Western Animation / Builders & Bashers

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Builders And Bashers is a series of CGI-animated shorts which first aired in approximately 2018 or 2019 (exact dates are unclear). The show is based on the Little Tikes toyline known as Kingdom Builders.

The kingdom of Buildera is constantly under threat by the Bashers, a destructive quartet who love nothing more than smashing homes and razing castles to the ground- but Buildera is not defenseless. The Kingdom Builders- Prince Phillip, Lady Twist, Sir Hammer of Head, Sir Wrench-A-Lot, and the very King Hex himself- defend the kingdom from the Bashers and are able to quickly reconstruct anything they destroy, all with powers derived from a set of magical tools kept deep within the castle. But the Bashers- a motley crew lead by the pirate Captain Cannonblast, with Crow DeBar and the barbarians Sledge Hammerfist and Wrecky- have their own powers from their own set of Magic Tools, and will stop at nothing to get their hands on the ones owned by the Kingdom Builders.

Builders And Bashers contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Lady Twist, the princess of Buildera, is shown to be just as capable at fighting Bashers and building structures as the rest of the Kingdom Builders.
• Alliterative Title: The show itself and two episodes (“Builders Build & Bashers Bash” and “Builder Basher Battle-O-Rama”) have one.
• All Just a Dream: “A Bashingly Good Dream”, as you might expect from the title, turns out to be someone’s (Captain Cannonblast’s, to be precise) dream at the end.
• Amateur Film-Making Plot: For a show that’s supposed to be a Medieval European Fantasy, there are a surprising amount of these.
  • “D.I.Y. With C.C.B.” has Captain Cannonblast attempting to film an instructional video teaching the other Bashers how to D.I.Y- Destroy It Yourself. Given the intelligence of Wrecky and Sledge, it’s no surprise that things end up going wrong.
  • “The Un-Unboxing Show” has Sir Hammer of Head trying to film his own “BuilderaTube” (please don’t ask) show where he makes the boxes for unboxing shows; unfortunately, Wrecky and Sledge destroy all of his boxes for their own amateur show, “Bash ‘n’ Dash”.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Build-A-Beast is a tiger with bright cyan fur.
• Ambiguously Brown: Sir Hammer of Head has a visibly darker skin tone than the other Builders, but it’s not clear at all what his ethnicity is; he’s probably a Token Minority, but he might just have a really good tan. Wrecky also has a darker skin color than the other Bashers, and in his case things are further confused by his vaguely-Eastern European-sounding accent.
• Animated Adaptation: Of the Kingdom Builders toys.
• Audible Gleam: Clouds of sparkles, accompanied by this sound effect, have a tendency to appear on things the Builders have just constructed, and occasionally on other things (such as Sir Wrench-A-Lot’s hair) as well.
• Bindle Stick: Build-A-Beast (a gigantic tiger, mind you) carries one of these in his jaws when he runs away from the Builders in “Bash Kitty”.
• Birthday Episode: “The Quest For Dehiccafurp” takes place on Sir Wrench-A-Lot’s birthday; unfortunately, he is unable to enjoy the celebrations due to having come down with the gastronomic ailment known as “hiccafurps”.
• Bridge Logic: In “The Quest For Dehiccafurp”, the Builders cross a canyon by building a very tall ladder and then having Sir Hammer Of Head knock it down so it falls across the canyon.
• Cardboard Pal: In “Builder Basher Battle-O-Rama”, Captain Cannonblast tries to scare the Builders with an “army” made of cutouts of the other three Bashers. They do manage to look semi-convincing while surrounded by a dust cloud he kicked up, but the ruse is soon revealed when Build-A-Beast roars and knocks all of them over.
• Cartoon Bomb: At the end of “Captain Cannonbaby”, Captain Cannonblast steals what he thinks is the chest containing the Magic Tools, only to open it and find it full of these. Cue a This Is Gonna Suck face.
• Catchphrase: Prince Phillip says “Builder brainstorm!” whenever he has an idea.
