Wonder Showzen

Wonder Showzen is an American adult black comedy television series that aired between 2005 and 2006 on MTV2. It was created by Vernon Chatman and John Lee of PFFR. Described as a children's television series for adults, the show's format is a parody of educational PBS Kids shows such as Sesame Street and The Electric Company (e.g. use of stock footage, puppetry, and clips of children being interviewed). In addition to general controversial comedy, it satirizes politics, religion, war, sex and culture with black comedy. Production Wonder Showzen was created by Vernon Chatman and John Lee, who originally made an early concept of it back in 1999, and pitched to the USA Network in 2000, but after a few minutes of viewing, executives there quickly concluded it did not fit the network's programming style. However, Viacom was re-branding MTV2 and made Wonder Showzen part of its new programming lineup. It aired as part of Sic 'Em Fridays, along with Dirty Sanchez and Wildboyz. The pilot and early concept were named simply "Kids Show". The Wonder Showzen theme song was also called 'Kids Show'. Reruns of the show also aired on MTV and Comedy Central. The first episode had animated segments provided by Raw Power, while the rest of the series had animated segments done by Augenblick Studios. Ben Q. Jones, who was a member of the art collective Paper Rad, did some animations for the series, before continuing to work with PFFR again on his failed Adult Swim pilot Neon Knome, which was rejected, yet turned a show on Cartoon Network called The Problem Solverz, which Jones himself created. Another notable crew member who worked on Wonder Showzen was Mark Marek, who also worked on Cartoon Network's Mad and Nickelodeon's KaBlam!; he created Yuck, Yuck, Goose, and his sidekick, his Butt for Wonder Showzen.