The final show from Nicktoon-cember I would like to talk about is The Modifyers. The Modifyers is a pilot episode introduced to Nickelodeon sometime in 2010. The show was created by Lynne Naylor and Chris Reccardi. In the show we focus on a young female spy named Agent Xero and her partner a robot named Mole. Xero is a master of disguises and along with Mole they work to foil the evil plans of Baron Vain and his organization of thieves. She does this by disguising herself as the master thief Lacey Shadows who works for Baron Vain and becomes a mole in his organization earning his trust and keeping her real identity a secret from him and his henchmen.
The show was a great idea. When I saw this pilot I was impressed with what I saw. First off the animation looked great in this show. The colors were lively and vibrant, it gave off this 60’s England feel to it. The world was interesting, we have anamorphic animals and people walking around and everything, and the story is a good attention grabber I could see them getting a good season or 2 out of the show with the premise alone and there’s some good slapstick comedy put in the show as well. But the best part about this show is the characters. Xero and Mole are two totally different people with different ideas and goals. That is so rare to see in a cartoon these days. Oh they both want to protect the world from evil but when it comes to spy work they have different objectives. Xero wants to do all the cool spy stuff that you see in movies while Mole is a guy who sticks to the rules and does what he’s told from his superiors. Then there’s Baron Vain who not only has an intimidating and cool character design but he’s also quite funny and a good villain. So here’s what this show has for us. We have an interesting story that gets your attention in a creative world, two good leading characters with a good villain, good comedy, and fantastic animation to boot. Sounds like a pretty good show to me, I don’t see why any cartoon channel would refuse it. Well apparently Nickelodeon found a reason to refuse it because when the show was introduced to them they flat out said no to the show. Why, because they’re idiots, that’s why. So naturally after Nickelodeon refused the show you would think Cartoon Network would pick up the show I mean they picked up Adventure Time when Nickelodeon refused it. Nope, Cartoon Network said no as well and it’s odd especially since Naylor and Reccardi used to work for Cartoon Network. Naylor did the character designs for a majority of the Samurai Jack episodes and Reccardi was the storyboard artist for Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls, and Tiny Toon Adventures so you would think Cartoon Network would be more than happy to pick up this show with such talented people working on it. But no both of these channels refused the show so all we got is the pilot which you can find on Youtube and the porn parody. Yeah, we might as well talk about it, there is a porn parody of this show out there called the Modifuckers, you can find it on newgrounds.com (Rule 34 at its finest). It may be a short porno but at least an animator out there saw the pilot and said to themselves that this would make a great show and tried to increase the exposure of the show in their own little way.
In the end Nickelodeon really dropped the ball when they refused this show. I know Cartoon Network also refused this show but it was proposed to Nickelodeon first and they needed it more because around this time Nickelodeon really had nothing worth watching while Cartoon Network at this time had Young Justice, Adventure Time, Regular Show, and The Clones Wars. Whether you like these shows or not you can’t deny that these 4 shows have/had good fanbases. I’ve heard that there’s a petition going around trying to get Nickelodeon to pick the show up and if so great. The Modifyers is a great show and if you haven’t seen pilot yet definitely give it a watch. It’s 10 minutes you won’t regret.