Happy Tree Friends (HTF) is an adult-oriented Flash-animated web series created by Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo, and Kenn Navarro, and developed by Montijo, Navarro, and Warren Graff for Mondo Media. A parody of the kids' show genre, the series follows the misadventures of cute anthropomorphic forest animals, who live initially peaceful lives until they are killed or injured in sudden, usually accidental, and extremely graphically violent incidents. Debuting in December 2000, Happy Tree Friends has achieved a cult following on Mondo's website and YouTube channel and expanded into a multimedia franchise, which includes the television series of the same name.
History While working with Mondo Media, Rhode Montijo drew a character on a piece of scrap paper, who would later become Shifty. He then drew a yellow rabbit that bore some resemblance to Cuddles, writing "Resistance is futile" underneath it on a spreadsheet poster. Montijo hung the drawing up in his workstation so other people could see his idea, and eventually, the idea was pitched to and accepted by the Mondo Media executives. 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) murdering three woodland animals, a squirrel, a rabbit, and a beaver (earlier versions of Giggles, Cuddles, and Toothy) with a banjo. From there, Mondo gave them their own Internet series, which they named Happy Tree Friends. Although the first episodes of Happy Tree Friends were produced in 1999, they were released online sometime in 2000 and became an unexpected success, getting over 15 million hits each month, along with screenings at film festivals. Mondo Media CEO John Evershed attributes the success of the series to animator Kenn Navarro:
"He had a clear vision for that show and he's just a brilliant animator. He has created something that is pretty universal. I envision kids watching Happy Tree Friends 20 or 30 years from now the same way that they watch Tom and Jerry now. So really it's Kenn Navarro." In 2014, after the episode "Dream Job" was released, Mondo Media announced plans to produce a feature film based on the series. However, in 2016, Kenn Navarro tweeted that he was unaware of work being done on a film, with his team being "in talk to do more shorts." Later, when a fan asked Kenn Navarro about the film, he replied, "a treatment that [I] and the writers did was all the work (that [I] know of) for the movie." On December 22, 2016, Mondo Media released five all-new episodes for purchase online. Bundled as a set named "Happy Tree Friends: Still Alive," the episodes came with some additional bonus material such as background designs, animated storyboards, the animation process, and a writer's session video. Upon purchase, buyers were able to download the DRM-free video files to their computer. In January 2017, Kenn Navarro tweeted, "As I understand, sales were OK but fell below what was expected." On August 17, 2023, it was announced that a new Happy Tree Friends episode titled "Too Much Scream Time" would be released on September 27, 2023, to tie into the downloadable content for the shoot 'em up video game The Crackpet Show (titled The Crackpet Show: Happy Tree Friends Edition), which was released on the same day. On October 18, 2024, a new episode titled "Happy Train Friends" was released as a crossover with Dumb Ways to Die.
Premise Happy Tree Friends centers on the lives of anthropomorphic, multicolored woodland animals. It intentionally misleads first-time viewers into thinking it is kids' animated edutainment series, with the show's regular opening and closing sequences being in the form of the Little Golden Books, and all main characters (except Lumpy and Sniffles) sharing a Care Bears-esque design (pie-eyes, heart-shaped noses, mitten hands, and boot-shaped feet). Each episode starts peacefully with the characters living their lives normally, with activities ranging from childish to grown-up, but a sudden event unintentionally (or sometimes intentionally) caused by another animal leads to many of the characters being subjected to extreme and graphic violence. Each character suffers brutal pain, murder, or mutilation by the end of each episode but always returns alive and well by the next.
Episodes
A total of 132 segments were released across ninety-three web episodes and the thirteen episodes (39 segments) of the television series.
Television series
The television series was first shown at Comic-Con 2006, while some of the episodes were shown on the website a few weeks prior to the show's television premiere. The television series would premiere on October 3, 2006, at midnight on G4's late-night block, Barbed Wire Biscuit (later renamed Midnight Spank). The web series also aired on the network's animation anthology series; Happy Tree Friends and Friends and G4's Late Night Peepshow. The Canadian channel Razer (now MTV2) aired the show in syndication with then-sibling television network Citytv, and then OLN. Internationally, the series was broadcast on MTV in Europe and Latin America, and Animax in South Africa.
Characters and cast
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