Super Why (Pilot)



Super Why! is an animated television show about a kid who jumps into books. The show's pilot was in production by Blue's Clues creator Angela Santomero and Cuppa Coffee Studios in Toronto, Canada between early-mid 1999. The show would return to production between 2004 and 2005 to be pitched to PBS Kids, and had its first television airing on 2007, while the pilot was unreleased created with a working title, Super Why?

Annecy Festival
6 cm tall Superwhy lives in a children's library. When he needs answers to his questions, he jumps into the right storybook. Characters like "The Three Little Pigs" and "Red Riding Hood" answer his questions and teach him how to solve problems.

Cuppa Coffee
"Who do you call when you need to know why? Superwhy, of course! This award winning pre-school pilot encourages critical thinking and reinforces reading skills in young viewers. Stop-motion and cutout animation bring this curious little tyke, his kangaroo friend and all of his favourite storybooks to life."

Cuppa Coffee (Variant)
"Who do you call when you need to know why? Superwhy of course! Cuppa recently produced this pilot episode for Nickelodeon. The show encourages kids to read, and reinforces reading skills. We used stop motion animation as well as cut-out to bring this curious little tyke to life."

Cuppa Coffee (Variant 2)
"A pilot for Nick Jr, Superwhy was centred around a superhero whose ability is to question why - AND find out! Superwhy takes place in the book of the three little pigs and the animations in the book come to life. The action gets kids to look into books to find out, well...why!?!"

BAMKids Film Festival
"Tiny Super Why doesn't take up much space in the children's library where he lives. When he needs answers to problems, he effortlessly hops into storybooks to find solutions."

ChicagoReader.com
"In Adam Shaheen's Super Why? an imp interacts with illustrations from a book of The Three Little Pigs, inviting the viewer into its world."

Differences
What makes the pilot different from the final product is that: A revised version finally aired on PBS Kids in 2007 and lasted until 2016. Below are the lyrics to the unused intro. Listen to it here: https://youtu.be/ujVM3wp1UZc
 * The pilot was animated in stop-motion animation instead of CGI animation.
 * Super Why/Whyatt, Pig/Alpha Pig and Wonder Red/Red Riding Hood were the only characters present in the pilot, while Princess Presto/Princess Pea and Woofster was not present.
 * Also, Whyatt was originally known as Willy (also known as Wee Willy).
 * In addition, there were two other characters in the pilot that never got to appear in the final product, this includes a stuffed purple kangaroo that served as Super Why's sidekick, and another character named Willa whom bears some resemblance to Red.
 * All the characters looked different from the final product due to the premise at the time was originally not superhero-themed.
 * The intro's theme and lyrics was completely different with a song only known as "Wonder Why, Just Like Superwhy". An unused one, one of 3, used a reggae tune instead of an upbeat theme.
 * The art style of the characters in the pilot is closely reminiscent to the characters' art style in Blues' Clues.

Plot
Note: while the full plot is currently unknown, someone who saw part of the pilot back when you could watch it on the Cuppa Coffee website has described what happened, here is what they said:

"The video reel was maybe about a minute long. The theme song was a chill reggae track, and a Jamaican singer said: "Wonder why, Just like Super Why!" It was very chill. Willy then said: "Hello! I'm hiding. Can you find me?"

The rest of the video is kind of a blur after that. When Willa appeared, she created some kind of wind/tornado, causing the buttons around the room to whirl around. Willy then said something to the camera in reaction to this."

Some other plot details have also been revealed, these are:

Recently, the composer of the pilot (Nick Balaban) recalled the later parts of the pilot has Super Why solving puzzles with the Three Little Pigs.

An online article also revealed that the book Willy explores is The Three Little Pigs and he interacts with the illustrations while in the book.

Characters

 * Willy
 * Willa
 * Roo-Hoo
 * Giraffe
 * The Three Little Pigs

Songs
Theme Song

Trivia

 * The name for the series was originally known as Super Why (also known as SuperWhy? or Superwhy in Cuppa Coffee Animation site archives, or SuperWhy! in Alexander Gorelick's site) in the pilot, since the premise was slightly different before being changed to Super Why! in the final product.
 * According to Annecy Festival, the running time for the pilot is 9 minutes and 36 seconds.
 * Even though the voice of Super Why is unknown, it's believed to be Zachary Tyler since he was young at the time.
 * Speaking of Super Why's voice, his voice might of sounded like Little Bill's voice.
 * The pilot episode was one of the winners of the 2000 Annecy Festival, receiving an award for being considered an educational, scientific or industrial film.
 * The pilot episode also received an award for 2001 Cairo Children's Festival, Gold Special Jury Award - Houston Worldfest 2000, the Certificate of Participation - Chicago International Children's Film Festival and the International Festival 2000.
 * The pilot episode was greenlit by Nick Jr. as a new series idea, but they decided to shelve it by choosing to produce Oswald the Octopus at the time.
 * In initial development, the series' pilot was originally conceived as a puppet show before being switched to stop-motion.
 * Before the site's rebranding, Cuppa Coffee Studios originally had two reels of the Super Why pilot on its site before becoming unavailable to view in the public. The first reel was the pilot's intro, while the second reel was a scene of Willa blowing Willy's buttons.
 * However, extra copies of the pilot episode is recently confirmed by the director (Dave Thomas) to be archived by Cuppa Coffee Studios in its current headquarters.
 * Despite the rest of the pilot's plot being unknown, the composer (Nick Balaban) recalled a scene of Super Why solving puzzles with the Three Little Pigs.
 * This is most likely that the pilot episode would follow the same basic plot as the first official episode "The Three Little Pigs", the only difference is that the plot focuses on Willy dealing with Willa blowing his buttons instead of Alpha Pig stopping Jill knocking his tower down.
 * An article from the Chicago International Children's Film Festival of 2000 also confirmed that the book Willy jumped into was The Three Little Pigs.
 * In the unused version of the pilot's intro, the vocals for the children saying "also known as Wee Willy" and "Why?" is provided by the composer (Nick Balaban). It is likely that his voice heard in the intro is filtered with a voice changer.
 * The vocals of the singer saying "Tell me why, why, why?" is provided by Michael Rubin.
 * A logo of the pilot was uploaded in 2004 to Wikimedia by a user who is unacknowledged that is was the logo of the pilot. The image was likely taken down by a troll in 3rd April 2021 claiming it as copyright infringement.
 * An image from an archived article of the Super Why pilot from Annecy Festival was thought to be taken down for the similar reason. However, this turned out not to be the case as Annecy Festival was actually updating the theme of their website and the removal of one of the images turned out to be an error.
 * An artist known as Daniel LeBlanc would eventually sample the pilot's intro to his song Wide Leg Funk. The only difference is that the songs use different instruments, while the latter has an extended and slightly altered music arrangement - including an extended opening during the beginning of the sample song.
 * Some speculated that the similarities to the songs may be simply just a coincidence, but this is not the case as the artist's official website indicates that lives in Canada in which Cuppa Coffee Studios was initially established. Therefore, he might had asked permission from Cuppa Coffee Studios to sample the intro for his song.