• Character Action Title: One episode is called “Builders Say Cheese”.
• Chirping Crickets: This happens at one point “No Aye-Aye In Team” when Captain Cannonblast asks the other Bashers if they’ve had a winning season or a losing season; the camera then reveals an actual (unusually large) cricket chirping, which Cannonblast kicks at in anger.
• Circling Birdies: Occasionally, impacts to the head will leave characters with circling stars; weirdly, despite not being birds, bird sound effects will still play until the stars disappear.
• Clip Show: Episode 18, “Top Builder-Basher Moments” is one of these, presented as a countdown of the best moments in the show.
• Color-Coded Characters: The Builders.
  • Prince Phillip - Red
  • King Hex - Golden / Yellow
  • Sir Hammer of Head - Green
  • Sir Wrench-A-Lot - Blue / Cyan
  • Lady Twist - Dark Blue / Purple
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Being comedically-Dumb Muscle, Wrecky and Sledge are very prone to this; take the time in “No Aye-Aye In Team” when, asked by Captain Cannonblast why he’d gathered them all that day, Sledge asked if it was because they were getting Team Basher crew jackets.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In “Movie Night”, the Bashers mention “Frenemy Feast” as being the last incidence of Go-Karting with Bowser.
  • In “D.I.Y. With C.C.B.”, it’s established that the Wrecking Roller is held together with duct tape; in “A Basher Named Phil”, Phillip is able to demolish the entire vehicle by pulling a single piece of duct tape off the side of the thing.
• Creation/Destruction Juxtaposition: The core of the series is the rival between the heroic Builders (construction) and the villainous Bashers (destruction).
• Descending Ceiling: This is one of the traps Prince Phillip and King Hex have to contend with after accidentally shutting themselves into the castle’s dungeon in “Father-Son Dungeon Day”.
• Down to the Last Play: In “Build-n-Bash Games”, the titular competition between the Builders and the Bashers ends up being tied until the very last event.
• Dramatic Thunder: In “Things That Go Bash In The Night”, lightning flashes outside the window after Phillip announces that there might be a ghost in the castle.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Apparently, this is a major structural component of the Wrecking Roller, to the extent that Prince Phillip can easily demolish the whole thing by pulling one piece of tape off of the side.
  Captain Cannonblast: We built her from the ground up with our combined blood, sweat, and duct tape.
• Dumb Muscle: This is Wrecky and Sledge’s whole deal; they’re barbarians who hit hard but are, to put it bluntly, less intelligent than the walls they knock down.
• Ethereal Choir: One can be heard when the Magic Tools are first seen in the show’s first episode.
• Fake Defector: In “A Basher Named Phil”, the Bashers try to hit Prince Phillip with a bag of magic sawdust that will turn him evil; Phillip narrowly dodges the spell, but uses that fact that they don’t know he dodged it to fake turning evil so he could sabotage their Wrecking Roller.
• Fakin' MacGuffin: The Bashers have made off with fakes of the Magic Tools twice- in “King Hex Inspection” they nabbed some gold foil-covered chocolate tools instead, while in “Captain Cannonbaby” the chest they thought contained the tools actually held a store of Cartoon Bombs.
• Feedback Rule: This happens when Sir Wrench-A-Lot tries to sound the alarm via microphone in “An Alarming Situation”.
• Fictional Holiday: One episode “Frenemy Feast Day”, when enemies put away their differences and sit down to have lunch together.
• Food Fight: This is how the Builders and Bashers’ attempts at Frenemy Feast Day end up going.
• Four-Fingered Hands: This is just one of those shows where everyone has these.
• Gag Haircut: In “Builder Say Cheese”, Sir Wrench-A-Lot, in attempting to change his hairdo, somehow made his hair stick straight up, causing him to resemble an armored troll doll.
• Gale-Force Sound: Build-A-Beast’s roars tend to be this; in fact, in his debut episode, he was able to knock a hole in a stone wall just by roaring at it.
