The Magic 7...But Where's John Candy

this year, a made for tv film called the Magic 7 is being released. It was a fantasy film that was part animation part live action (I think). It's plot was about a group of kids who challenge the 6 arch enemies of the earth and ride a 5 toed dragon (voiced by James Earl Jones). From what we've read or heard about it, John Candy and Madeline Kahn were involved in the making of this project. Both of them recorded the voices for their characters in the early 1990's. But the project was shelved for more than a few years. The final version is coming out this year but sadly neither John Candy or Madeline Kahn's characters appeared in it. Now I feel that the true fans of John Candy have been cheated on. And as a fan of John Candy myself (as well as being a close friend of his) I feel that it was unfair that John was removed from the cast list and that his voice wasn't used in the final film. I mean John had been in animated projects before. He was the voice of Wilbur the albatross in Rescuers Down Under (which is our friend the Master Of Oz's favourite Disney film, his 2nd favourite is The Wild) and voiced himself in the cartoon series Camp Candy (which should be aired on Boomerang as well as the original Biker mice series). He also voiced a few characters in the sci fi animated film Heavy Metal- most notably Den the geek turned muscleman, a robot in one of the other segments and a desk sergent in another one. The true JC fans out there have been cheated on by the producers of the Magic 7. Not only is John's voice not in the final version of the film but we're not sure if his character was voiced by someone else or just removed from the film- and we were looking forward to seeing what his character Smokestak Sam was going to be like. We kinda imagine that the character would be kind of like a cross between Sully from Monsters Inc and the Genie from Aladdin. We kind of imagine that Madeline Kahn's character Wastra must be kind of like a cross between Maleficent and Cruella DeVil.

If John's character was indeed voiced by someone else in the final version I hope it was Tino Insana- because he sounds a lot like John Candy. He was the voice of Pig in Barnyard and it's spin-off series Back At The Barnyard, he was the voice of Uncle Ted in Bobby's World as well. He's also currently the voice of Barf the mog in the new Spaceballs cartoon series which we have seen more than a few episodes of (we think it's really funny).

Our mascot Chumsley was voiced by John Candy in our animated shorts, commercials and in Chumsley and Friends from 1982-1994. When John died in 1994, we got Tino Insana to fill in. You can still see more than a little bit of John's personality in him. Chumsley the werejohncandy is pretty much a LOT like John Candy himself- he's kind of like a mix of some of John's best characters, he's a little bit of Ox, a little bit of Del Griffith, a little bit of Freddie Bauer, a little bit of Irv Blitzer and more than a little bit of ol Uncle Buck. Tino Insana also provides the voice of Uncle Kong in our latest cartoon series Bonzi's Jungle Treehouse. Uncle Kong is based on the title character from Uncle Buck. He's basically John Candy as a gorilla.

We were very good friends with John Candy. We met him once. And the first parody we actually wrote when we were on Amiright was a parody of the song John Henry by Harry Belafonte and was the true story of how we met and became friends with him. We've also got this amazing story of how we saved his life once. You can view the music video for that song on

the Chumsley and friends seasons 1-2 dvd special features. Also you can view the original Chumsley and friends animated shorts featuring John as the voice of Chumsley. These animated shorts of ours aired during the early 1980's. You can also view the commercials featuring Chumsley- they are a parody of those commercials where people turn into monsters and similar stuff like that, in them someone (usually me) turns into Chumsley. We pulled that off using a variety of different techniques, including morphing, makeup, and special effects. You can also view the PSA's featuring Chumsley. In mid 1984 we did a series of PSAs featuring Chumsley- each one with John Candy providing the voice of the character. These PSAs can also be seen as one of the special features on the Chumsley and Friends season 1-2 dvd boxset.

Chumsley the werejohncandy is our beloved mascot. He's been featured in quite a few of our animation projects. He's starred in a couple of episodes of Doizee's Fairy Tales. Doizee's Fairy Tales was a puppet tv show which is a spin-off of the Doizee Club kids show. In it Doizee tells her kids a variety of entertaining fairy tales. Chumsley plays the role of the Beast in the episode Beauty's Beast Friend which is kind of like the Disney version of Beauty And The Beast and the role of the Giant in the episode Sam And The Beanstalk (featuring Sam Leno as the title character) a retelling of Jack and the beanstalk.

For those who are curious, this is what Chumsley looks like in animated form:

This is what he looks like in live action form:

There are a couple of books with Chumsley in them which we did. The first one is a storybook called Chumsley's Family Vacation and the other is a graphic novel called The Good, The Bad, And The Furry which is a satire of those Clint Eastwood style spaghetti westerns. He appears in quite a few SCTV books of ours including the SCTV Power Rangers crossover comic. There are action figures of him and his family available in stores as well as ones of his various relatives. These ones are also available in Cuddle Buddy form. In some of the SCTV video games we have he is a special guest character, in SCTV VS SNL he's an unlockable character. There are several ways to unlock him- one way is to complete Arcade Mode using John Candy or one of his characters. The other way is to enter the word CUDDLEPAL as a cheat code on the cheat menu, and then there's the other way- go to character select mode, on the left side of the screen opposite John Belushi and Chris Farley is a box with a golden heart symbol on it- select that box and Chumsley appears.

The Chumsley And Friends Season 1-2 dvd boxset comes with a Chumsley Jumbo Cuddle Buddy (it's kind of like a beanie buddy) that talks, tells stories and sings songs. There's also a variety of John Candy mushabellies including one of Chumsley.

If you want to know where Chumsley lives. He lives in a tree fort located in the woods, it's next door to the clubhouse that was the setting for various episodes of The Doizee Club. He has lots of animal friends. He tells them stories and sings to them as well. He also has a couple of human friends there that help out or visit- one of them is Josh Peck from Drake and Josh.