Western Animation / Puff the Magic Dragon

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First written in 1959 as a poem by filmmaker Leonard Lipton and set to music in 1963 by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, "Puff, the Magic Dragon" tells the story of a boy who outgrows his childhood fantasies. The song also inspired a series of animated CBS TV specials that recast the eponymous dragon, voiced by Burgess Meredith, as a sort of fantastical child psychologist coming to the aid of some deeply troubled children. All three specials were written by Romeo Muller, who also wrote most of the work of Rankin/Bass Productions.

The specials were:

• Puff the Magic Dragon (1978): Puff comes to the aid of young Jackie Draper, who's so plagued by fear and self-doubt that he's stopped talking.
• Puff in the Land of Living Lies (1979): Puff helps a girl named Sandy, who has a habit of telling lies, by taking her to a magical world inhabited by famous fictional fibbers such as Pinocchio, Baron Munchausen, and the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
• Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody (1982): A boy named Terry receives Puff's help after his wild imagination and imaginary friend, Mr. Nobody, prevent him from living in reality.

The TV specials provide examples of:

• Adaptational Wimp: The original song describes Puff as more of a wild and fearsome but still friendly dragon, suggested in lyrics like "Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name" and "And Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar". In the specials, he's a polite and humble child therapist with the voice of Burgess Meredith, and does not roar at any point. The trade-off is that he's given Adaptational Intelligence, which gives him its own sort of dignity.
• Adults Are Useless: Played with. The parents of the children love and care for them very much. Other adults such as teachers or doctors are exaggerations of this trope.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: The inhabitants of the Land of the Living Lies are the embodiments of all the various forms of lying (monstrous lies, little white lies, etc.).
• Apathetic Teacher: In Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody, Puff shows Terry that his teacher (who put down his artistic skills) is just one of these.
• Art Initiates Life: Terry journeys to the Fantaverse and paints a boat for himself and Puff to sail in.
• Assimilation Academy: In Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody, one of the reasons that Terry started blaming his creative output on his imaginary friend was due to his teacher disparaging his picture of a spaghetti landscape and telling him to paint "real trees, and real houses."
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Very Long John Black and Bluebeard Kidd, a gigantic pirate captain... before his Heel–Face Turn.
• Band Land: In Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody, Puff and a boy named Terry travel through the Fantaverse, which includes Cleftomania, a land made of musical instruments. They are instructed to "proceed harmonious through," but have to tame the Savage Beast first.
• Batman Gambit: Puff is quite The Chessmaster when he needs to be, apparently allowing himself to be trapped or lose his powers so his young wards will have to discover themselves.
• Bedsheet Ladder: In Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody, Terry, after being told by his parents that his eponymous imaginary friend isn't real, and unable to find him after that talk, runs away to find his friend by making a bedsheet rope and climbing out the window. But since his friend wasn't there to help him tie the knots, the rope comes apart, and he lands in Puff's waiting arms. They go on a journey and eventually find Mr. Nobody, and Terry resolves his issues. Then it's revealed that he actually landed in the lilac bush outside his window and had been knocked out the whole time.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: At the start, the Draper family is meeting with three doctors who match this — a tall, red-headed man (thin), a bald and bearded man (short) and a bushy-haired, friendly and rather wide man (big).
• Bill... Bill... Junk... Bill...: When Puff is looking through his bag, he pulls out and names several things, which are all props from famous fairy tales:
  Puff: Glass slipper, Alice's mushroom, Peter's shadow, gold spun from straw, yellow brick...
• Captain Colorbeard: The "Black and Bluebeard" part of Very Long John's name.
• Compulsive Liar: Sandy has a habit of telling Blatant Lies, resulting in her alienating her friends.
