If you've ever had to babysit someone's kids or are a parent yourself, you'll know that it's not easy looking after little ones. Few know that truth better than Ed, an anxious red-feathered ostrich living in the middle of the desert who spends his days devotedly tending to his brood of eight eggs. While most birds would find sitting in the desert on a nest of unhatched chicks to be a simple job, Ed has a weird way of making it the most difficult thing in the world for himself. An overprotective perfectionist cursed with the worst luck in the animal kingdom, Ed always finds himself either causing or encountering problems that threaten the safety of his precious eggs, and thus puts himself through all kinds of pain to keep all eight of his eggs from being turned into a pile of splattered yolk and shell. But thankfully, his brood seems to have it much better off than him, and no matter what sort of suffering Ed goes through to protect his eggs, he can always be assured that they'll always come out completely safe in the end.
Cracked (known as Cracké in French) is a 2016 All-CGI Cartoon from Francophone Canada produced by Squeeze Studio
, an animation studio based in Quebec City specializing in 3D animation. Consisting of 52 one-minute shorts, the series originally aired on Teletoon in its native country as interstitials during commercial breaks but has been broadcast in over 200 countries and territories, thanks to its shortness, lack of spoken dialogue, zany slapstick humor, and high-quality CGI animation giving it universal appeal and multi-platform potential. Indeed, the series has acquired over 400 million views on digital platforms worldwide and spawned both a mobile platform game and a mobile animated comic book. Official compilations of episodes can be found online on Youtube.
In 2022, a Sequel Series consisting of 52 seven-minute episodes was released titled Cracké Family Scramble. It follows Ed, who's no longer in the desert, as he raises his eight newly hatched chicks (evidently, his dedication to protecting his eggs has paid off). The new series features a newer more stylized Painted CGI look compared to the previous show.
Not to be confused with a humor website and magazine or a 2013 Canadian crime drama series that aired on CBC.
Cracked provides examples of:
- All-CGI Cartoon: Being a creation of Squeeze Studio, Cracked is animated entirely in 3D.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Ed is an ostrich with bright red feathers, rather than the black-and-white ones that real-life male ostriches have. Strangely, his zombie form has those realistic colors.
- Amusing Injuries: Ed frequently gets injured for comedy in his efforts to protect his eggs, although given the nature of the shorts, even his gravest injuries have no impact on his ability to protect his brood and nearly all of them are very comically over-the-top in nature.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: Ed goes from living in the desert and defending his eggs from wild animals, to living in a house where he and his kids use human appliances in Family Scramble.
- Anuscape Plan: Inverted. While trying to rescue his eggs, Ed finds himself going through a rhino's (strangely machine-filled) digestive tract which he enters through his rear and exits through his mouth.
- Bloodless Carnage: Ed frequently gets dismembered, chopped up and loses his eyes, but there's not a drop of blood anywhere, which helps out the series' Amusing Injuries.
- Born Unlucky: Nothing ever goes right for Ed, which is why he always ends up having to save his eggs from various predicaments. Thankfully for him, his eggs seem to have the opposite luck and always come out safe.
- Butt-Monkey: Ed. His terrible luck and neurotic personality lead to tons of misfortune for him, and he frequently endangers his eggs through his own tendency to overthink things. Most of the show's humor comes from the absurd and over-the-top ways in which he gets injured while protecting his eggs.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Despite all the injuries and abuse he goes through, Ed never fails to keep his eggs safe, and most shorts ends with him making a relieved expression as the eggs return to him safe and sound.
- Eye Scream: One of the more common forms of injury Ed tends to suffer from. Many shorts will have his eyeballs pop out of his skull, blinding his body and forcing his eyeballs to act on their own.
- Golfing Gator: Referenced in the short "Birdie!", in which Ed, in his usual attempts to protect his eggs from the hungry crocodile that wants to eat them, spots a nest resembling a golf hole that inexplicably appears in the middle of the desert (complete with a flag and grassy area surrounding it), giving him the idea to pelt his eggs like golf balls (and later himself, by popping out his own eye and hitting it) towards the nest and away from the crocodile.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: A couple shorts see Ed get sliced in half, only for the two halves of his body to continue running around.
- Informed Species: Ed doesn't look particularly ostrich-like, as he has red plumage and a yellow, more parrot-like beak.
- Iron Butt-Monkey: Ed will put himself through uncountable forms of pain and suffering to protect his eggs for the amusement of the viewers, but he always ultimately succeeds in his goals.
- Lighter and Softer: The original shorts can get downright visceral with the violence Ed is subjected to (minus the blood). However, Family Scramble seems to be aimed more towards younger kids, with Ed's eggs now hatched into fully developed chicks, and while Ed is still far from lucky, his misfortune is notably downplayed.
- Losing Your Head: Happens frequently to Ed, which usually results in his body blindly fumbling around while his head tries to protect the eggs.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Asides from the occasional squawk or screech from Ed, none of the 52 shorts feature any verbal dialogue.
- Mushroom Samba: A fruit does this to Ed in Buzz-Ed, After swallowing it Ed severly trips out, hallucinating an eye in the sky, materializing cacti, and changing colors.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: A significant number of shorts involve Ed having to protect his eggs from hungry crocodiles.
- Organ Autonomy: Ed's body can perfectly function without a head and move on it's own. It's also shown that Ed can detach his own body parts and have them move independently from himself.
- Overly Long Tongue: Ed has an unusually long tongue for an ostrich.
- Papa Wolf: Ed will do anything to keep his eggs safe, even if it means risking his life to fight predators, letting himself take blows that would kill him in real life, and even sacrificing his own body parts. And the best part is that he always succeeds in saving his eggs.
- Pulling Themselves Together: Ed's body parts have a tendency to fall off his body as a result of the slapstick he goes through, but Ed nonetheless finds ways to make things work, thanks to their cartoonish autonomy.
- Rhino Rampage: Rhinos are another hazard that Ed frequently faces. Strangely they can be found in trees and in one case can hatch from eggs.
- Struggling Single Father: Ed is an ostrich dad who has to care for a clutch of eggs all on his own, constantly pitted against the forces of nature and his own bad luck.
- Swear Word Plot: One episode of Family Scramble has Ed accidentally teaching his children bad words (made up entirely of symbols in Speech Bubbles).
- Throw the Dog a Bone: In "The Terrible 8", Ed is spared from his usual bad luck, which is instead subjected to a crocodile that tries to eat his eggs.
- Toon Physics: A prominent part of the series. Numerous shorts feature Ed performing cartoonish feats of body contortion to save his eggs or being injured in ridiculous manners.
- Wild Take: In true Zany Cartoon fashion, Ed tends to pull these whenever his eggs are in danger.