Excuse me, there may be possible spoilers in this review. It is advised that you watch the short before you read the review.

Incredibly inventive and hilarious, as expected from Aardman. The concentrated acid - absolutely great. And, Lupercal, I an 100 American and it translates perfectly well, we have kiddie shows that have narrators that are calm no matter what circumstances. The ways that they try to kill each other, all unsuccessful however they maul each other. And at the end they seem very civilized, except for the part when Pog kills Pib.

Good. Very good. A little violent, but funny nonetheless.

Anyone growing up in the 50-80’s in Britain and apparently Australia (I wonder about other parts of the Commonwealth), is most likely going to remember the kind of programme that this is affectionately mocking. Programmes like Play School, Muffin the Mule, Bill and Ben and so on.

Early education programmes for the young made as patronising as possible; at least that’s the expression I got while watching them. To be honest this type of thing has only slightly improved, preschool edutainment has generally gotten better, but there’s still some that is absolutely cringe worthy, like, oh the Tellytubbies; but the past is sort of behind us how (although Bill and Ben currently have a new series). Although our (read mine) Country’s presenters are still terribly guilty of this.

Here we have two clay characters who could have stepped out of Morph (another Aardman made series), but who take their rivalry to extremes of animated pain; while a woman comments and narrates on their antics in a stereotypical (for the time period) BBC standardised upper-middle class English accent.

This is what I ranted about in my review of Happy Tree Friends. That senseless violence minus any real repercussions can, when done well, be funny. Here the repercussions are pretty non-existence, with the characters rebounding back from the sometimes slapstick and the sometimes potentially horrific. Of course most of this is to due with that narration.

Still this has been done to death, and it gets old a little too fast: it just isn’t as good after several watches, worth watching once or twice, but you soon yearn for something with more substance.

I wonder if this Aardman short may lose a little in transaltion to an American audience. It would depend on whether you have the equivalent to a certain British and Australian TV stereotype. The sickly-sweet goo-goo gah-gah female narrator of small children's TV shows, who sounds like if a guy car crashed his car into her living room she'd probably say "Goodness me, boys and girls! What could that be? What a silly man!" Perhaps this a bit of a period-specific thing, too, because the shows I'm thinking of are 'Play School' (there was an Australian and British version) and 'Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men'. But I imagine there are equivalents around today.

Anyway if you can imagine that type of personality, with a rather upper middle class British accent, you have the narrator's voice down. Basically she prattles on in an amused way, commenting on the antics of two claymation characters, Pib and Pog, as they proceed to brutalise each other in a series of incidents which progress to the point where she laughngly delivers lines like (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "Goodness, Pog - what does Pib have in that bucket? Why it's concentrated sulphuric acid!" You get the idea.

Of course this is immensely tasteless, but the fact that it's claymation, and after a character gets cut in half, he's perfectly alright a few seconds later, renders the violence so far removed from reality that it's really not shocking. Plus there's a twist at the end that kind of neutralises the brutality to a certain extent.

I've read reviews from parents who claim their seven year-olds have thought 'Pib and Pog' was hilarious. I might be careful showing it to VERY young kids, but... well, let's face it, the audience for these Aardman shorts isn't really kids anyway, is it?

One problem, which isn't it's fault, is that similar themes have been rather done to death since it was made, even if this might be the only claymation example. Still it's pretty damn funny for a couple of viewings.