"Ice Sore" is the 16th episode of The Powerpuff Girls Season 1.
It was produced in 1998 and first aired on Cartoon Network in the United States on January 13, 1999.
Synopsis[]
Blossom discovers that she has the power to breathe ice onto things. She begins to constantly show off her power, making her sisters jealous. When Blossom makes a mistake while using her ice powers, she becomes reluctant to use them, right as another danger begins approaching Townsville.
Plot[]
On perhaps one of the hottest days in Townsville, the heat has everyone running for shelter and shade. The sweltering and blazing heat has made life unbearable.
Meanwhile, at the girls' home, the Professor burns himself with his own coffee while thinking about a theory involving force. While the girls are eating breakfast, Buttercup flash cooks their oatmeal with a heat ray and subjects her sisters to serious mouth burns. Of all days, Blossom discovers that she has a new power: ice breath (she can breathe ice just like a dragon breathes fire). Despite Bubbles and Buttercup getting annoyed by their lack of such a power, the girls decide to have a bit of fun with it, even having Blossom ice the entire floor until the Professor slips to his dismay. The Professor, witnessing this for himself, comes to explain that apart from their standard strength, flight, and laser eye beams, each of the girls have their own unique abilities, such as Bubbles speaking Spanish. With this settled, the Professor makes Blossom promise to not use this newfound ice power unless it is necessary.
Later at school, Bubbles and Buttercup are still deeply annoyed at Blossom's exhibitionism of her ice powers, even when the air conditioner is broken. Ms. Keane asks for the kids to go outside while the mechanic works on their air conditioner, disregarding their safety and protests.
While the kids are all outside in the extreme heat, Blossom is still holding to her promise to avoid using her ice powers until a classmate, Mary, is suffering from heat exhaustion. Blossom reluctantly uses her powers to help Mary, who is better and in awe at this power. After she helps Mary, the other students want Blossom to aid them too, but Bubbles and Buttercup bear witness to this and try to frame Blossom for doing something bad. They then find that the schoolyard has become a frosty oasis. Miss Keane is shocked, but pleased with the coolness, as well as the ice sculpture of herself that Blossom made.
As a call about a robbery comes in, Blossom is left behind at first, as she is busy serving snow cones to her classmates. At the crime scene, Bubbles and Buttercup give chase to a getaway car whose tires succumb to the intense heat of the road. When Blossom catches up, she tries to use her ice powers to freeze the perpetrators, but ends up only helping them escape as the car skates on the frozen road. Unable to bear the guilt of aiding an escape, Blossom swears off the use of her ice powers entirely.
However, the Mayor is observing the skies for a probable source of the intense heat, eventually discovering that a large fireball - an enormous meteorite - is on a collision course with Townsville. When Bubbles and Buttercup go to handle it alone, it proves too hot to handle, and the people await their doom. Bubbles and Buttercup spend a good amount of time convincing Blossom to use her ice powers, but she brings up her promise. Bubbles states if Blossom does not use her ice powers, it will cost a great deal of human life; Buttercup tells Blossom to forget her promise. The sisters even admit they feel bad for being jealous and forbidding her from using her ice powers. Blossom then uses them to freeze over the fireball enough for all three of them to destroy it.
Having saved Townsville with Blossom's new ice power, the girls bask in otherwise more stable weather. However, Blossom gets a chill from all the cold and she accidentally blows fire at the two of them when she sneezes.
Trivia[]
- Moral:
- Humility - The mark of a true hero is allowing your abilities to speak for themselves. While acknowledging them to a certain extent is acceptable, bragging is not, and it will only come back to bite you where it hurts.
- Jealousy - Being jealous of someone else's talents is normal, but taking out your frustrations on them for having such talents is unacceptable.
- At Bubbles' request, Blossom makes the floor all icy, like in the Tom & Jerry short "Mice Follies". Bubbles also mentions that Tom & Jerry is her favorite cartoon.
- Ms. Keane acts somewhat differently in this episode, being more strict, aggressive and careless, possibly due to the heat on top the frustration of a broken air conditioner.
- This episode reveals Bubbles's linguistics ability by simply demonstrating her ability to fluently speak and understand Spanish.
- When Bubbles speaks to Pablo, she says "Move, kid!" in Spanish.
- Although Blossom's ice breath runs out at the end of this episode, it's revealed that she has it again, and for the rest of the series, (most notably in Stuck Up, Up, and Away and Helter Shelter) most likely because whenever she uses that power, it starts a recharging period that happens overtime, and for the maximum duration for when she uses it all up, it would fully charge up again after most likely about a few hours.
- The ending also reveals that Blossom only has her ice breath in hot weather. In colder weather, it later changes into fire breath, though this was most likely intended as a joke.
- This episode reunites E.G. Daily and Scott Menville since their work on Rugrats.
- If you pay close enough attention after Blossom breathes fire and burns Bubbles and Buttercup, you can see that the toasted two are charred versions of the same pose that all three of the girls were briefly in during the episode "Major Competition", after a gust of wind from Major Man blows them around.
- This is the first episode where Buttercup picks up the Powerpuff Hotline.
Production Notes[]
- Although this episode premiered in the United States on January 13, 1999, it was actually produced in 1998 according to the credits.
- This episode was finished in October of 1998.[1]