Squashed Grapes

Squashed Grapes is a now-forgotten franchise by Thrift Shop Tales Family Entertainment. It began as a monthly comic strip for an obscure homeschool online newspaper on August of 2016. An animated series was planned for it, but cancelled after only two episodes due to lack of interest.

Comic Strip

The Squashed Grapes comic strip introduced Dave, Ruff, and Tuff, three brothers who would deal with daily life. The strip was very popular and the newspaper's owner really liked it. Its first issue was on August of 2016 and described Dave and Ruff's character traits. The September 2016 issue introduced Tuff and involved Dave and Ruff dealing with a tampered Xbox. The October 2016 issue was about Ruff finding a valuable rubber duck, and the Novermber 2016 issue was a Thanksgiving-themed parody of "The Reason Why My Son Is Crying" memes. An issue for December was planned, but scrapped since the author, Ash Eskeldson, left Miscellany Monthly, the newspaper in which the strip was published. However, a desktop computer in her house still has the original version of it.

Squashed Grapes: The Animated Series

Since the comic strip was popular, Ash Eskeldson decided to create an animated series for it in Summer 2018. The show's two existing episodes, The Sound of Screaming and Pulled Muscles, were produced with Cyberlink PowerDirector 14 with art done on Microsoft Paint and voiceovers done with VoiceRecord. However, these two episodes did not attain enough views for production to continue. Thus, the whole series was cancelled in favor of The Misfits of Publicity Stunt Isle, Thrift Shop Tails, and All Riled Up. The show was supposed to introduce additional characters, but only two of them, Kelly, a non-anthropomorphic Pomeranian puppy, and Muff, the elder sister to Dave, Tuff, and Ruff were ever shown. Storyboards were made for a third episode, The Last Laugh, which was supposed to be about the five main characters (Kelly, Muff, Ruff, Tuff, and Dave) receiving a Tickle Me Elmer Fudd doll and getting disastrous results when that doll robs everyone else's laughter.