The Villains of Habit Heroes

As Innoventions prepares to shut down as part of the oncoming Epcot remodeling project, let's take a look back at one of the more notorious exhibits of its twilight years: Habit Heroes.

Opening in early 2012, Habit Heroes sought to tackle health problems and bad habits in the form of anthropomorphising them into cartoon supervillains with all the subtlety of Captain Planet's rogues gallery. The attraction featured four villains: "Control Freak"; a blue gremlin child with a mecha representing television and gaming addiction, "Snacker"; an overweight fairy representing the dangers of fatty foods, "Lead Bottom"; a fat wrestler representing how you need to get out and exercise, and "Sweet Tooth"; a woman in latex who wants to cram cupcakes down your throat.

Artist: "god i wish that were me"

Of course, putting a ton of emphasis on obesity and sloth in a 15 minute interactive experience culminating in getting the fat wrestler to dance was met with immediate backlash over fatshaming and within about a month or two, it shut down for retooling, replacing the human supervillains with more generic looking monsters and even put out some Marvel comic tie-in for it.

The website for the original Habit Heroes featured a wide assortment of ill-conceived supervillains and I managed to preserve these profiles during the initial shutdown.

Skipper Survival Guide

Take a look inside the whole thing. 

https://mega.nz/#!YwAAkSDY!IUnDg2GS9AJ7FImJ01dttONR43QzOBMARquaGbcLQMg

38 page Cast Member manual dedicated to getting Skippers acclimated into a 1938 setting with the Jungle Cruise’s backstory, wildlife journals, and Skipper character prompts in addition to operational information.

A History of the Jungle Navigation Company, c. 1994

When the Indiana Jones Adventure was introduced and the Jungle Cruise was re-routed and given a new boathouse to accommodate the attraction and the increased crowds in the area, show writers took an opportunity to rethink the attraction's tone and tried to further develop the setting. Wanting the stories of the Cruise and Indiana Jones to interconnect and trying to improve immersion, fourth wall jokes were banned to focus on putting people into a 1938 exploration setting. This was also around the time they introduced that awesome jazz and swing music loop that has become almost inseparable from Adventureland ever since.

A newly rewritten Cast Member manual, the Skipper Survival Guide, was developed to try and get skippers into a mindset of being in a jungle in 1938 with "1938 Current Events" listings, an animal guide in the form of an expedition journal, and character archetype prompts to encourage Skippers to try and make the show more of their own. But what we're focusing on now is the backstory of the Jungle Navigation Company and the old colonial boathouse they call home. Later Jungle Cruise projects such as the Skipper Canteen have changed some of the details, but this is where most of the notion of asking where the Jungle Cruise came from started.

Cranium Command in the Classroom

When Disney first opened Epcot Center, they also took it as an opportunity to rebrand their Educational films arm under the banner of "Epcot Educational Media". Some of the new productions under this initiative would take inspiration from some of the park's attractions such as the eleven part "Language Arts Through Imagination" series starring Journey into Imagination's Figment, who would teach kids about different aspects of creative writing, or the Kitchen Kabaret's Collander Combo taking off their fiesta gear to teach a boy about growing tiny little seeds in "Harold and his Amazing Green Plants".

The latter, directed by animator Bob Kurtz (best known for the Mr. DNA sequence in Jurassic Park) at his "Kurtz and Friends Studio" serves as a connection to a lesser-known, almost forgotten, part of this aspect of Epcot's history: The Wonders of Life video series.

Released on January 26, 1990 after the 1989 debut of the pavilion, this trio of films with animation directed by Bob Kurtz were loosely based on Cranium Command. Consisting of "The Bones and Muscles Get Rhythm", "The Brain and Nervous System Think Science" and "The Heart and Lungs Play Ball", they follow the attraction's central idea of exploring different parts of the body tied to a middle school plot in the outside world. However, Buzzy goes by his original draft name of Captain Cortex (and sports some cool shades) and being a smaller animated project, there's no sign of any celebrity organs here. But you do find the uncredited voices of Lorenzo Music, Rob Paulsen, Lennie Weinrib, Christine Cavanaugh, and Scott Menville in here.