Breadwinners (2014 TV Series)

Breadwinners is a flash-animated television series that aired on Nickelodeon. It was originally an Internet video on YouTube, before Nickelodeon took an interest and decided to turn it into an animated series. The series debuted in February 2014 and ended in September 2016. Reruns were on Nicktoons from 2016 to 2020.

Plot
The series revolves around two anthropomorphic, flightless ducks named SwaySway and Buhdeuce, who are best friends and fly around the water-based planet Pondgea in a rocket-powered van delivering bread to the citizens.


 * 1) The animation may be fluid, but it never really goes above average in terms of quality.
 * 2) Weird character designs. Notably, SwaySway and Buhdeuce are supposed to be ducks, but they look more like frogs (unironically, they own a pet frog named Jelly) with orange lips; the background characters, who are also ducks, are made from stock photography, similar to Fish Hooks.
 * 3) * This also happened before with Chop Socky Chooks, which the main trio are supposed to be chickens when they look more like bowling pin creatures with lips.
 * 4) Most of the episodes have weak storylines.
 * 5) It mainly overuses unfunny gross-out and toilet humor, mostly consisting of butt and fart jokes.
 * 6) * The show relies heavily on butt humor. Notably the main duo twerk in almost every episode and Buhdeuce has a "special attack" move in which he punches people with his buttocks, which is referred to as a "booty kick".
 * 7) * In "Bye Bye Booty", Buhdeuce's butt literally comes to life and separates from him; the episode also lazily rips off elements from the novel The Day My Bum Went Psycho!.
 * 8) * In "Frog Day Afternoon" and "Adventures in Big Baby Bun Sitting", Big Baby Buns and his parents each have three buttocks, which is disturbing to look at.
 * 9) * In "Rodeo Ducks" shows Buhdeuce having an enlarged butt in front of the audience.
 * 10) * In "PB&J" ends with the main characters doing a "farty punch", which is just utterly nonsensical.
 * 11) * In "Shrunken Ducks" SwaySway and Buhdeuce climbed Rambamboo's butt causing her to hit a lamppost!
 * 12) On the topic of gross-out humor, the violence is extremely realistic, featuring everything from skin peeled onwards. As a result, it feels disturbing to the point where the show feels more like an adult animated series than a children's animated series.
 * 13) Hammy voice acting, with Buhdeuce's voice acting being one notable example.
 * 14) Most of the characters are one-dimensional and unlikable.
 * 15) * Even the main characters, SwaySway and Buhdeuce, are unlikable in some instances. An example can be with how they aren't afraid of breaking laws and acting flat-out creepy, with one instance showing the duo chasing others with chainsaws and another being breaking into an girls-only summer camp for SwaySway to force Jenny Quackles, a younger duck, to love him in one episode.
 * 16) * Oonski the Great is an awful villain, besides breaking through everyone’s homes for their jewelry. He’ll fall in love with every object he sees with female attributes.
 * 17) * Jenny Quackles herself is a disgusting and pointless love-interest with no personality at all.
 * 18) Average soundtrack, done mostly in an "8-bit" retro style.
 * 19) The show is extremely hyperactive, to the point there's not enough moments where the characters calm down or talk in a normal way.
 * 20) The pacing in many episodes is too fast.
 * 21) The distributors of the show don't take kindly to criticism. RebelTaxi gave this show a negative review and it was taken down by Viacom despite fair use.
 * 22) * They even took down the original pilot on YouTube, despite technically not owning the rights to it.
 * 23) * The writers of the show completely ignore criticism. While Sanjay and Craig started out mediocre, it got better over time because they listened to criticism; the show only became more lazily-written (culminating in "PB&J", a rehash of "Everyone Knows It's Bendy" and the heavily panned and controversial SpongeBob SquarePants episode "A Pal for Gary").
 * 24) It tries too hard to appeal to modern day children. For example, Buhdeuce will say "Yeah boi!" in some scenes.
 * 25) Some of its episodes are inappropriate and disturbing for younger audiences:
 * 26) * The Love Loaf episode. It contains a scene involving an implied rape joke at the end, which is highly inappropriate for its target audience. In the episode, SwaySway, who has a crush on Jenny Quackles, tries to force Jenny Quackles to eat the love loaf (essentially a love drug disguised as bread) so that she'll fall in love with him, which conveys a cruel message to children that "drugging someone will make someone fall in love with you" and encourages sexual harassment and, well... pedophilia, since Jenny Quackles is far younger (despite being a stock image of an adult duck rather than a duckling, which kinda makes this less creepy but still) than SwaySway.
 * 27) * There’s also one episode that promotes mechanophilia in the episode "Quazy for Vanessa". During the song about Oonski's love for Vanessa (which is actually the Breadwinners’ rocket van disguised as a girl), he actually wanted to raise a family with the van. It even shows the duck doctor shocked at the newborn rocket-van/beaver hybrid especially SwaySway and Buhduece!
 * 28) It overuses a lot of sound effects from Hanna-Barbera, which can get grating on the ears pretty quickly.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Creative and interesting concepts, notably the Rocket Van and the "level-up" concept, as well as the premise of SwaySway and Buhdeuce delivering bread to other ducks.
 * 2) As mentioned before, the animation is fluid and is at least better than the animation in the pilot.
 * 3) The weird character designs are admittedly cute.
 * 4) The bright color palette of the show is nice to look at.
 * 5) There are a handful of catchy songs, with the intro being one notable example.
 * 6) T-Midi, Chief Rambamboo, Jelly, Ketta, and the Bread Maker are all likable characters.
 * 7) The Breadwinners themselves can be likable sometimes, and they actually do get comeuppance for their actions.
 * 8) Despite what most people say, there are still a handful of funny moments.
 * 9) * Speaking of which, there are some nonsensical moments that come out as funny, like in the episode "Quazy for Vanessa" when half of Budhuece’s face gets scraped on building and SwaySway tells him to shake it off and then his face is completely cured.
 * 10) Some episodes are decent or nice, including "Night of the Living Bread" and the series finale.
 * 11) Despite it’s violence and gross-out humor, it still feels like a kids show because there’s no blood, overtly grotesque wounds, feces and/or urine in the show, unlike Mr. Meaty, which the latter feels nothing like a kids show on Nick.
 * 12) It's not as bad as Fanboy & Chum Chum.
 * 13) The Breadwinners theme song, while cringey, is not as awful as Fanboy & Chum Chum.

Reception
Breadwinners received extremely negative reviews from critics and audiences alike. The show currently holds a 3.5/10 on IMDb and a 3.8/10 on tv.com and is considered to be one of the worst Nickelodeon shows ever made, and was heavily criticized for it's violence, and bad morals.

Saberspark placed the show at #10 on his "Top 10 WORST Nickelodeon Cartoons" list. PhantomStrider has strong hatred for this cartoon.