Top 10 Bizarre Relationships in Children’s Media

Ahh… love… it’s everywhere, and children’s media is no exception, in fact, sometimes the couples that are in love in these pieces of children’s media are as weird as they come. I’ve taken the liberty of sorting out some of the weirdest ones and listing them here with ten being the least weird of the group and one being totally insane. Some of these couples are more well known than others, while others are ones you probably have never heard of before. Keep in mind, I only included one couple per movie or franchise, for those that included more than one crazy couple I chose the one that was more crazy or had more success than the other.

Premiering in 2000, Dinosaur was a revolutionary film in terms of animation. It’s the first film EVER to put computer animated characters in front of live action backgrounds. But that aspect is not what we are talking about what we are talking about is the romance in this film. Aladar is a male iguanadon that grew up with a family of lemurs… not seeing any of his kind whatsoever until he’s a full grown adult. When he does, one of the first he meets is the female iguanadon Neera. He has to get through her brother Kron before he can win over her heart but he eventually does win her over when Kron is tragically killed by a carnotaur by giving her some comfort. At the end of the film audiences were treated to seeing Aladar and Neera’s batch of eggs, as Aladar’s lemur family greets his newly hatched son into the world. This isn’t necessarily a really crazy couple but the fact that Aladar hadn’t met any of his kind until adulthood puts them on this list.

While Manny premiered in the 2002 Ice Age Movie, Ellie didn’t come until Ice Age: The Meltdown in 2006 (a big year for this list) These two are both Woolly Mammoths so it doesn’t seem that this couple is that incredibly strange unless you consider the fact that Ellie is Manny’s second mate! That’s right Manny had a mate before Ellie but she passed away a while before the first movie, a quick review of the beautiful cavepainting scene in the 2002 film will expand on this. Another factor that earned this duo’s spot on this list is the fact that for a big chunk of Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ellie who was raised by a family of possums, firmly believes that she IS a possum. It’s not until, out of the blue, she remembers  her possum mom finding  her that she realizes that she is a mammoth. Even still she is extremely close to her possum “brother’s” Crash and Eddie, and the three are basically a package deal for Manny. Another bonus for this couple, in the 2009 film Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs Manny and Ellie welcomed their daughter Peaches into the world.

Even aliens need love and Stitch is no exception, in fact, Disney took the liberty of creating a character just for the sole reason of being his girlfriend. Meet Angel experiment #624, who premiered in the 2004 “Angel” episode of Lilo and Stitch the Series. She basically looks just like Stitch but is pink with longer antennas which look uncannily like long hair. Her best talent however is her singing which she frequently uses to convince the other experiments to be either good or bad, even though she premiered in 2004 it took until the 2006 “Snafu” episode for the two to get together. The reason that these two have made it onto this list is simple… Stitch and Angel are cousins! I dunno if there are any hillbillies in Hawaii but it seems like these two pretty much mastered that area. Even so, “Angel” was voted number one best episode of the series when Disney Channel had fans of the series vote on the official website… and we wonder why we let our kids watch these shows.

Those who enjoyed the first Brother Bear movie in 2003 were in for a shocker when they sat down in front of their tvs to enjoy this straight to dvd movie that came out in 2006. In the film it is spring, the season of love and noone is immune to it’s calls, not even good old Kenai, voiced by none other than Patrick Dempsey of Greys Anatomy fame. When Kenai runs into his old pal Nita he is thrilled to say the least, until he realizes that she only wants his help to return a necklace he gave her when they were little that apparently bound them together, meaning they could only be with each other. Of course, Kenai’s ‘McDreamy’ charm wins her over and at the end of the movie she ends up dumping the other guy, and changing herself into a bear so that she could be with him. This girl literally changed into a different species so that she could be with this guy! That’s not the weirdest part of this film though, anyone who has seen this movie won’t soon forget the literal bear wedding that is featured at the end of the film.

This is the only double couple in the list, but I couldn’t list two of them without the their best friends. Everyone knows of Scooby Doo and his owner Norville “Shaggy” Rogers or Shaggy for short. Crystal and Amber on the other hand are characters that not too many people know of. In the film Scooby Doo and the Alien Invaders which was released in 2000 (one of the two big years for this list) Shaggy and Scooby are sure that they have met their true loves in Crystal, an attractive female human who wears tye-dyed outfits and her pet golden retriever, Amber. They spend a great majority of the film together investigating recent reports of ‘alien activity’ in the local desert, and it seems that everything is going great until audiences were shocked with the reveal that Crystal and Amber were not what anyone thought they were, first they say that they are nature photographers, sweet! Then they say that they are not nature photographers but that they work for the government, investigating the alien reports, even more sweet! Then they say that yeah, they work for the government but not for any government on this planet… that’s right, Crystal and Amber are freaking aliens, not sweet! As Velma says “I always said everyone has somebody out there… but I never thought I meant out there.” It becomes quite obvious once this is revealed that it’s not going to work out since well long distance relationships never work out. The four part ways sadly and that was the last we saw of the groovy alien girls.

