rogan months prior. He then asked Rogan if there was more to the pilot with him confirming that that was all that the company made before production was moved to 9 Story Entertainment.^[1]