• Gassy Gastronomy: In one episode, Sir Wrench-A-Lot gets the “Hiccafurps” (hiccup-fart-burps; they’re as nasty as they sound) as a consequence of eating brussels sprouts, bacon bricks, and raw dragon eggs.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In “Build-n-Bash Games” the Builders and Bashers compete against each other in various sporting events. “Frenemy Feast” has the Builders inviting the Bashers to the traditional feast day, while the Bashers return the favor by inviting the builders to watch a movie with them in “Movie Night”.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: The all-important Magic Tools are golden, as are parts of King Hex’s armor. (While there’s no excuse for the armor, the pesky physical properties of gold don’t matter for the Magic Tools, as their magic powers mean you’re not going to need to be using them directly as tools.)
• Goo Goo Getup: In “Captain Cannonbaby”, Captain Cannonblast infiltrates Buildera Family Fun Day by dressing up as a baby (with Crow DeBar pushing his stroller around).
• Help, I'm Stuck!: “Stuck In The Middle” sees Captain Cannonblast getting stuck in his armor/cannon; apparently, he ate too many bacon bricks.
• Holiday Episode: “Father-Son Dungeon Day” takes place on Father’s Day, and has Prince Phillip and King Hex undergo some father-son bonding after they accidentally build themselves into the castle’s dungeon.
• Horns of Barbarism: Wrecky and Sledge both have these on their helmets.
• Human Cannonball: Captain Cannonblast has a suit of wooden armor that can transform into a cannon and fire him out of it; his ability to come out unscathed after impacting whatever he aimed himself at is treated as just being some cartoon physics, but actually comes from the Magic Cannonball.
• Impossible Shadow Puppets: In “No Aye-Aye In Team”, Wrecky and Sledge entertain themselves by making these on a blank projection screen Captain Cannonblast is setting up.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: This happens in “Not My Flower”, after Sir Hammer of Head sets up a small wall to protect a pretty flower.
  Sir Hammer of Head: Nothing can bash down this protective wall! (Leans on it, causing it to fall over)
• Jabba Table Manners: In “Frenemy Feast”, the Bashers all having these is one of the things that starts to strain the Builders’ Go-Karting with Bowser attempts.
• Kibbles and Bits: The show having a high degree of toy accuracy means that these are copied from the toys; most of them are handled fairly well, such as Phillip and Twist’s screwdriver heads becoming their swords when in normal form, or King Hex’s nut driver turning into his royal scepter, but Sir Wrench-A-Lot obviously just has two halves of a giant crescent wrench head stuck to his back while in normal form.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In “How To Build A Beast”, Prince Phillip says “Why don’t we just cut to the chase?”, and then it cuts to him, Lady Twist, and Sir Wrench-A-Lot literally being chased by the tiger they’d been tracking.
• Literal Metaphor: In “D.I.Y. With C.C.B.”, Captain Cannonblast is told his expression is “a little… wooden” while he’s wearing his armor, which, as an effort to make him look taller than he actually is, has a wooden “face” above where his actual face would be.
• Loud Sleeper Gag: In “Things That Go Bash In The Night”, Prince Phillip, Lady Twist, and Sir Hammer of Head are up in the middle of the night tracking a ghost in the castle; they hear a set of noises they think are coming from the ghost, but these just turn out to be King Hex snoring.
• Lucky Seven: Prince Phillip mentions that seven is his lucky number in “Top Builder-Basher Moments”.
• Message in a Bottle: At the end of “You Can’t Handle The Truce”, Captain Cannonblast finds a few of these on the beach, all containing the same treasure map- apparently, they’ve invitations to something his old pirate buddy has set up.
• Metafictional Title: “The Un-Unboxing Show” is named after Sir Hammer of Head’s [BuilderaTube] show.
• Miles Gloriosus: Sir Wrench-A-Lot has these tendencies; it’s most noticeable in “How To Build A Beast”, when he spends the first part of the episode bragging about himself only to immediately freak out when he, Phillip, and Twist actually encounter the tiger they’d been tracking.