• Consulting Mister Puppet: In Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody, a gifted child is persecuted by peers and authority figures alike for his excessive creativity, so he starts attributing his output to his imaginary friend. He eventually comes to believe that all his talent is due to his friend's presence.
• Darker and Edgier: "Land of Living Lies" is notably darker than the special before it and the one that followed it, being about a girl whose parents are going through a divorce for which she blames herself and struggles with compulsive lying as a way to mask her depression and wish away the circumstances that trouble her, and featuring a climax where both the girl and Puff are put on trial by the Living Lies (who all blame the girl for everything as well), and Puff getting condemned to be a prisoner for crimes he didn't commit prior to the girl accepting the truth in order to set them both free, with the Living Lies implied to crushed by falling rocks.
• A Dog Ate My Homework: Sandy lies to her teacher that a dragon stole her homework and ate it with ketchup and mustard. At the beginning of the special, Puff acts out this lie, before explaining that it was a lie.
• Down the Rabbit Hole: The animated version of Puff tends to take children to fantasy worlds where they have to confront metaphors for their own problems.
• Giant's Droplet, Human's Shower: The giant pirate Very Long John Black and Bluebeard Kidd cries giant tears which fall upon Puff and Jackie Paper.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Puff tells Jackie that the mean-looking clouds overhead are jealous of the stars, because the stars can fly so much higher than they can. As fate would have it, a falling star lands in their boat, and the clouds all have an Evil Laugh; Puff looks at them in disgust, saying, "They're so happy when a star dies." (She's not dead yet, though, and they can still save her.)
• Heel–Face Turn: Very Long John does this when he becomes a baker.
  Very Long John: I'm a new man! No, no, no, no, no. I'm an old man with a new heart!
• In Name Only: Despite attempts to arbitrarily weave the lyrics into the narrative, the first special has very little to do with the song of the same name outside of the character and location names.
• It's All My Fault: Sandy believes that she was the cause of her parents' divorce. Puff helps her to see that it wasn't her fault and that her mom and dad still love her.
• I Will Find You: Terry's parents try to convince him that Mr. Nobody isn't real. This causes Mr. Nobody to disappear. Aided by Puff, Terry goes on a quest to find him.
• Kangaroo Court: In the Land of the Living Lies, Sandy is put on trial on a false accusation of picking apples and eating flowers. The judge is the Monstrous Lie, the jurors include the Meaningless Lie and the Vicious Lie, and the prosecuting attorney is an intimidatingly Speaking Simlish giant.
  Prosecuting Attorney: Little girl, isn't it true you zipped the zapper when you snipped the snoo? Hmm?
  Sandy: I can't understand him!
  Puff: Because he's the prosecuting attorney. A genuine flimfam.
• Kilroy Was Here: The bald, long-nosed figure is seen in the Land of the Living Lies, peering over the top of a graffiti-covered fence.
  Puff: Always was there, and never was anywhere.
• Level Ate: Terry imagines a landscape made of pasta, then paints a picture of it.
• Lighter and Softer: "Puff and the Incredible Mr. Nobody" has notably far less conflict and peril present than in the prior two specials.
• Living Lie: "Puff in the Land of Living Lies" has a girl named Sandy who constantly tells lies, only to be brought to the titular land of living lies by Puff, which is inhabited by such famous liars as The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Baron Munchausen, and Pinocchio. She is accused of a crime and subsequently blames Puff. Puff tells her the only way to return home is to tell the truth. Sandy then blames herself for the fact that her home is "broken" because she broke it, saying she is responsible for her parents' divorce. Puff uses the reaction from the living lies to show her that it isn't the truth, that she is not the one responsible for the divorce, and that her parents still love her. Puff suggests that Sandy can direct her imagination in more healthy and creative ways, like writing.
• Long John Shout-Out: The first special features a gigantic pirate called Very Long John Black and Bluebeard Kidd.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: Mr. Nobody has "If I had a middle name, [X] would be it!"
• Magical Land: Puff takes young children to various magical lands as a way of helping them deal with their problems:
  • The first special has he and Jackie sailing to Puff's homeland of Honalee.
  • The second has Puff taking Sandy to the Land of the Living Lies to teach her a lesson about honesty and face up to the root cause of her compulsive lying.
