Wonder Pets! is an American animated childrens television series. It debuted March 3, 2006, on the Nick Jr. block of the Nickelodeon cable television network and Noggin (now Nick Jr.) on the same day. It won an Emmy Award in 2008 and 2010 for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition in the United States.\r
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The Wonder Pets! television series was created by Josh Selig for Little Airplane Productions. The show was first seen as a short Nick Jr.s film series called Linny the Guinea Pig, in which a guinea pig named Linny traveled into space and under the ocean. Ming-Ming Duckling and Turtle Tuck were created when the show was expanded and called The Super Singing Power Pets!. The title was later shortened to Wonder Pets. The shows main characters are three elementary school classroom pets — Linny the Guinea Pig, Turtle Tuck, and Ming-Ming Duckling. They are presented as a trio of heroes who rescue baby animals as they demonstrate the benefits of teamwork.\r
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The animation style used to create Wonder Pets! is called photo-puppetry, and was created for the series to allow animators to manipulate photographs of real animals. It also uses drawn objects (not characters), so the total presentation could be considered animated mixed-media.\r
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A good deal of the dialog is sung, so the show has been likened to operetta or singspiel. A 10-member live orchestra performs each episode, sometimes including other instrumentalists skilled in music from the region to which the pets are traveling during the episode. Completing each episode takes thirty-three weeks from script to final delivery.\r
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Each episode follows a similar structure, with some variation, in terms of the storyline and the musical form.\r
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As each episode begins, viewers hear the school children, off-screen, leaving school at the end of the day. They say goodbye to the classroom pets. Once the classroom is vacant, a pencil holder rattles to create the ringing of a telephone. Often, the classroom will be decorated with student artwork or other items related to the storyline, particular animal or geographic location of that episode.\r
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One by one, the classroom pets wordlessly notice the ringing phone. Up to this point in the episode, they have acted like normal animals and not said a single word. But as the phone rings, the Wonder Pets get dressed and make their way towards the phone while singing their opening verses.