• Missing Mom: Prince Phillip’s mother never appears, and is only mentioned in “Builders Say Cheese” (as he wants to take a photograph of himself and his fellow Builders to send to her). Being the queen of Buildera, it can be presumed that she’s off on some sort of important diplomatic business.
• The Napoleon: Captain Cannonblast is an arrogant pirate captain who will stop at (almost) nothing to get the Magic Tools… and he’s the height of a child. Needless to say, he’s a biiiiit touchy about this, and even made a set of wooden armor that makes him look taller when he wears it.
• Non-Natural Number Gag: In “Top Builder-Basher Moments”, after Prince Phillip reveals that seven is his lucky number, Sir Hammer of Head reveals that his lucky number is 222 1/2.
• Not Me This Time: In “Things That Go Bash In The Night”, while Captain Cannonblast did sneak in to the Builders’ castle, he’s not the one responsible for the mysterious crashing noises the Builders have been hearing.
• Objectshifting: The Magic Tools grant their owner the ability to transform into (human-sized) tools; the Builders’ set of them also gives these tool forms Ridiculously Fast Construction powers. The one exception to this seems to be the Magic Cannonball, which doesn’t physically transform Captain Cannonblast but still gives him the durability to survive his Human Cannonball stunts.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Sir Wrench-A-Lot doth talketh like this… sometimeseth. Ye dialogue-writing for him doth be-eth a bit inconsistenteth.
• Once Upon a Time: The episode that reveals the origins of the Magic Tools has the tale of how they were forged begin this way.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Builders have a pet dragon named Greenie, who roosts atop one of the castle towers and roars to sound the alarm whenever the Bashers approach the castle. This… is pretty much all that the audience learns about Greenie during the entirety of the show.
• Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: In “Sib-Building Rivalry”, Prince Phillip and Lady Twist each believe they heard King Hex calling the other “his favorite”; in fact, he was talking to Build-A-Beast, his favorite pet.
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • In “Buildera Self-Improvement”, Wrecky and Sledge put on glasses to disguise themselves when infiltrating the castle; Sledge’s glasses also come with a Groucho Marx nose and mustache. Lady Twist appears to be fooled by this, but it later turns out that she was only pretending to do so in order to force them to do various things they'd rather not have to do to keep the charade up, for her own amusement.
  • In one episode, after Crow DeBar and Captain Cannonblast are accidentally left behind when the Wrecking Roller retreats, they infiltrate Buildera Family Fun Day by having the Captain dress up as a baby, and Crow pretend to be his parent.
• Paranormal Episode: In “Things That Go Bash In The Night“, Prince Phillip hears mysterious crashing noises with no obvious source and comes to believe that a ghost is causing them; as it turns out, the real culprit is a sleepwalking Build-A-Beast.
• Parental Favoritism: This is subverted in “Sib-Building Rivalry”; Prince Phillip and Lady Twist each think they heard King Hex call the other one his favorite, but it turns out he was actually talking to Build-A-Beast, his favorite pet.
• Parrying Bullets: In a rather extreme version of this trope, Prince Phillip can use his sword to parry cannonballs. Sir Hammer of Head also has a knack for using his hammer form to smack cannonballs out of the air.
• Pirate Parrot: Captain Cannonblast had one, bearing the uncreative name of “Polly”. In “Top Builder-Basher Moments”, Phillip jokingly speculates that she’s the one responsible for the surprisingly-competent-despite-the-nature-of-its-crew driving of the Wrecking Roller.
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: One episode is called “You Can’t Handle The Truce”.
• Premiseville: It only figures that a kingdom whose heroes have the power to turn into tools and build amazing constructions would be named Buildera.
• Pun-Based Title: There are a lot of these: “No Aye-Aye In Team”, “An Alarming Situation” (revolving around a literal alarm), “Things That Go Bash In The Night”, “Sib-Building Rivalry”, and “The More You Crow”.
• Punny Name: Most of the Bashers’ and Builders’ names are puns around whatever tool they’re associated with; the two worst ones have to be Crow DeBar and Wrecky’s real name, Wreckin’ the Ball-Barian.