  • The third has him take Terry to the Fantaverse, a land where the imaginary is real:
    "As the Universe is to real people, so the Fantaverse is to imaginary."
• Meaningful Echo: A sort of meta example with the song. The first animated special ends with a sobering lecture to Jackie that he'll eventually have to grow up and "go beyond childish fancy such as dragons and not need them anymore." This fits with the interpretation that, in the original song, Puff is a toy who gets discarded as Jackie grows up; this idea is retooled with Puff, reworked as something of a child therapist, knowing that this will eventually happen and that he can't stay.
• Misplaced Retribution:
  • Early on, Sandy breaks her mother's lamp by throwing a ball, then blames her dog, Muggs, who wasn't anywhere near the lamp. Much to Sandy's dismay, her mother decides that Muggs is too big to keep around and decides to give him back to Aunt Clara.
  • In the Land of the Living Lies, when Sandy is falsely accused by the judge and jury, she panics and blames Puff, who is arrested.
• Music Soothes the Savage Beast: Kleftomania, the music kingdom, is under the control of a savage beast. Terry soothes the beast by taking out a flute and playing a tune he wrote.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The short, brown-haired doctor is friendly and tries to be optimistic about Jackie's condition (nice), while the tall, red-haired doctor is a Perpetual Frowner who bluntly tells Jackie's parents that the case is hopeless (mean). The old doctor shares the tall one's mindset and opinion but shows genuine concern for Jackie's health and safety (in-between).
• "Not Your Fault" Reassurance: Puff in the Land of Living Lies revolves around a girl named Sandy, who's fallen into a habit of compulsive lying as a way of masking her depression, brought on because she blames herself for her parents' divorce. By the end of the special, Puff has helped her admit how she feels and demonstrates to her that her claim of being the cause of their divorce is a "self-deceptive lie", reassuring her that her parents separating was not her fault and that they still love her.
• Quacking Up: Terry's Imaginary Friend is Mr. Nobody, a talking duck who wears a saucepan hat with a feather.
• Saving the World with Art: Or music, when Terry frees Kleftomania by soothing the savage beast with his flute.
• See-Thru Specs: Puff's smoke rings have this effect. Looking through them allows Puff and Jackie to see that Very Long John secretly wants to be a baker.
• The Shrink: Puff is the Awesome variety, taking kids to various magical lands to confront the cause of their problems.
• Soup Is Medicine: Seen in the first special, when Jackie brings Very Long John to Honalee to cure the Living Sneezes with chicken soup and restore Honalee to its former glory.
• Straw Vulcan: The tall, red-headed doctor and the bald, bearded doctor, who not only suffer from Genre Blindness, but are both Flat Earth Atheists. They firmly tell Jackie's parents that Jackie will never speak, nor relate in any way to the world around him.
• Time Master: With the aid of a magic alarm clock, Puff has the ability to temporarily stop time. He does so before taking Sandy to the Land of the Living Lies, then starts it again after taking her back to her home.
  Puff: I've stopped the clock 'twixt the tick and the tock. We can go anywhere, do anything, and when we return, not one second will be lost.
• Token Good Teammate: The short doctor in the first special is more optimistic to the idea of Jackie speaking and relating to other people eventually, though his two comrades quickly shut him down.
• Unlocking the Talent: Terry has a gift for drawing, painting, and composing poetry and music. When his teacher calls his painting of a pasta landscape silly, Terry decides to avoid any future blame by giving Mr. Nobody credit for his art — until he believes that Mr. Nobody is the gifted one. Puff helps Terry to rediscover his talent.
• "Where? Where?": Variant in the first special — Puff already knows he's a dragon, but as he's walking by Jackie Draper's house and sees him sitting silently in his room, he pulls the trope in an initial effort to cheer Jackie up, asking the boy, "I beg your pardon, could you tell me if you just saw a dragon pass by? I could swear I saw one." [chuckles] "Most unusual nowadays." Then he looks again and says, "Aaahhh... your mirror across the room. I did see a dragon! Me." Later, after Jackie's back to normal at the end of the special, Puff walks by the house again and this time asks the audience, "I beg your pardon, did you happen to see a dragon pass by? Oh, the mirror. I did see a dragon! Me. By the way... where's your fancy stuff?"