4.7 /10 4 Votes
Written by Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. First episode date 17 September 1983 Program creator Ross Bagdasarian Sr. | 6.8/10 Directed by Ross Bagdasarian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Created by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. (characters) Based on Alvin and the Chipmunksby Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. Voices of Ross Bagdasarian, Jr.Janice KarmanDody GoodmanThomas H. WatkinsFrank Welker Cast Similar The Alvin Show, Animaniacs, Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears |
Alvin and the Chipmunks is an American animated television series featuring The Chipmunks, produced by Bagdasarian Productions in association with Ruby-Spears Enterprises from 1983 to 1987, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson from 1987 to 1988 and DIC Entertainment from 1988 to 1990.
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It aired from 1983 to 1990 on NBC and is the follow-up to the original 1961–62 series, The Alvin Show. The show introduced the Chipettes, three female Chipmunks with their own human caretaker, Miss Beatrice Miller (who joined the cast in 1986). In 1988, the show switched production companies to DiC Enterprises (with 11 additional episodes produced by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson) and was renamed just The Chipmunks.
In 1987, during the show's fifth season, the Chipmunks' first animated feature film, The Chipmunk Adventure, was released to theaters by The Samuel Goldwyn Company. The film was directed by Janice Karman and featured the Chipmunks and Chipettes in a contest traveling around the world. In its eighth and final season, the show again switched titles to The Chipmunks Go to the Movies, but it was same as The Chipmunks. Each episode was a spoof of a Hollywood film like Back to the Future or King Kong. Several television specials featuring the characters were also released. In 1990, the special Rockin' Through the Decades was produced. That year, the Chipmunks also teamed up with other well-known cartoon characters (such as Bugs Bunny and Garfield) for the drug abuse-prevention special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.
From 1998 to 2002 Cartoon Network aired the 65-episode syndication package of the series. It also aired in Canada on Teletoon Retro from 2008 to 2015 when the channel shut down. The later episodes that were not included on the syndication package have not aired in the United States since the series' cancellation in 1990.
Characters
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Original network run
The series made its debut on September 17, 1983 on NBC, originally under the name Alvin and the Chipmunks, and was animated by Ruby-Spears Productions. Beginning with the 1988–89 season, the series was renamed to simply The Chipmunks, and production switched to DiC Enterprises for the remainder of the series' run (with the exception of five episodes produced for the syndication package by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, which aired on NBC in fall 1988 for reasons currently unknown - this was not due to the 1988 Writers Guild of America Strike, which did not affect any animated series). For its final season in 1990, the series was renamed again, this time, The Chipmunks Go to the Movies, as all episodes in this season were spoofs of popular Hollywood movies.
Syndication package
The series went into syndication in the fall of 1988 under the original Alvin and The Chipmunks title, distributed by Lorimar-Telepictures (and later Warner Bros. Television after Warner Communications' purchase of Lorimar, Warner Bros. would later buy Ruby-Spears in 1996). The package contained all 52 episodes produced by Ruby-Spears (#901–952), as well as the Valentine's and Reunion specials. To round the package out to the common-practice syndication package length of 65 episodes (5 days a week for 13 weeks, allowing for exactly four cycles a year), an additional 11 episodes were produced specifically for the package by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson. In the syndication order, these episodes followed the 54 Ruby-Spears shows; in the fall 1988 cycle (September 12–December 9), they aired from November 25–December 9.