I’m not talking about the original Teen Titans comics here, I’m talking about the Cartoon Network TV show that started in 2003. Throughout the duration of this show which got canceled in early 2006 the fandom for these two was INSANE to say the least. It took until the TV movie Teen Titans: Trouble In Tokyo in late 2006 for the couple to actually become an item. You might be asking why in the world are these two on this list? Ok, think about this, Robin is a human… and Starfire, well, she is an alien, a Tamaranian to be exact, a Tamaranian princess to be even more exact. This is a couple made up of a mere human boy and an alien princess! They’ve made it to number five on this list because not only are they an interspecies couple (a big trend in children’s media these days as you will see with the rest of the list) but I’m sure that most male readers would love to be on the Robin side of this equation.

While they were both featured in the 2005 Madagascar movie, this wacky twosome didn’t become an official item until Madagascar 2 in 2008, making them the newest couple on this list. Audiences had no idea that it was coming until, about fifteen minutes into the second film Melman blurts out of nowhere that “I love you Gloria, I always have!” and the drama ensues. Completely oblivious to her best friend’s affections, Gloria goes off and finds a buff hippo guy to cozy up to by the name of Moto Moto (Which literally translates from Swahili into “Hot Hot”) who apparently only likes her for being “Big and Chunky”. It didn’t end sad for the tall guy however, because good old Melman Mankiewicz the third (yes, that is his real name, feel free to laugh all you want) finally managed to win Gloria over by attempting to sacrifice himself to the fire gods by jumping into a volcano… how romantic.

Like Melman and Gloria, this interspecies couple consists of a giraffe, but that’s about where the similarities end. This time around the female, Bridget is the giraffe and the male, Benny is… a squirrel. This strange couple who premiered in the 2006 film The Wild did not start off smoothly. Benny at the beginning of the film is obviously interested in Bridget, who seems to have no interest at all in having a relationship with a squirrel. Amazingly enough, by the end of the film after going through crazy adventures helping their pal Samson the lion retrieve his son Ryan, Benny is able to win Bridget over, actually earning a kiss from her! Apparently in this movie, more commonly known as Disney’s cheap version of the much more successful Madagascar series that Dreamworks created that kind of stuff happens. But hey, at least these two beat Melman and Gloria on this list… although the two couples next on the list are certainly much more bizarre.

This couple made up of two characters who have been around for around 50 years premiered in the 2000 broadway play based off of Dr. Seuss’s works. Horton is the well-known elephant from the “Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg” books and Gertrude is the little known blue bird from one of the ‘other stories’ in “Yertle The Turtle and Other Stories”. The writers of this play however decided to be a bit daring and pair the two up anyway. In the show Gertrude McFuzz (yes, that is her real name) has been living next door to Horton for a while and has found that well… she kinda is head over heels in love with the guy. The issue? She only has a one feather tail, which she is sure is a turn off, so she goes to the doctor of the jungle and literally gets “pillberries” to make it grow. Of course, Horton takes no notice and when he is kidnapped by the circus while he is watching over Mayzie’s egg she finds that the tail is too long to allow her to fly! Gertrude gives in and gets the tail plucked and goes through (I am not kidding here) being attacked by a dog, hurting her foot and being the victim of a hit and run among other things in order to find him at the circus and rescue him. This wins Horton over and when the egg hatches the two decide to raise the Elephant Bird inside together. Oh, and by the way, this play closed on broadway after only seven months, apparently the plot was too complicated, go figure.

This could quite possibly be the most well known couple on this list. This crazy couple made up of a talking donkey and a fire-breathing dragon first premiered in the 2001 film Shrek and are going strong. Like Horton and Gertrude, Bridget and Benny and Melman and Gloria above, they are an interspecies couple. However, Donkey and Dragon have 5 little things that shot them up to this number one spot, Their names are Peanut, Parfait, Coco, Bananas and Debbie and they are Dronkeys. That’s right, Donkey and Dragon somehow managed to mate and produce a litter of 6 kids who premiered in Shrek 2 in 2004. Note that I only said five names though, sadly enough one of the six mysteriously disappeared between Shrek 2 and Shrek the third which premiered with only 5 Dronkeys in 2007. Don’t ask how they managed to have kids though, even Donkey has no idea. In Shrek The Third when Shrek mentions that he knows how Fiona got pregnant, he just can’t believe it happened, Donkey responds with a serious “How does it happen?”

Honorable Mentions: Shrek/Fiona from the Shrek Franchise, Doppler/Amelia from Treasure Planet, Skipper/Bobblehead Doll from the Madagascar Franchise.