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   Sweet Deals April 14, 2025 at

   Pretzel and the Puppies is saccharine, but it’s cute. The animation looks great. The dogs look and move like dogs. The city looks like it was made from papercraft, and the action is not excessive or hyper-stimulating. The dogs sing their little jingle, which is not annoying, overdone, or generic.

   The main plot is about a father, Pretzel, a mother, Greta, and their five puppies. Pretzel encourages his children to “make their bark”, which in this case means making the world a better place, even if the good deed is small and simple. I can’t really argue with that. I believe doing good deeds is a good thing, and that you don’t have to be big and powerful to make a difference. The puppies are small, but they come up with the ideas all by themselves and resourcefully use whatever they have lying around. Their father, Pretzel, and the other grown-ups typically indulge whatever idea his puppies have without any reservation or complaint. I’m all for encouraging autonomy in children: it’s good to let kids work things out for themselves (with adult supervision, of course). It helps that while the puppies might have to try lots of different ideas on the way to their goal, they never make any big mistakes that might make a mess or cause anyone to get hurt.

   The world of Muttgomery is a lot gentler than real life, and life is depicted as relatively frictionless. If anyone wants something, all the puppies have to do is ask. Mom is the mayor of the town, so when the puppies want to help the town, Mom immediately brings it to the town council, and they pass the vote right away without any fuss or red tape. When the puppies want to host a party and ask a local shopkeeper to provide the kibble, he brings it right out without asking for anything in return. There’s usually no fighting over how to get something or who gets what, and everyone is always working together and cheering each other on. Maybe the cynical adult in me shouldn’t be nitpicking a children’s cartoon about talking dogs, but I tend to roll my eyes when shows get too saccharine and frictionless. I know it’s only a cartoon, but anyone who has dealt with children and grown-ups knows from experience that even little kids can have big emotions, and even simple problems can become a hassle if others don’t cooperate, which in real life is all the time. I’m beginning to think that these shows are ultra-idealized not for the benefit of child viewers, but as a fantasy for grown-ups in the room who have had enough fighting battles in the real world and don’t want to deal with any sadness or conflict on TV, or producers who might be afraid that kids might think conflict is an imitable act. Being happy and easy all the time seems nice, but smiling too long can hurt your teeth just as much as too much sugar can. Learning how to deal with conflicts, coping with negative emotions and resolving them is just as important as “making your bark”, but that’s another problem for another show.

   Pretzel, Greta, and their puppies are an adorable nuclear family. I think Greta works and Pretzel is the house-husband who watches the kids, but Pretzel is really good at it because he’s patient and encouraging, and being extra-long is useful when corralling five excitable puppies.

   Around town, it’s common to see female dogs in traditionally masculine professions (firefighters, construction, garbage pick-up, mechanics) and male dogs in feminine ones (the librarian). Nothing is inherently wrong with this, but it feels slightly like deck-stacking.

   One of the puppies, Poppy, appears to have the dog-equivalent of a wheelchair. When one of her friends appears wearing a dog cone that gets in her way, she mentions that having a wheelchair sometimes makes it hard for her to play, too.

   In the fifth episode, “Groom Games”, a golden doodle dog appears to have two male dogs as parents, but only one of them is a golden doodle like the kids are. The other dog is a black-and-white dog. The golden doodle family reappears in a few episodes because the children are friends, and they own a furry outfitters store downtown. It’s very subtle because the show doesn’t call much attention to it. Some of the episodes where the golden doodles appear don’t feature both adults at the same time, so viewers might not notice it.

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