Tip's Nursery

Tip's Nursery is a Kuboian traditionally animated preschool television series. The show was produced by Kubokartoonz, and was the studio's fifth animated series. The show centres around a black cat who helps her owner run a daycare centre.

Premise
Tip is a black cat who is owned by a middle-aged man called Declan Colonies. Declan runs a daycare centre for children after school, during weekends, and during the school holidays, with the children attending either due to their parents having to go to work, the children wanting to make new friends, or both.

The show focuses on Tip and Declan as they look after the children at the daycare. Though Tip and Declan appear in every episode, the children characters who appear in each episode change frequently, with some episodes having more than others. In addition to humans, several animals are featured in the show. Several of the cats and dogs, including Tip, are capable of speaking to each other and the humans, though some of them are incapable of speech.

According to Harlow Morrison, Tip's Nursery is centred around self-expression, with many of the show's characters having important character traits that make them unique. Episodes of the first series were generally centred around a specific character, with everybody else learning to appreciate their differences. Later episodes were more story-driven, and often involved squabbles between the children and Tip and Declan's attempts to calm then down, or Tip and the childten having to stop other people with malevolent intentions from using the daycare to their advantage.

Main characters
Other part-time employees make regular appearances, including Avery (voiced by Felix Olajide), a young man who is often exhausted either due to having to put up with Sarge's or the children's antics, and Polly (voiced by Lilian Pond), a young woman who likes animals yet Tip finds annoying.
 * Tip (voiced by Lilian Pond) is a black kitten who runs a daycare centre with her owner and is fully capable of speech - she speaks in a high-pitched English accent. Although Tip enjoys playing with the children, she can get tired very easily and is occasionally lazy. She apparently had her claws removed some time before the events of the show for unknown reasons.
 * Mr. Declan Colonies (voiced by Flynn Raidon) is a single man in his fourties and Tip's owner, who runs the show's daycare, a role which he took over from his father. He supposedly adopted Tip due to suffering from loneliness. A majority of the children refer to him as Mr. Colonies, though the adult characters simply refer to her as his first name.
 * Big Sarge (voiced by Bentley Royal) is an assistant at the day care who helps Mr. Colonies with his work, typically by entertaining the children. He is known for his loud, over-the-top voice, and almost always dressing in army clothes and sunglasses. Sarge is apparently a rapper and eurodance musician in addition to his work at the daycare, though it is heavily implied that he is simply an independent musician. His behaviour is met with mixed opinions from the other characters.

Children
Several child characters, who attend the daycare regularly, appear throughout the show, with about four appearing in each episode. They are all aged between six and ten years old, though the ones who make the most appearances are all either nine or ten years old.

Other characters
Additional characters, such as the children's family members and a majority of the one-off characters are voiced by Charlie Karma, Emily Merletta, Jospeh Bell and Melissa Emery. Bruno Leon Vidal and Gerald Crowdus also voice some characters in the specials.

Development
Tip's Nursery was created by Ashley Maverick in 1994, though did not spend much time developing the show due to being busy working on The New Adventures of The Sweet Treets and Magma Eye. Harlow Morrison therefore spent more time developing the show.

Development of the show began in late 1994. Due to Kubokartoonz receiving criticism due to the lack of diversity in their shows, Morrison decided that a large focus of Tip's Nursery would be about celebrating self-expression. At one point, the show was set in a school, and Tip would help the head teacher with running the school, though Morrison was unsure how well the idea would work, so he changed the setting to a daycare.

Due to being in development at the same time as Magma Eye, both it and Tip's Nursery share a lot of the same voice actors and writers, with the two also referencing each other regularly. Morrison also mentioned that the producers of the two shows would contact each other frequently - Morrison said that, for example, they could suggest an idea that did not work for one show that could work for another.

Production
The first series was produced from 1996 to 1997 and aired in 1998. A second and third series aired in 1999 and 2000. After the third series, Kubokartoonz decided to put the show on hiatus in favour of producing several specials starring Tip and the other characters. In contrast to the main series, these were more action-driven, and often involved drama between the characters and/or villainous characters appearing and taking advantage of Tip and company.

