Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? (partially lost unreleased original voice audio and unfinished/unknown Cartoon Network animated series episodes; 2002-2003)

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RobotJonesTitle.png

The show's opening title card.

Status: Partially Lost

Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? was a Cartoon Network animated series that ran for two seasons from 2002 to 2003. The series consisted of 12 shows with two episodes per show and filled a 30-minute time slot. The cartoon was notable for its style, mimicking cartoons produced in the early 1980s in addition to many references and plot devices based on fads of the era.[1] For example, an episode based on the Rubik's Cube series of puzzle boxes. Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? was produced using traditional cel animation when most productions had moved on to computerized animation, furthering the style that was desired. However, the series was released to praise from critics for its unique animation style.

Plot

Robot Jones is a young robot tasked by his parents to attend a middle school for humans so that he may study them. Initially, Jones is hesitant to do so as he finds humans "inefficient". After dad-unit has his say, Jones begins life as a typical middle school student with a light bulb for on his head. He quickly finds fitting in to be very difficult as most of the school find him strange, including the students, teachers, and especially a technophobic principal. Shortly after blowing a fuse in front of the entire school, Jones loses all will to study humans, until he falls for a mess of a girl in an overly exaggerated set of braces with a metal leg and instantly changes his attitude on the matter. Humans are now interesting creatures that desire "further study". As the series progresses, Jones confronts typical middle school issues such as love, fads, bullies, and Physical Education.

The Voice

For the first season of Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?, the titular character had a computer-generated voice that stood out amongst the other characters' voices (with the exception of Jones' parents, also using computer-generated voices). Series creator Greg Miller has stated that he wanted a true synthetic robot voice and researched a lot of speech programs when starting the show, even discussing the topic with Bell Laboratories. Contrary to popular belief, Jones' voice was not produced with Macintosh Macintalk's Junior Speech but was actually produced using Microsoft Word 98's Junior Speech text-to-speech function. Miller confirms this in a Facebook interview. He chose Word because of its controls in speed and pitch. Miller created the Jones Audio himself, even spelling each word phonetically for it to be pronounced correctly and adjusting the pitch to get the "acting" right. The executives at the Cartoon Network found the voice unusual and requested a more "Hollywood" voice for Jones. This led to Jones's being voiced by an actual voice actor (Bobby Block) at the start of Season 2. In addition, the pilot and older episodes were re-dubbed using Block's voice for re-runs of the series. Episodes containing the original computer-generated voice are currently being sought after by fans of the series. The voice change was made early in the production of Season 2.[2]

Other Lost Aspects

In addition to the original Jones voice, several other small aspects of Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? are now lost as well.

The season one episode "Growth Spurts" was edited in later airing to remove a poster in the background containing the phrase "Kick-Ass", changing the phrase to simply "Kick". The original airing of the episode remained lost until it was picked up by Cartoon Network's Latin American sister channel, Tooncast. The show aired reruns on there for a couple of years since 2015, but for some reason, it may have been recently taken off Tooncast's schedule around September of 2017. It returned to Tooncast's schedule in 2020 (unknown voice audio version), and was removed again in January 2021 according to the official programming schedule. Cartoon Network Latin America aired segments from both seasons in the early morning Cartoon Pop programming block from at least 2015 until the block was dropped on May 1, 2021, but only with the Bobby Block voice on the English audio track.

Three episodes are believed to have been put into production before the series was cancelled, and were storyboarded but never actually animated:

  • The first would have been about the history of robotics, possibly explaining a little more about this robot-assimilated society the series revolves around.
  • The second, called the "Talk Show" episode, would have had Robot Jones appear on a parody of The Oprah Winfrey Show (called the "The Soapy Winfall Show" in-universe). Storyboards for this episode have been made available from series writer Chuck Klein's blog spot.
  • The content of the third episode is unknown as of now. Miller claims; "it was so long ago, I forget...".

Two episodes are also rumored to have existed as the fourteenth show of the series: "Risk" and "Robotic Graffiti". Most people claim that the two episodes could be fake or fan-created as a predicted educated guess while the official Season 2 premiere was actually pushed back to October of 2003 (after Season 1 ended in September of 2002) because the person on TvTome.com rumored the two episodes in the first place without knowing anything about the second season's episodes that have not yet been publicly aired.[3] On the other hand, in 2012, an anonymous fan (later known as "Wer Wie Was" on the Illiop.com forum) has posted a theory on Wikipedia thinking that these two episodes were potentially banned by the executives at the Cartoon Network for violent, mature content, then posted another theory on an Illiop.com forum believing that the two episodes were actually scrapped or unfinished, but so far, no physical evidence of this has been put forward, so it is unknown whether these two episodes actually existed in the first place or were discovered to be fake.

According to a FaceBook interview with show creator Greg Miller, it is clear that the planned series finale could involve Robot Jones rallying (or even building) a robot army to exterminate the human civilization and rule the planet, but unfortunately, before this could be revealed, the show was cancelled, resulting in "Rules of Dating" to be the last episode of the show (even though that one wasn't actually intended to be the actual series finale in the first place).

Availability

The show has a total of 25 segments + 1 seven-minute pilot episode + a music video, totaling up to 27 segments total. 3 episodes are unconfirmed to exist, and 4 others have remained unfinished due to the show's cancellation. Calculating the total amount of known segments on this list, the show would've had a total of 34 segments in all.

As of October 2017, user BigFatRobot2002, who backed up all of the first season episodes with the original voice audio has synced the English audio to the DVD-quality Tooncast video sources (removing the Spanish and Portuguese language tracks) in higher quality and uploaded them, along with Tooncast rips of the second season episodes as well, on a Google Doc.

The original Latin Spanish and Brazillian Portuguese rips from Tooncast, which BigFatRobot2002 obtained the DVD-quality rips from, also have also been uploaded to a Google Doc. Latin Spanish dubs of most episodes (excluding "Groovesicle" and the pilot episode, two of which are unconfirmed to have existed in Spanish) have been found; Only ten episodes are available in Brazillian Portuguese.

Episodes

Season 1

Episode Name Original Voice Bobby Block
0 Pilot Found Found
1A Electric Boogaloo Found Found
1B The Groovesicle Found Lost
2A Politics Found Found
2B Growth Spurts Found Found
3A P.U. to P.E. Found Found
3B Vacuum Friend Found Found
4A Parents Found Found
4B Embarrassment Found Found
5A Cube Wars Found Found
5B Sickness Found Found
6A Jealousy Found Found
6B Scantron Love Found Found

Season 2

Episode Name Original Voice Bobby Block
7A Gender Lost Found
7B Math Challenge Lost Found
8A Family Vacation Lost Found
8B Hair Lost Found
9A Garage Band Lost Found
9B Work Lost Found
10A The Yogmans Strike Back Lost Found
10B Hookie 101 Lost Found
11A House Party Lost Found
11B School Newspaper Lost Found
12A Safety Patrol Lost Found
12B Popularity Lost Found
13A Summer Camp Lost Found
13B Rules of Dating Lost Found

Unreleased/Unfinished Episodes

Episode Name Original Voice Bobby Block
N/A Risk Lost Existence Unconfirmed
N/A Robot Grafitti Lost Existence Unconfirmed
N/A History of Robotics Lost Existence Unconfirmed
N/A Talk Show Lost Existence Unconfirmed
N/A 3rd Unknown Episode Lost Existence Unconfirmed
N/A Untitled/Planned Ending Lost Existence Unconfirmed

Gallery

Screenshots

Videos

A promo (with the original voice).

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CN Fridays bumper.

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External Links

References