• Purely Aesthetic Era: The show is ostensibly a Medieval European Fantasy, but the Magic Tools are designed after modern-style tools, not medieval ones; everything from camcorders to film projectors to a Brand X version of YouTube has been seen being used by the Builders, and Captain Cannonblast is a pirate straight out of the late 1600s.
• Repeat After Me: This happens when Captain Cannonblast tries to get the other Bashers to stop making excuses for their poor performance in “No Aye-Aye In Team”.
  Captain Cannonblast: Repeat after me: “It’s my fault.”
  Bashers: It’s your fault.
  Captain Cannonblast: No, no, no! It’s not my fault, it’s your fault!
  Bashers: It’s not my fault, it’s your fault.
• Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony: Performing one is one of the kingly duties Phillip has to perform in “King For A Day”.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: The Builders are able to do this; at least once, Prince Phillip was able to convert the castle into a single tall tower in a matter of seconds. Given that all of their builds were performed with the assistance of the power of the Magic Tools, it’s safe to say that this is probably another one of the Magic Tools’ powers.
• Right Behind Me: In “You Can’t Handle The Truce”, Captain Cannonblast, after finally reaching the chest with the Magic Tools, takes a moment to gloat about how stupid the Builders are… as their shadows slowly rise up over him.
• Scooby Stack: Prince Phillip, Lady Twist, and Sir Hammer of Head do this at one point in “Things That Go Bash In The Night”; given that the plot of the episode involves tracking down an alleged ghost in the castle, this might be a deliberate Shout-Out.
• Seadog Peg Leg: Captain Cannonblast’s right leg is wooden.
• Shoot the Bullet: The Builders do this in “King Hex Inspection”, with one of the cannonballs from their newly-improved castle defense system shooting down one of the cannonballs from the Wrecking Roller.
• Shout-Out:
  • “Things That Go Bash In The Night” has two separate Scooby-Doo references (three if you count the characters performing a Scooby Stack, although that one might be accidental)- Captain Cannonblast saying he “would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you pesky Builders”, and Sir Hammer of Head ending the episode with a hearty “Buildy buildy woo!”
  • In “Movie Night”, the Bashers have prepared to put on Bash Wars: The Jackhammer Awakens.
• Show Within a Show:
  • Sir Hammer of Head tries to run a BuilderaTube channel called “The Un-Unboxing Show” in the episode of the same name; his efforts to build boxes keep getting ruined by Wrecky and Sledge, who are breaking things for their own channel, “Bash ‘n’ Dash”
  • In “Movie Night”, the Builders and Bashers are going to watch Bash Wars: The Jackhammer Awakens.
• Sick Episode:
  • In “The Quest For Dehiccafurp”, Sir Wrench-A-Lot is afflicted by the gastronomic ailment of “hiccafurps” (apparently, burps with the frequency of hiccups and the odor of farts), and the Builders need to quest to a “distant land” (sort-of) for a remedy.
  • “King For A Day” has King Hex ill with food poisoning, necessitating that Prince Phillip take over his kingly duties for the day.
  • In “An Alarming Situation”, Greenie the dragon (whose roars normally sound the alarm when the Bashers approach) is sick and unable to roar, so Sir Wrench-A-Lot needs to fill in for her.
• Sir Verb-a-Lot: One of the Builders is named Sir Wrench-A-Lot.
• The Smurfette Principle: Lady Twist is the only woman in not only the Builders but the entire cast of named characters.
• Standard Snippet: “Builder Basher Battle-O-Rama” is set to the finale of the 1812 Overture.
• Stock Footage: There’s a clip of the Wrecking Roller driving straight through Buildera’s gates that gets reused basically every time the Bashers attack.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Captain Cannonblast has this problem; two of the other Bashers, Wrecky and Sledge, are barbarians from the absolute bottom of the intelligence barrel who tend to drive him up the wall with their nonsense.
