The Home Sweet Home of Bluis & Bubblina

The Home Sweet Home of Bluis & Bubblina is an American animated series created by Wilton Lawrence. The show follows two anthropomorphic gumballs — Bluis and his girlfriend Bubblina — and their misadventures in a world made out of and populated by food. Lawrence has cited the show's stylistic and tonal influence from various animated shorts and commercials from the 1940's up to the 1970's (he specifically cited Jay Ward's Rocky & Bullwinkle and Roger Hargreaves' Mr. Men as his main influences), as well as contemporary editions of Candy Land.

Bluis & Bubblina made its debut in first-run syndication through the Bear Bones Lineup on November 6, 1997, and ended on December 16, 2000 with a total of 52 episodes across three seasons.

Plot
The Home Sweet Home of Bluis & Bubblina is set in the town of Foodville in the Cuisine Community, where most of the residents are based on food. The series revolves around two gumballs named Bluis and Bubblina who are currently dating as they go through their everyday lives.

Characters

 * Bluis (voiced by Billy West) — a strong, sensitive, and stubborn blue-colored gumball.
 * Bubblina (voiced by Lauren Tom) — Bluis' girlfriend. She is a soft, but very sharp-minded pink-colored gumball.
 * Lucky Bone (voiced by Tom Kenny) — a child-like, open-minded chicken drumstick who acts as a good sport and the trusting companion of Blues. He is also an amateur baseball player.
 * Egghead (voiced by Tom Kenny) — a deadpan-voiced, screwy, and unpredictable yellow egg who wears a bow tie and hollow glasses that show his complete lack of eyes, and is missing one tooth.
 * Ol' Toasty (voiced by James Patrick Stuart) — a walking slice of toast and the strict, straight and righteous ruler of the Cuisine Community.

Production
Production of the series started in 1993 when Bear Bones Productions pitched a pilot episode to ABC as a part of their Saturday morning lineup. The pilot of the series, named "Blueball and Pinkball" just simply revolved around Bluis (then known as Blueball) meeting Bubblina (Pinkball) as he finds a way to become her love. While ABC passed on the series, Bear Bones moved forward in production on an animated romance series.

The series was set for a premiere in July 1995, but it was delayed because Bear Bones wasn't financially sure if the series would be successful. Between Bear Bones Lineup's promising ratings and the money the studio was raking in from the series on the lineup alone, the series was given a premiere date of August 1997. Between then and October 1997, the series was given some final touches and was given new animation.

Animation was outsourced to D'Ocon Film Productions in Spain, Lacewood Productions in Canada, Wang Films Productions/Cuckoo's Nest Studio in Taiwan, and StarToons in Chicago. The opening title sequence was animated by Toon-Us-In and Virtualmagic Animation Inc.

Episodes

Broadcast
The series was broadcast in first-run syndication through the Bear Bones Lineup. Reruns later aired on the Bear Bones Channel and BBToons.

Home media releases
The series was released on VHS by Family Home Entertainment under license from Bear Bones. Select episodes were bundled with various Bear Bones compilation videos.

Lionsgate Home Entertainment released all four seasons of the series on DVD between 2006 and 2008.