Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants

Plot

A scientist from New Swissland named Professor Pippy P. Poopypants invents a shrinking machine called the Shrinky-Pig 2000 and an enlarging machine called the Goosy-Grow 4000. He goes to the United States of America so he can show these inventions to everyone and help the world by using his machines to shrink down the size of garbage and increase the world's food supply by growing food. Unfortunately, everyone laughs at Professor Poopypants' name instead of taking him seriously.

At Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, the school is going on a field trip to a restaurant to eat pizza and play video games (similar to Chuck E. Cheeses), but when George and Harold change the sign Mr. Krupp attacks them with his razor-sharp teeth and bans them from the field trip, forcing them to clean the teachers' lounge. Fortunately, George and Harold get revenge on Mr. Krupp and all the other teachers by changing the route of the sprayer, and putting powdered paste on the ceiling fan, and putting Styrofoam in the refrigerator. After returning from the trip and sacrificing George and Harold while everyone else goes home, Mr Krupp and the teachers enter the lounge and Mr. Meaner turns on the lights after wondering why they were off but once he does the ceiling fan slowly starts to spin around with a little pit of the powder paste falling off, nobody notices and Ms. Ribble goes to turn on the water tap at the sink, only to have it start spraying at her and the other teachers. And the fan starts to spin faster and all of the paste lands on the teachers and sticks to them, by now they knew that George and Harold were behind all this. After Ms. Ribble opens the refrigerator all the pellets fly out and due to the fan still blowing, fly around the room until they land onto the teachers and stick to them, they then get steamed up with George and Harold and chase them around the school. After seeing the teachers running through the school resembling snowmen, the school's science teacher, Mr. Fyde quits his job to retire, thinking he's going insane. Meanwhile, Professor Poopypants has had no success showing his inventions to the world, and sees an ad in the newspaper to teach at Jerome Horwitz. He applies for the job, thinking that children would be kind and sweet-hearted, but the children are no different than anyone else and are too distracted by his silly name to focus.

Professor Poopypants manages to get the children interested in science by building a robot machine that allows gerbils to jog alongside their masters. However, this interest is short-lived, as he reveals his middle name to be Pee-Pee, causing the children to start laughing again. Much, much later, Ms. Ribble reads the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. This inspires George and Harold to make a comic book about the Professor inventing an army of gerbil joggers to destroy the world, by being forced to listen to Cher, which destroys the last of Professor Poopypants' credibility with the students and drives him crazy.

Using his enlarging machine, he makes the gerbil machine as large as a tall building and then gets inside. He shrinks the school and holds them hostage. He then unveils his plan to force everyone in the world to change their names so everyone will have a silly name instead of a normal one using 3 charts that he made by finding 3 blank billboards and using a pencil he enlarged with the Goosy-Grow 4000 and anyone who refuses will be shrunk and the instructions were to find the first letter of your first name on the first chart and your new first name will be whatever is linked to that letter, you do the same for the second chart to find your new first part of your last name and using the third chart for your new last part of your last name. Professor Poopypants does this first on Mr. Krupp, who becomes Lumpy Pottybiscuits.

George and Harold (now Fluffy and Cheeseball) get Captain Underpants (now Buttercup Chickenfanny, but Captain Underpants won't change his name because he says he's taking orders from no one) to steal Professor Poopypants' enlarging machine, but unfortunately he and the machine are shrunk in the process.

The two of them try to enlarge the school back to normal size, but get flicked off the school. Cheeseball makes a paper airplane that Fluffy enlarges. The plane flies into many threats, yet Captain Underpants rescues them and they end up in an abandoned alley. Fluffy tries to enlarge Captain Underpants (accidentally enlarging Cheeseball's right hand) to the size of Professor Poopypants' gerbil machine. Captain Underpants then fights and defeats Professor Poopypants. Once Professor Poopypants is defeated, everyone gets their names back. The boys use the shrinking and enlarging machines to get the school and Captain Underpants back to normal size. Then Captain Underpants gets soaked with water, turning him back to Mr. Krupp again.

Professor Poopypants is hauled off to jail. On the advice of George and Harold, he changes his name so no one will make fun of it anymore. Unfortunately, all names originating in the land where he comes from are silly, so when he chooses his maternal grandfather's name, Tippy Tinkletrousers, the people at jail make fun of him, setting the climax for book 9.

The moral of the story ("I think this is the first time one of our stories had a moral," notes George) is that it's not nice to make fun of people. Unfortunately, there is another moral that the boys have possibly forgotten about is never hypnotize Mr. Krupp because when they got up to mischief Ms. Anthrope snaps her fingers at them which causes Mr. Krupp to turn into Captain Underpants and flies (he got superpowers in the previous book) out the window with George and Harold clinging for dear life on his cape while they scream 'oh no' and ' here we go again' like they do in every book which finishes the book.

Captain Underpants and the Pied Pooper of Piqua

The comic begins with an introduction by Professor Poopypants. Everyone laughs at his ridiculous name causing Pippy to make an army of Gerbil Jogger 2000s and inserted gerbils, but they refuse to be evil, so he makes them listen to something on headphones. The gerbils take all the kids hostage but Captain Underpants intervenes. When everyone still laughs at him, Pippy uses a button on his tie to make himself into a giant robot. Captain Underpants and Professor Poopypants fight and Pippy catches him. But Captain Underpants uses a tiny toilet (called "The Tiny Toilet of Truth") to flush the water over Pippy, making him rust. The headphones are revealed to be playing Cher. Captain Underpants destroys the headphone remote control, and takes Professor Poopypants to jail. The back of the comic reads: "Notice: All animal cruelty was simulated. No actual gerbils were forced to listen to Cher."

Captain Underpants comic

The Captain Underpants comic reveals what happened in the last three books to how Mr. Krupp became Captain Underpants to how he got super powers.

Characters

Following Book

The book that followed this was The Wicked Wedgie Woman (2001).

Reception

The Book received mainly positive reviews from critics, making the villain, Professor Poopypants, appear in later Books of the series as both a recurring character, or even the main villain.

The book was removed from an elementary school in Page, North Dakota due to parental complaints.