What's Space Goofs?

Space Goofs (otherwise also known as Les Zinzins de l'Espace) is a french cartoon series produced by Gaumont Multimedia and Xilam.

The basic plot of the show centers around 5 (4 in season 2) aliens who've crashlanded on earth after a picnic trip together with no easy means of returning back to their home planet, Zigma-B. In fear of being found out to be extraterrestrials and getting experimented on and the like, they take refuge and hide out in an old mansion. However the mansion is up for rent thus introducing a bunch of strange tenants constantly entering, so it is on the goofs to use the smtv (an invention Etno had made and brang with them) and various other methods to drive these tenants out and keep their identity a secret long enough till they escape earth.

With as simple as a plot like this, it's not hard at all to imagine and come up with interesting and fun ideas for episodes which is definitely present in season 1. There's also quite the variety of episodes that stray away from the typical "monster of the week" (or more appropiately "tenant of the week") premise which focuses more on the group themselves or individual characters.

The show ran from September 6, 1997 to May 12, 2006, broadcasted on tv networks such as France 3, Teletoon, Fox Kids and Nickelodeon with a total of two seasons, a CD-Rom point and click game, a potential (but ultimately scrapped) movie and 3 comic books.

Viewing this show has been an interesting experience to say the least... and I think a contributer to that was all the discussions I've had over space goofs as a show and Xilam as a company. I've grown up watching a concerning amount of Oggy and the cockroaches (Xilam's most popular franchise) and a small amount of Zig n Sharko and Space Goofs while not their most obscure of works especially not now has kinda been left off to collect dust as a franchise by Xilam, only really being relevant whenever someone brings up the bizaare and strange scenes within the franchise or from childhood nostalgia. Seeing as I have never grown up with space goofs, this obviously alters my perception of this franchise. It wasn't till the early to middle part of last year when I caught wind of space goofs first through an artist drawing fanart to my friend group growing familiar with the franchise and eventually watching some episodes and watching a playthough of Stupid Invaders. Innitially I kinda just brushed this all off, I didn't feel too deeply with it at the time and at some point there was just this idk, embarrassment over possibly even being caught invested over such a cartoon like space goofs when realistically no one would really care. I was just willing to look at space goofs, go "yea that's neat I guess" and move on with my life, but I didn't. Some time ago I've finished watching the entirety of space goofs season 1 with a friend, I've browsed many sites and pages relating to the space goofs fandom online, searched for instances of space goofs related media and merch, for gods sake I literally played the fucking video game like 6 times now already and I'll I have left to say is, why? Why and how did this fixation stick with me the way it did for this amount of time, is space goofs really that good of a franchise and has aged perfectly? (the immediate answer to the latter is obviously a no but I swear we'll get there) Do I just really get easily amused by these multicoloured queer freaks running around causing shennigans? Is there something deeper I've personally learned and have taken from viewing and consuming this piece of media? This is all of course my opinion but space goofs in a way is really a cartoon that will never happen again like many others, there will just simply never be another "space goofs".

Overview

Space Goofs S1

episodes watched: 26/26

8.5/10. This season is really entertaining and just off the shits, it's best watched with friends especially.

Space Goofs S2

episodes watched: 23/26

5/10. It's alright but honestly compared to the first season it doesn't really hold up.

Stupid Invaders

2.5/10. I still fucking hate this game and the more I think of it the more infuriented I get.

Stupid Invaders (movie)

This would've been so fucking bad but my god am I curious if this ever came out.

Space Goofs fr comics

Literally just season 2 episodes but in comic form apart from three original stories, visuals are pretty appealing/cute atleast.

Space Goofs german comic

Made up of two original story/episode ideas and some extra stuff, very much early/season 1 space goofs esc. Pretty entertaining and fun.


Characters

Etno Polino

Etno polino is the "leader" of the group being quite intelligent and peaceful. Being the "brains" of the group, they tend to spend most of their time making rocket ships to return home or experimenting/inventing something new. Etno's peaceful side is shown from how when in conflict, they tend to try the most rational option compared to Gorgious who tries to solve it as quickly as possible.