• Team Pet: After the show’s second episode, the Builders have one in Build-A-Beast, a tiger with mechanical armor who likes to kick Basher butt as much as they do.
• Tempting Fate: After finally assembling everyone for the group photo in “Builders Say Cheese”, Phillip makes the mistake of saying that nothing could go wrong now. Cue a Basher attack.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: The first episode has the Builders Breaking the Fourth Wall and declaring that they should introduce the show to the viewers in the form of a song.
• Toilet Humor: This has happened occasionally.
  • In “How To Build A Beast”, Sir Wrench-A-Lot farts while staring down a tiger… and then blames it on the tiger.
  • A later episode has Sir Wrench-A-Lot being afflicted with the “hiccafurps”- burps with the frequency of hiccups and the odor of a nasty fart.
• Token Minority: Sir Hammer of Head is Ambiguously Brown, while the rest of the Builders are all Caucasian-looking. The same goes for Wrecky and the Bashers.
• Top Ten List: “Top Builder-Basher Moments” is a Clip Show presented as a list of the top seven moments in the show.
  Sir Hammer of Head: Wait, these things are usually the top ten or top five. Why seven?
• Totally Radical: This has happened occasionally; “King For A Day” has Phillip dabbing while posing for a statue, while Lady Twist can be seen flossing at one point in “Build-n-Bash Games”.
• Treasure Map: At the end of “You Can’t Handle The Truce”, Captain Cannonblast discovers one, apparently created by an old pirate buddy of his.
• Truce Trickery: Captain Cannonblast pulls this in “You Can’t Handle The Truce”, as another scheme to try to get the Magic Tools. Fortunately, the Builders figure out what he’s up to just in time to stop him.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: This has happened to Captain Cannonblast, twice, each time as a result of being shot from a Builder catapault; specifically, it happened at the end of “Builder Basher Battle-O-Rama” and near the end of “You Can’t Handle The Truce”.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: One episode reveals that the Magic Tools were forged by one of these, named Immaculus.
• Villain Episode: The Bashers have gotten three- “D.I.Y. With C.C.B.” (where Captain Cannonblast tries to instruct the Bashers on how to better destroy things), “No Aye-Aye In Team” (where he gives the other Bashers their quarterly “report card”, and it isn’t pretty), and “Magic Tools Bedtime Tale” (where a recuperating Wrecky and Sledge demand he read the origin story of the Magic Tools to them as a bedtime story).
• Visible Boom Mic: This is one of the least bad problems with Captain Cannonblast’s demo video from “D.I.Y. With C.C.B.”.
• Visible Odor: This show has a habit of using green vapor to represent a noxious odor; it was first shown being released from a foul-smelling Buildera blossom in “Not My Flower”, but later episodes mostly used it for bodily emissions.
• Wink "Ding!": One happens at the end of the first episode; later, in “The More You Crow”, King Hex produces a whole string of them when he winks to Phillip to signal the plan he has for the Basher’s spying statue.
• With Catlike Tread: Wrecky and Sledge do this while trying to infiltrate the castle in “Buildera Self-Improvement”; a Running Gag in that episode is them constantly breaking vases.
• You Can Talk?: In “The More You Crow”, King Hex discovers that a mysterious crow statue (which actually has a camera and speaker in it that connect back to the Basher’s base) can speak, and has this reaction.
• You Can't Handle the Parody:
  • One episode is titled “You Can’t Handle The Truce”
  • In “A Basher Named Phil”, when the Bashers ask for proof that Phillip has really undergone a Face–Heel Turn (he hasn’t), he says
  Phillip: You want proof? You can’t handle the proof!
• Your Other Left: This happens in “Movie Night”, when Captain Cannonbolt is trying to direct Wrecky and Sledge to hang a piece of cloth that’s being used as a film projection screen.
  Captain Cannonblast: A little more to the left, boys… No no, my left, not your left.
  Sledge: My left is right sometimes too, you know.
  Wrecky: Oh, right it is!
  Captain Cannonblast: No! Left! LEFT!