Little Shop (TV Series)

Little Shop was a 1991 animated television series about a teenager and a giant talking plant that ate everything in sight. Little Shop was based on the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors, which was itself based on the off-broadway musical of the same name, which was based on the 1960 Roger Corman film The Little Shop of Horrors. Despite the gruesome theme of murder and abuse presented in previous versions of the story, Little Shop was sanitized for children. The series followed self-proclaimed nerd Seymour Krelborn, an adolescent boy who worked in a flower shop where he kept his pet plant, a Venus Flytrap named Junior. The unusual thing about Junior was that he sprouted from a 200 million year-old seed and had the ability to talk... and rap! While Seymour was well aware of Junior's vocal abilities, no one else seemed to know. The flower shop was owned by stodgy Mr. Mushnik, whose daughter Audrey was the object of Seymour's affections. Audrey, however, would show no indications of feeling the same towards him. Also seen was buck-toothed Paine Driller, a neighborhood bully who continuously targeted Seymour. Episodes focused on the pubescent exploits of the leads and frequently featured a heavy-handed moral. The series was a musical, like the 1986 film, and featured a couple of musical numbers per episode. In keeping with the "urban" persona of the carnivorous plant in the musical film, Audrey Junior in the series rapped during his numbers, and spoke with a more modern, hip-hop dialect. Also featured were a trio of singing flowers which were reminiscent of Crystal, Ronette, and Chiffon, the three chorus girls in the film.