Etno on multiple occasions has been shown being quite the anarchist/anti war/anti capitalist which while suprising is not unexpected having seen most episodes of this show already, while these elements still somewhat remained in season 2 (as most of these "outwardly" political comments were made in season 1) most if not a lot of etno's traits from season 1 have been entirely forgotten off besides the fact that they're extremely intelligent but that is used more to show how "egotistical" Etno is in season 2, even almost to the degree of potraying Etno as cold and slightly morally dubious atleast with their experiments.

From the official Iggy pop cd:

"Etno is the group leader. He is a natural optimist, witty and intelligent. Of all the monsters he is the most easy going and thoughtful. He handles difficulties in a rational and objective manner and is very methodical in his approach, however, the solutions he comes up with are often indicative of his misunderstanding of the situation. He owns a dictionary on humans which is his sole reference to understanding the comportment of the humans that enter their home."


Candy Caramella

Candy Caramella is certified neatfreak and house wife-alien. She's the main caretaker of the house, cooking, cleaning etc. Due to her compulsions (caused by Candy's mother) he tends to be very dramatic and overreacts, leading her to act irrational at times. She's also quite feminine, having the most female/feminine disguises out of the group and being quite gender ambigious in other countries, Candy was actually comfirmed to be a nonbinary transfem from both Stupid Invaders (the game) through multiple lines about getting a sex change and the creator of the show comfirmed the former in an interview.

Candy due to her overreactive nature and technically being the groups only girl character is subject to a lot of jokes relating to her irrationality and in some cases her femininity, most jokes about the latter being off her being extremely attracted to guys or her fondness for pantyhoses/lingerie. This ESPECIALLY becomes apparent in season 2 in which when amplfying the humour she was turned into a major butt monkey the entire punchline sometimes being just how upset she reacted to situations. Also interesting to note that canonically she was said to be the groups "concious" when she's the most superstitious and sensitive of the aliens, but I guess that superstitions part does match with Bud's nature of being unsuperstitious.

From the official Iggy pop cd:

"Candy Hector Caramella is the most sensitive alien of the Aliens' household. Obsessed with cleaning and decorating, Candy is a neat-freak, tomgirl, leader and a house-alien that was sure to keep the house clean in a perfect condition, but not allow it to become a filthy, health hazard-like mess. Apparently as a baby from her home planet, Zurkon, his mania came from Candy's mother, who would've been criticized from her diaper being dirty and stinky. She always gets in a feminine side to get some various female disguises by Etno's invention, the SMTV. Although possessing the largest cranium size within the group, She does not possess the largest brain."


Bud Budiovitch

Bud Budiovitch is the "dumb one" of the group, being quite lazy and laidback. Bud can be found mostly watching tv being quite addicted to the screen. However despite all that Bud is shown to be very kind and compassionate (especially towards animals) and is actually quite intelligent due to all the knowlegde they gain from watching tv programs.

As said earlier, while Bud is generally joked on for being the dumbest and laziest of the group, they actually had quite the amount of character depth (atleast as much as you can extract from a primarily light hearted cartoon) being as also mentioned before quite unsuperstitious, being able to calm and rationalize the situation for the goofs at moments. They're very compassionate towards animals, having even fallen in love with a few before and they have a large interest in western/cowboys, it sometimes being the major focus/theme of Bud centric episodes. Funnily enough while it was clearly intended that Bud in season 1 was also a major butt monkey, they felt suprisingly much more complex of a character compared to Bud in season 2 which tried to not make Bud the biggest joke in the room (I mean apart from the one time Gorgious called Bud the r slur but AHEM AHEM cough) but ultimately made him blander/forgettable.

From the official Iggy pop cd:

"Bud is laid back... in fact downright lazy. He spends most of his time flat on his back, watching TV and guzzling sodas. He is a true TV addict and will watch anything and everything. Bud is not enthusiastic nor is he driven by anything, but his TV. No one is quite sure if there is some intelligence behind his simple facade."


Gorgious Klatoo

Ok I'm not even going to sugarcoat it, Gorgious is one of the worst characters in the show, especially in season 2. Gorgious Klatoo is the brute of the group, his main character traits beung that he's incredibly food crazy and very ill tempered. Due to the latter he's shown to hold a deep hatred for humans like the others but is also most of the time an asshole towards the goofs, his prime targets being Candy and Bud.

