The Brothers Grunt

Overview

The series centers on a group of pale, rubbery, twitchy humanoids with yellow eyes, blue hair, green tongues, and prominent varicose veins, who are always shirtless and wear boxer shorts and wingtip shoes. These characters, called the Brothers Grunt or simply the Grunts, are clumsy and dim-witted, able to contort their bodies into various shapes, and subsist mainly on cheese and martinis, though they can eat other foods such as potatoes. Their single parent is a large, floating, mute, morbidly obese male named Gruntus Primus Maximus, or the Maximus, who gives birth to them as embryos inside skin warts, similar to the Surinam toad.

The Grunts live in a monastery in an unspecified American wilderness location, accessible through sewers. Five of a set of sextuplets born from the Maximus form a group to retrieve their sixth brother, Perry, who abandoned his role as the Chosen One to live among humans, who generally ignore the Grunts' bizarre nature. The characters communicate mostly through grunts with occasional subtitles, so humor relies on physical comedy and abuse. Some episodes include music video segments supervised by Kathy Karp featuring additional animated grunting.

Production

The show originated from a 1993 MTV ad called "Grunt MTV" that Danny Antonucci animated while seeking work outside International Rocketship Ltd., where he had been employed since 1984. After the success of Lupo The Butcher, Antonucci wanted to leave that company and start his own, resulting in a.k.a.

Cartoon, founded on April 1, 1994. MTV executive Abby Terkhule liked the ad so much that he asked Antonucci to turn it into a series. Each episode consisted of three to four segments in production order.

Reception

The Brothers Grunt received generally negative reviews from critics. Kenneth R. Clark of the Chicago Tribune stated that MTV had "created the most repulsive creatures ever to show up on a television screen" and had "accomplished the seemingly impossible." Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times called the show "an effortful, sophomoric half-hour that leaves the viewer longing for the refined good taste of Alice Cooper." In the book North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema Since 1980, William Beard and Jerry White labeled the series a "failure." The show was often compared to Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, but co-creator Gábor Csupó rejected the comparison, noting his show was more character-driven while The Brothers Grunt was idea-driven, with different visual styles. Creator Danny Antonucci later said the series "didn't really do too well" and had become MTV's "dirty little secret."

Did You Know?

• Fleer released trading cards based on the series in 1995 as part of the MTV Animation Fleer's Ultra set.
• The show's theme song, written by Brendan Dolan and Geoff Whelan, appeared on Television's Greatest Hits: Volume 7 in 1996.
• T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks, and calendars were sold to promote the show between 1994 and 1995.