Anyone else remember Orson's Farm? (Garfield And Friends)

Member Name: mreyre

Product:	Garfield And Friends
Date:	13/11/01 (3127 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: animation clips available on the web, lots of videos available, lots of books still available through all good bookshops

Disadvantages: most Garfield memorabilia now relegated to car boot sales, you would have to be over 20 to have even heard of Garfield these days, in the newspapers sometimes

Garfield – well, he’s a cartoon cat. If you were holidaying on the Moon about 15 years ago, you won’t have heard of him, but most people of my generation grew up with the cartoon moggie, either through watching the animation on TV, reading the endless cartoon books, or reading the strips in Daily newspapers.

If reading about the marmalade-coloured creature was not your scene, then perhaps you might have purchased a stick-on-Garfield for the back passenger side window of your Ford Cortina. Indeed, you may have even bought a Garfield “rear end” to grace the boot of your Austin Allegro.

Either way, you couldn’t escape the popularity of Garfield. I used to draw pictures of Garfield with pride in my “rough books” at school and be admired by all my mates. I’m not sure why I picked up this uncanny ability to be able to draw Garfield really well, but there is a strange co-incidence – Garfield and “mreyre” share the same birthday – June 19th. Now, isn’t that strange!

Even stranger, the official Garfield website can be found on www.garfield.com (see, strange, that!)
It all soon becomes apparent that Garfield is still very much alive and well. Let’s start off with the menu bar on the left hand side:

“What’s Hot!”
+++++++++++
In a nutshell, as the name suggests, this section gives you a brief idea of “What’s Hot!” in the world of Garfield at the moment. However, my main criticism is that this section is not updated as regularly as it could be, many of the articles were from June when I looked at the site in November.

Also, as the site, and indeed Garfield himself is American-based, many of the products are only available in the USA.
Finally in this section, should you wish, you can have a Garfield comic strip e-mailed to you every day of the week! Needless to say, I didn’t sign up to this
service, I get enough rubbish in my in-box as it is. However, I would be interested to find out whether they are full colour cartoons or black and white.

Comics
++++++
This section is my favourite, and most comprehensive of the sections. This tells you about Garfield and all his characters. This section also confirmed that Garfield did indeed first appear on June 19th, though 4 years later than yours truly!

Odie, the dribbling dog, appeared in August of the same year. He is usually the butt of Garfield’s jokes and often gets kicked around the screen / comic strip.

Arlene is the pink moggie, she has a love-hate relationship with Garfield, spanning over 20 years.

Jon is the owner of the pets, he provides food, drink and shelter for them, often at great self-expense, whilst the pets provide the laughs.

Pooky is, after Garfield himself, my favourite character. He is a humble cuddly bear, but comes to life in the mind of Garfield. He is always there when Garfield needs him.

Nermal appeared a few years later. He is the world’s cutest kitten – Garfield hates all the attention Jon bestows on him and tries to set traps for Nermal so as to make her ugly or squashed flat!

Mom, Dad and Doc Boy complete the human family line-up. They appear and disappear frequently over the years.

The Mailman is also a principal character, of course, Garfield loves him. (a-hem).

Finally, Liz the vet makes the odd appearance, whenever Garfield gets some sort of illness. This happens quite frequently, as Jon secretly fancies her and occasionally goes on dates with her. Of course, nothing ever becomes of this as Jon is the world’s biggest geek.

Also in this section is a character profile of all the animals featured in the Garfield and friends TV series. Garfield and Co. were made a bit more rounded than in the comic strips and obviously given voices, which was initially quite s
trange as when you read the cartoons in the paper, you can only imagine what the voices would sound like.

As a child, my favourite bits were not actually the Garfield animations, but the extra bits from a series called “Orson’s Farm.” (Books and comic strips were also published).

Orson was the pig, who told all the stories. He was the most polite pig you ever did see.
Roy, the Rooster, loved to play practical jokes on all the other farmyard friends, but they usually backfired on him.

Wade was by far my favourite character, I can still remember how he talked in the series today. He was frightened of everything – even water! He wore a stupid rubber ring so he didn’t drown!

Booker and Sheldon were the chick and the egg, the latter was just an egg with legs sticking out of the bottom. Very comical, just to look at!

In this section, there are also some video clips, so you can relive the Garfield animated series in all its glory. However, they take a minimum of 12 minutes to download on a 56K modem, so you would either have to be a very devout Garfield fan (In which case, you’d probably have all the videos anyway), or have invested in a broadband connection.

Unfortunately, I would like to have seen some “Orson’s Farm” clips in this section.
Even more unfortunately, as yet, I have been unable to locate an official “Orson’s Farm” website!

Finally in the “Comics” section, you can print out colouring pages of Garfield (and Pooky and Odie, but unfortunately none of the other characters).

Fun and Games
+++++++++++

Probably my least favourite section of the website. This part is jam-packed full of really tenuous links – ie. Garfield slide puzzles, wordsearches, e-postcards, screen savers, you know the type of thing. None of this is really useful, again, unless you are a completely sad fan.
r>Book Nook
++++++++
This is a fairly useful sort-of biography section of Garfield literature currently in print, though again, predominantly American. My advice is to make a note of the titles and cross-reference them via Amazon.com / co.uk.

Finally for this website, you can even become a member of the Official Garfield Club (quick, where’s my cheque book??), for a paltry $12.95 you get all sorts of Garfield paraphenalia. Not sure if this is exclusive to the US, but, frankly, who cares?

The internet didn’t come up with a great deal of other facts or trivia for the Garfield series, except to end with the useless fact that the voice of Garfield was provided by a bloke called Lorenzo Music.

Strange!