Honestly how Gorgious was potrayed in early season 1 episodes is quite interesting as Gorgious was actually a lot tamer than how his attitude would later be potrayed especially in season 2. Gorgious while still obnoxious came off more as a character who wanted to get rid of problems through the quickest and easiest ways possible resulting in Gorgious acting quite impulsively upon such situations. However this of course all changed in season 2 where the characters got considerably flanderized thus resulting in Gorgious being even more of an asshole than he was in season 1 to the point where it's just straight up unpleasant. So it's no secret why Gorgious is so easily dislikable not only for his gluttonous and selfish behaviour but his general attitude and treatment towards the other characters.

From the official Iggy pop cd:

"Gorgious is the wildest member of the group. He is independent, impulsive and cynical and has an innate revulsion for humans. He has urges rather than feelings and is constantly crying to satisfy these needs. Eating is his priority and his is often taken by his uncontrollable fits of bulimia. His sole reason for being is to eat and drink, he has no other motives or desires to do anything else but consume delicacies such as ice cream, pizzas, roast chicken, etc"


Stereo Monovici

Stereo Monovici are conjoined twins which tends to give them some conflict whenever they start argueing about any given topic. The two heads can be differentiated with their voices however, one sounding a bit more bookwormish while the other a much more "crustier" voice. Despite their squabbling they do share a common interest in books and knowlegde, seemingly have an infinite amout of useless facts and they also tend to be quite mischivious.

If you know anything about this show, you'll soon know that Stereo was completely taken off the show for season 2, only appearing in 2 seperate episodes before leaving again. The backstory to how Stereo left was actually shown in one of the french comic stories which I guess is a little neat atleast explaining how they got written out of the show. The actual reasoning to Stereo's departure was due to most people and even the major people working at Xilam themselves deciding that Stereo was too boring as a character to stay and didn't really have many moments where they actively contributed to the plot. I kinda disagree with this notion but I'll explain more later (I'll give you an early hint, it was just a product of lazy writing).

From the official Iggy pop cd:

"Unlike the other aliens, Stereo has two heads. And each head has a separate personality which causes major problems. Both heads are in constant disagreement and never stop arguing because the only thing they have in common is their body. Stereo has one advantage; a photographic memory which in some instances can be very handy."


Episode Guide

Luckily most episodes of Space Goofs can be found easily on youtube through the official Space Goofs youtube channel, heavy emphasis on most however.

For whatever reason, they decided to not completely upload every individual episode from both seasons, even more frustrating they've managed to make playlists for their compilations of random space goofs episodes but not even for episodes listed in order for each season so there is a considerable amount of episodes missing from fan made season 1 and 2 playlists, especially for the latter. Even more annoying for both seasons episodes are wrongly numbered so there's no way of actually viewing this show chronologically unless you checked the wikipedia episode listing and even then it's sometimes wrongly numbered on the fanwiki! However you can binge watch all episodes through the official youtube channel's numbered compilations for both seasons in order, really strange why they would do that. There are also reuploads for episodes that are paired that weren't uploaded by the official channel.

Season 1


Season 2


I've already gone in depth with my thoughts of fucking game here, but I'll go through it real quick again.

▶ Giant rant about the game, click this if you wanna see me tear into this game.

Having played this game a few more times after writing the innitial review/page, I hate this game even more than I thought I could and throughout all my playthroughs with a friend viewing, all I could do was just get mad, point out everything wrong with Stupid Invaders and the possible damage it did/impacted for season 2's writing and flanderization. Literally everything about this game apart from a few miniscule aspects such as the music (which is just the regular space goofs soundtrack) or the background sets is either middling or fairly average to downright TERRIBLE. From controls to dialouge (which is basically none, literally harsh winds the vidya game) to puzzles which are irritatingly easy to fucking bullshit especially near the end, this game is TE-RRI-BLE. I can't for the life of me figure out exactly who this game was marketed towards apart from really die hard space goofs fans back in the 2000s, and even then that's an insult towards their tolerance for this game's bullshit, I swear any person who claims Stupid Invaders on any technicle level beyond le funny memes and jokes is a good game is either nostlagia blind or hasn't experienced the true hell of this game. I'm so glad Jerma got that dumb fucking disc message than played this game, while it would've been funny, it's not worth it and realizing now a terrible introduction to space goofs as a franchise. Not even the things outside of the game are good apart from the old archived website dedicated to it, maybe some box art and the bud shimeji of course considering how the game manuel/descs mischaracterizes the goofs (especially Etno). Overall I would not reccommend the toture unless you REALLY wanted to. Only other interesting thing abt this god forsaken game was this one interview with one of the people behind this game. 2.5/10, the people who designed this game must've had a serious oedipus complex (if you know what I mean).