Shortly after the fourth series concluded, Morrison said the show had officially ended in order to focus on Kubokartoonz' other franchises, as well as Tangle Jam, which was in production at the time.

International airings
In the United Kingdom, Tip's Nursery aired on CBBC as did other Kubokartoonz' programmes due to a license the BBC had at the time. It debuted on the block around the same time as its Kuboian premiere. The fourth series debuted on CBeebies in the spring of 2002, and aired on the channel until around mid 2008. The show later aired on Tiny Pop from 2007 until 2011.

In the Netherlands, the show aired on Z@ppelin. It also aired on France 5 in France, and also aired in Germany on Super RTL as part of its Toggolino block.

In the United States, Tip's Nursery had its premiere on Noggin in late 2000, airing during its preschool block in the early morning before moving to the afternoon slot after the channel changed its demographic. It last aired on Noggin in late 2007. In Canada, the show aired on Treehouse from 1998 until 2004. Contrary to popular belief, both countries aired the show's original Kuboian version.

Critical reception
In February 1998, the Open Eagle noted that Tip's Nursery was proving popular amongst childten, citing "relatable characters and entertaining storylines" as the show's strongest factors. Common Sense Media awarded the show a 3/5 rating citing that it "promotes self-expression", but that some of the characters had "weird" personality traits.

Controversy and criticism
One child character present in several episodes, Marcy, is revealed to be a transgender girl in one episode. Although some sources praised Kubokartoonz for including a transgender character in the show, some criticised Marcy's personality, being insecure and very indecisive, as very stereotypical for a transgender character. Several audiences, including Common Sense Media, argued that young children may fail to understand the point of her character and that she was better suited for a programme for older audiences. Kubokartoonz also faced criticism from some LGBT activiists, who claimed that they were making poorly-written LGBT characters purely for publicity.

The depiction of some other characters has also been controversial, particularly Samantha, an American girl, and her family, with her uncle being a stereotypical depiction of Southern Americans. An article by British newspaper The Daily Telegraph cited the show's characters, especially Big Sarge and some of the children's relatives, as "incredibly tacky".

Profanity
When new episodes were being produced for the show, TVVC received several complaints from parents due to minor profanity heard in some of the episodes, including one episode where Samantha says "damn it" and another episode where one of the children proclaims "Oh for God's sake!" Despite the complaints, the episodes continued to air uncensored on both Tiny Vision and KT.

Due to the profanity, the episodes were censored when the show was released on home media releases, as well as in most international airings, where the scenes are either cut to remove the profanity, or the voice clips are simply removed.

Home media releases
The Complete Collection, featuring all episodes and specials, was released in Region 2 in April 2009, and saw a release in other regions several months later.

YouTube
The YouTube channel JangleNet! has uploaded all episodes and specials of Tip's Nursery in their original uncensored form.

Discography
The show spawned some musical releases in the early 2000s, including a studio album that was released in March 2001. Much like in the show, Tip's vocals on the album are performed by Lilian Pond.

Studio albums

 * Non-Stop Dance! (2001)

Singles

 * 2000: "The Kitty Dance"
 * 2000: "Non-Stop Dance!"
 * 2001: "Take It to the Dancefloor"
 * 2002: "Get Get Down"

Other music
Kubokartoonz licensed several songs to appear in some of later episodes and specials.

Books and magazines
A Tip's Nursery annual series was published from 1999 to 2004, with new annuals being published in December. A sticker book based on the show was also published around the same time, with stickers being sold throughout the 2000s.

From 2000 to 2002, a series of books based on the show were published, which featured stories based around a particular character in the show. A series of activity books featuring quizzes and puzzles were published from 2002 to 2005.

Video games
An educational video game, Tip's Activity Centre, was released for the PC and PlayStation in September 1999. Later, an action-adventure video game called Tip's Nursery: Saving the Nursery! was released for the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance in November 2001 (the GameCube version was released in June 2002). Nintendo Official Magazine noted that it "had a lot to of stuff to do" but that the game was easy and repetitive.

Another educational video game based on the show was released for the V.Smile in October 2004.

Tropes

 * Tropes
 * Your Mileage May Vary
 * Trivia