i’ve been teasing it for a while…but i think it’s time we talked about this guy.

my last fandom before getting back into caddicarus was within the WDAS/pixar movie sphere. and if you’ve seen encanto, then puppicarus is basically like the bruno of the caddicarus fandom. especially post-2020.

but as i said at the beginning of this post - we’re gonna talk about him today!

so look below the cut, and get ready for quite the flashback…or a history lesson if you’re newer!

~ exposition ~

so imagine you’re a caddicarus fan who came along between 2020 and now. you just got done rewatching the main channel videos an…unholy amount of times, and you’ve finally decided to head over to the second channel to see what’s going on over there. you find streams…tons of them. you peek at a couple, but don’t watch them all the way through. you also look at those “best of” videos.

but then you scroll down a little farther, and you end up in the forbidden pre-2020 period. the mysterious period of which caddy told you to never look at. yet, you proceed.

you find random shitposts, the old skits caddy looked at, other discussion videos, an old room tour…it’s all innocent, wholesome content.

but at the very top of this pre-caddy plays period is a strange set of videos titled puppicarus. they’re uploaded out of order, but you don’t realize that. you click on one of them, and you’re then greeted by the actual debut of endigo’s iconic 8-bit intro…and the reason why jim still sticks with the same caddicarus choir he recorded in 2012 when his voice hadn’t deepened yet.

you then watch a skit with a puppet version of caddy attempting to take stan on a walk- OH MY GOD IT’S BABY STAN!!! HE’S SO TINY!!!

once the short 3-minute video ends, you try to read the comments but find they’re disabled. the description has no links…just a couple sentences that read “made by cerys mackay. reuploaded here and taken away from the main channel due to too much negativity!”

you hover your cursor over the area where a comment section would normally be, touching the digital, ancient soil of [OLD], and you think to yourself…“something terrible happened here”.

 

early history

on the 12th of july in 2015, the first caddicarus show episode in nearly 3 months was uploaded - the ballz 3D collab with yungtown. this episode wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, as it was pretty much just a huge shitpost playing on how caddy’s and luke’s styles don’t flow well together. however…people still took it seriously and complained. it was the first caddicarus episode in 3 months.

within this fever dream of an episode were the first appearances of caddy’s tattoos (they’d already appeared in videos a few weeks before, but this was their first TCS appearance), a rap song performed by caddy and luke, the first sponsor segment for the pixel empire…but most importantly, it was the first appearance of a character named puppicarus.

after receiving this puppet for his 21st birthday, caddy decided to dedicate a sketch to him in this episode. this short sketch, titled “do it with puppicarus”, had the puppet instructing viewers on how to make pasta…by smashing a combination of pop tarts, pasta noodles, and ham in a pan. he also appeared in the snow white episode for a small bit where he flipped the bird at caddy.

at first, this character was actually wonderfully received. he quickly became a hit with fans - the comment section of the video had nothing but praise for him. people were begging for puppicarus segments to become regular on the channel, and some were even begging for a series!

for the next several months, puppicarus would be occasionally mentioned in social media posts, but he wouldn’t have any appearances on the channel. well, that was until…

 

the series

it was a friday morning in december 2015…the 18th, to be exact. an unexpected now-deleted update video dropped on caddy’s channel, announcing a brand new friday series. we were informed several months earlier that a possible friday series could be coming to the channel; back in june, caddy uploaded an also now-deleted (and unfortunately unarchived) video where he announced that he was coming up with ideas for this friday show.

this friday show was the puppicarus show - a show where the titular puppet does just about anything. movie reviews, skits…anything was possible! the videos would be produced by cerys in a channel first - the caddick-mackay household had only just officially assembled with caddy moving in, and therefore a tighter schedule could be more possible with cerys’ help.

later that day, the first episode dropped. this episode was called “walking the dog”, and in it, puppicarus showed the audience how to walk a dog in his usual chaotic way. of course, the tiny stanley - only a few months old at the time - stole the show with his adorableness.

the next friday was christmas, so the episode for that day was a cute christmas message from puppicarus. during this message, he expressed how overwhelmingly positive the show’s reception has been! well, gee, can’t wait to see where this show goes in 2016!

after the channel returned from winter break in mid-january, the third episode “dating” premiered. in this episode, he got ready for a date with chloe! upon arriving to her house, he quickly made chloe uncomfortable with his “self-cleansing” hair, and upon finding this out, caddy threw him out of the second-story window. the poor puppet laid on the grass as he chewed on the flowers he got for chloe.