Stupid Invaders was a CGI animated movie based of Space Goofs that would be produced by Action-Synthese and Xilam, directed by Oliver Jean-Marie and written by Brandon Sawyer. It was set to be released in the second quarter of 2009 however of course that never came to be as the project was cancelled due to the company Action-Synthese going bankrupt in 2013 as well as the overwhelmingly negative reception towards their previous animated film, Doogal/The Magic Roundabout. To put the nail in that coffin, Xilam themselves comfirmed via an email about the movie's status roughly translated from french "Thank you very much for your message, as well as for your interest in the Zinszins from space! Indeed, the film was in project, and (unfortunately) did not succeed." Despite the general mysteriousness behind this movie, quite a bit of info was found of it from concept art to what could be a brief plot run down, there also was a trailer uploaded on youtube for the movie showing off the goof's new 3d looks.

The plot of the movie seemed generally similar to the premise/pilot of Space Goofs with them crash landing on earth but instead of hiding out in the mansion, they end up crash landing in the home of an unamed teen girl who is curious about the goofs/aliens.

From a site detailing more of the movie and possibly more plot points:

The subject: Four harmless, switched-on aliens whose broken-down saucer falls by chance on our planet, try to escape from some overexcited earthlings: an idiot general, a stressed-out journalist, a mad scientist with an evil with a demonic plan, robot garden gnomes. To survive this forced stay in this crazy world, the earth, they will have to rely on friendship and the friendship and resourcefulness of a little girl fan of Science Fiction.

They are among us... and they are scared shitless! Far, far away, in a distant galaxy, a few dozen black holes and nebulae away live four specimens of particularly colorful aliens. In a saucer for an inter-galactic wedding, they get lost at the first light junction, cross a field of space potatoes of space potatoes and fall into the black hole discharge of Alpha Centauri. They disappear there. They reappear in our solar system and land heavily on our planet. Alert, they are among us! The invaders are here and this time everyone has seen them. The army is on its toes, the press on the spot. Could this be the end of civilization as we knew it? The four friends quickly understand that they will not be able to expect any help from the earthlings! First kidnapped, then helped by Lou, a little girl fan of Science Fiction, they escape from a tough general with a terrible sense of humor to foil the plans of a mad scientist at the head of an army of aging clones. It is by saving the little girl from a fatal genetic modification orchestrated by the mad scientist by the mad scientist that they will show the obtuse earthlings of humanity that they would do well to envy them. The invaders will return to their world because, really, the earth, with its hole in the ozone layer and its hysterical population, who would want to invade it ?


Concept art made for the movie by an employee who worked at Action-Synthese

Another render with the models


Les Zinzins de l'espace (Jungle Kids) volume 1 and 2 were two sets of comic books centering around the space goofs. It was most likely released after season 2 (past 2005) due to each volume including one section retelling a season two episode with the exception of vol 1 briefly retelling the first episode/Once upon a time.

Both volumes have been scanned and posted freely in a drive, however they have not been translated into english/are french only. Volume 1 and Volume 2 here.


Ein Hein für Aliens most likely produced by the band Dino Comics is a comic book centering around the space goofs released before season 2 and most likely during the airing of season 1 due to how many merchandising deals there were for it around the time. The book itself actually contains a lot more extra stuff such as a MAD magazine and Simpsons comics advertisments, a brief character introduction for all the goofs, a mini game and some behind the stuff information of the show and comic. For the comics itself it contains two stories, one a retelling/slight spin on the first episode/Once upon a time and a totally original story idea.

This book had been scanned and posted freely in a drive, however like the other comics made, they have not been translated into english and are german only, view here.

Space Goofs/Stupid Invaders iceberg


Space Goofs iceberg tiers explanation

click the image below to go back

a spinning gif of a brightly colored 3d model house

Spinning Planet Jupiter