Maggie and the Ferocious Beast is a Canadian animated children's television series created by Michael and Betty Paraskevas. The program was based on the 1996 book The Ferocious Beast with the Polka-Dot Hide and its sequels, all of which were also written by the Paraskevases. The show began as a series of shorts aired on the Canadian channel Teletoon in 1998. The first full-length episode premiered on August 26, 2000. The series began airing on Florida-based television channelQubo on May 28, 2018.
Plot
A young girl named Maggie creates her own map of an imaginary world known as "Nowhere Land" that, in reality, takes the characters nowhere. She imagines that characters Beast and Hamilton Hocks are her friends.
Episodes
Characters
Main
Maggie is a five-year-old girl and the human protagonist of the show. She is Hamilton's and Beast's best friend. They both look up to Maggie very much and always turn to her for advice. Maggie is the leader of the group and is always there to be the compassionate voice of reason to her dear friends.
The Ferocious Beast appears ferocious, but is actually gentle and kind. He is yellow, with big red removable spots, and three horns on his head. He often wears multi-colored galoshes which he pronounces as "Goo-lashes". His favorite catchphrase is "Great googly moogly!", which he says several times per episode. In "Hide And Go Beast", it is shown that he is allergic to pollen. Beast loves pretty much any kind of food, especially Hamilton's cooking, and is almost always hungry. He even loves baths. Maggie and Hamilton are his best friends. Hamilton often corrects his pronunciation, but he does not believe him.
Hamilton Hocks is a pig who can be bossy and quite fussy, but he has a warm heart. He lives inside a portable cardboard box which he loves, is the best cook in Nowhere Land, and is a total clean freak. Hamilton's most prized possessions are his beautiful "H" sweater and his cardboard box, which also happens to be his home. Maggie and the Beast are his best friends.
Recurring
Rudy the Mouse : Rudy is a cheese-loving mouse who lives in a large wheel of cheese in a part of Nowhere Land called Cheese Town. It is revealed in one episode that Rudy's hat and boots do not come off because they are glued to him. Strangely enough, this character started off with the name Pippy but was renamed by the writers soon after.
Nedley the Rabbit: Nedley speaks in rhymes. He says rhymes almost all through every episode that he appears in, but sometimes he talks normally a little bit before starting his rhyme again. Nedley lives in a rabbit hole next to his carrot patch in Nowhere Land.
The Moo Sisters : They are the three cows who live in a part of Nowhere Land called Mooville. They love to sing and do it often. They are sisters and their names are Millicent, Mavis and Marge.
Mr. Moon: He is the only non-human and non-animal character in the episode "Blue Moon". He is usually grumpy because people say he is made of green cheese.
The Kindly Giant: The Kindly Giant is not at all scary but instead kind hearted. The others are scared at first but they soon get used to him and they sometimes go to him for advice or a favour. He refers to Maggie, Hamilton and the Beast as little ones. He owns a garden full of fruits and vegetables, from which he always lets the ever hungry Beast scarf up a giant blueberry or two. His face is never shown, and he only appears in a few episodes. He is big and strong. Even the Beast seems small compared to the giant. The Kindly Giant lives in an area of Nowhere Land where all the fruits and vegetables are giant sized. Usually, only his shoes and ankles are seen due to his largeness.
The Dream Sheep: White sheep that make "baa" sounds. They are occasionally up in the clouds.
The Jellybean Team: They are a group of seven jellybeans. There is a red one, an orange one, a yellow one, a purple one, a black one and two green ones. They are small, of course, but have big personalities. They also tend to argue with each other a lot because they each think they are more important than the others.
The Triplets : Maggie's baby cousins. They only appear in four episodes, "One, Two, Three", "Home of the Kindly Giant", "The New Rubber Ball" and "Which Way Did They Go?".
Big Duck: A large duck with white feathers who lives in the water. She is the focus of the episode "The Big Duck" and appears in the series' theme song.
Reggie Van Beast : Beast's cousin. His coloring is the inverse of Beast's, being red with yellow spots, and he wears a monocle. He is rather stuck up and rude, and never really seems to enjoy anything that Beast and his friends want to do. He also often speaks in rhymes, similar to Nedley. He first appeared in "Guess Who's Coming to Visit".
Production
The theme song for the show is "Maggie and the Ferocious Beast in Nowhere Land," which is an original song by Isabella Molley. Maggie and the Ferocious Beast is produced by Nelvana and produced with the participation of Teletoon, and directed by Jamie Whitney and Stuart Shankly. The series debuted in 2000 and the series aired its last episode in 2002. The show is distributed by Nelvana. In the United Kingdom, the show was dubbed with British voice actors, replacing the original Canadian soundtrack. The shorts were shown with the original voices.
Broadcast
In Canada, Maggie and the Ferocious Beast aired on Teletoon and Treehouse TV. In the United States, it aired on Nickelodeon as part of its Nick Jr. block from June 5, 2000, to September 6, 2004, and the American children's channel Noggin from April 7, 2003, until September 27, 2009, when Noggin was re-branded as Nick Jr., and continued to air reruns until October 30, 2010. The show aired in reruns on "Nick on CBS" from September 16, 2000, to June 9, 2001. As of May 28, 2018, it is airing on Qubo.