in the fourth episode, puppicarus reviewed “the revenant”. this was pretty much just a normal quick movie review, just with a puppet as a gimmick…wait a minute, was arlo around at that point? did jim know who he was at that point? hmmmmm…

it would’ve been interesting to see where this show went next, but unfortunately, its life was cut short…

 

the fall

on january 23rd, 2016 - the day after the show’s fourth and final episode was released, puppicarus was abruptly canceled. here is caddy’s infamous twitter rant condensed into this one paragraph…

So, after the unbelievably unsupportive shit we’ve had to read through, Puppicarus has ended. Sorry to all that enjoyed it/gave feedback. [1] Constructive people = the best. We listened. But everyone else that decided to tear our lives to shreds over a fucking puppet, fuck you. [2] We only made Puppicarus a thing for MORE content for everybody. That’s all. And it was thrown back in our faces. And it was a LOT of hate. [3] Trust me, I’ve ignored this shit for years - wouldn’t be here if I didn’t - but the level of hate here was utterly ridiculous. Not worth it. [4] Whoever was genuinely harsh/critical and tried to make it better - thank you. Meant a lot to Cerys. But Christ, it’s not worth it. [5] This isn’t a ‘giving into the haters’ scenario - I get plenty of hate on well-received videos - this was ANOTHER fucking level. [6] Disabling comments and likes defeats the point of making content - we WANT to see what people think - but not for this. Speechless. [7] I’ll stick the vids on the 2nd channel soon, but after this shit, no way is it continuing. Cerys and I still want to feel creative. <3 [8] Thanks for the support everyone but being told to 'not give up’ would be Cerys making content for the sake of views. Not what we want. [9]

soon after this rant was posted, the original uploads on the main channel were yoinked, and about 3 days later they were reuploaded out of order on the second channel.

so…what about that overwhelmingly positive reception? what on earth happened?

well, puppicarus was just one of the few factors that lead to the bust of the caddicarus channel’s initial boom. there was a period between mid-2015 and early 2016 that i call the first intermediate period; during this period we began to see the problems with having so many shows on the channel.

we had this prosperous period from late 2013 until mid-2015 when thousands of new caddicarus fans came along daily - but not too long after the snow white video in august 2015, those numbers began to grind to a screeching halt. comment sections on youtube, twitter, and facebook began to grow more and more critical as caddicarus episodes became less common. december 2015 and january 2016 were particularly divisive months, as jim started taking up more sponsorships and the caddicarus show had a middling start to the new year with its season 5 finale blossom blast bastards. and of course, puppicarus was there through the climax of this bust.

the reception to puppicarus was not nearly as positive as jim initially made it sound…trust me, i was there. and it was VILE. i made one of those “hitler reacts” videos based on it.it was a different time. i was able to find this capture of the revenant review video - look at that like/dislike ratio. sure, it wasn’t overwhelmingly bad, but there was still a considerable amount of dislikes. and usually, when shows on the channel got canceled, the show would stay on the main channel. this was the only instance in which the show was taken off and reuploaded to the second channel.

a couple weeks after this, the channel rebranded, getting rid of all the extra shows and making the caddicarus show weekly. current quickies became weekly on wednesdays, and the new show film fridays was released on fridays. this didn’t really solve the channel’s stagnation problem…the stagnation would continue until the channel’s complete reset in 2020.

the character of puppicarus would appear in one more video - season 10’s muppets racemania in 2018. he actually had a pretty major role as he was now a villain character, eager to get revenge on caddy for canceling his show. caddy beats him up in the cold open, puppicarus disguises himself as percy the parrot in the middle of the episode, and at the end he kills caddy with the slaughter gun. ahh, video game review show lore…

and after that…the puppet disappeared without a trace.

 

but what does mel think?

at the time, i very much enjoyed puppicarus, both the character and his show. then again, i pretty much ate up anything caddy would put out.

looking back at the series now, it was…a series! i mean, it had some cute moments, but…the funny was just…not really there? i mean props to cerys for her editing, you can tell these were the first videos she’s ever done but they were still well-made. and i always love seeing the stepdaughters in vids, even though we only got to see one in this short-lived series.

but yeah…it certainly wasn’t the best. wasn’t HORRIBLE, but…eh.

 

so…can’t you see why i had to make a completely separate post for puppicarus? lmao. there’s just…too much to talk about. but yeah, this is a mostly forgotten part of caddicarus history due to how buried it is.

next entry will be about the channel’s arduous climb to one million, and it’ll release on whatever day caddy uploads the spyro video. after that, i’ll probably start on those entries about the different eras of the channel - and i’ll come up with more original names for those eras instead of using ancient egypt period names, lol. well i might stick with first/second intermediate period, those just fit too well.