Tip's Nursery

Tip's Nursery is a Kuboian preschool traditionally animated 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.

The show's premise was created by Ashley Maverick, though a majority of the characters and plot elements were developed by Harlow Morrison. A series was aired in 1998 for Tiny Vision, whilst a second and third series aired in 1999 and 2002 respectively on KT.

Tip's Nursery has received mostly mixed reviews, with audiences generally praising the animation, voice acting and production, though some of the show's humour and characters have been criticised. Despite this, it proved popular throughout the 2000s, with a lot of merchandise based on the show being produced several years after it ended production.

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.

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 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 nine years old.
 * Marcy is a transgender girl with long straight blonde hair. She is often shy when surrounded by others and is generally reluctant to talk about herself, though secretly likes the company of others.
 * Samantha is an American brown-haired girl who is very friendly and likes being around others, showing a lot of dedication when it comes to her friends and family. However, she is also very egotistical and thinks highly of herself. Unlike the other children, Samantha refers to Mr. Colonies by his first name.
 * Zeke is a dark blonde boy who appears to be anorexic. He seems to like animals a lot, and therefore enjoys being around Tip a lot, especially when it comes to stroking her, which he occasionally gets carried away with.

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, whilst the second series was produced from early 1998 to early 1999, and aired in the latter portion of the latter year. Although the show was supposed to end after the second series, Morrison was requested to make a third series due to the show's popularity. The third series was produced in 2001 and aired in 2002. Shortly after the third 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 third series debuted on CBeebies in the spring of 2002, and aired on the channel until around 2007. The show later aired on Tiny Pop from 2007 to 2010.

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 generic 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 activiist, who claimed that they were making poorly-written LGBT characters purely for attention.

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 being "incredibly tacky".

In the mid-2000s, several sources, such as British magazine NME, criticised Kubokartoonz' decision to produce merchandise based off the show even years after it came to an end, with some citing the studio as "milking the franchise".

Music
The show's soundtrack, Tip's Nursery: Music From the Hit Series!, was released throughout Europe on 20th January, 2002. It features songs that play throughout the show, particularly from the third series, as well as vocal versions of instrumentals heard in the show. The soundtrack features a blend of songs from the R&B, UK garage and KB hopscotch genres.

Video games
Two video games based on Tip's Nursery were released, with the cast of the television series reprising their roles as their respective characters.

Tip's Activity Centre was released for the PC and PlayStation in September 1999. It is an educational game which allows and encourages the player to play a variety of minigames, with many being centred around trying to achieve the highest score possible.

Tip's Nursery: The Untold Adventures was released for the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance in August 2002. An action-adventure video game, it centres around Tip solving conflicts and other problems in the daycare, with each of the game's seven levels being centred around helping either one of the children or (during the last episode) Mr. Colonies. Occasionally, the player also takes control of one of the children. Nintendo Official Magazine noted that it "had a lot to of stuff to do" but that the game was easy and repetitive.