"Dream Scheme" is the ninth episode of Season 2, and the 33rd episode overall.
It premiered on Cartoon Network in the United States on September 24, 1999.
Plot[]
The Sandman wants to get some sleep, but can't as long as half the world is awake at any given time, so he builds a machine that will sprinkle the world with his sand and put the everyone to sleep, leaving it to The Powerpuff Girls to fight the Sandman in his dreams to make him wake up.
Synopsis[]
In this variant of the 1998-2002 animated episode outro, the falling gold stars aren't seen at all.
Putting everyone in the world to sleep can be a hard job and the Sandman has been wanting to get some sleep himself, so to make it easier, the Sandman builds a machine that puts everybody to sleep forever. Suddenly, the Powerpuff Girls confront the Sandman in their own bedroom, but before they try to stop him, the Sandman knocks them out and goes back to his lair to get some sleep. The Powerpuff Girls, while sleeping, enter the Sandman's dreams (after appearing in each other's dreams) and frighten him and crash his good dream staking on animal forms and resuming their human forms along the way. Then, the Sandman promises that he will never sleep again and finally, he wakes everybody up. However, the Girls also wake up from the Sandman's spell, but go to bed and sleep in late anyway.
Characters[]
Major Roles[]
- Blossom
- Bubbles
- Buttercup
- The Sandman (debut)
Minor Roles[]
- Professor Utonium
- Santa Claus (debut; cameo)
- Japanese family
Errors[]
- As the girls floated to their bed, Blossom's and Bubbles' pink and blue blankets are on the left and middle of the bed, but as they lay their heads on their pillows, the colored blankets switched places.
- As the Professor opened the Girls' door, it is pink, but then it changed to white in the next shot.
- As the Sandman is about to go to bed, clocks depicting the times in various countries and cities around the world can be seen in the background. Many of the locations have spelling errors, including Seoul, Tokyo, Hawaii, and Washington.
- When the girls come back and go to sleep, Buttercup has bags under her eyes.
Trivia[]
- The girls wear their regular clothes instead of their nightgowns for this episode, even when they go to sleep and appear in the episode outro wide awake.
- Also, in this episode, the Narrator says his usual episode-ending catchphrase differently: "Oh, Professor, perhaps you'd better turn around because while the rest of us were sleeping sound, the Earth was saved, just as it twirls, thanks again to The Powerpuff Girls!".
- During the 1998-2002 animated episode outro, when the girls appear, the falling golden stars don't appear at all. This was because the animators tried to find the cell of the falling stars but realized it was missing, so they decided to let the cell of the girls in their normal poses establish itself just a little more and leave the girls with nothing falling behind them. This will remain until "Slave the Day".[citation needed]
- This is an episode in which all of the dialogue rhymes (including the title).
- It could be a reference to the lyrics of the songs by the British girl group the Spice Girls.
- There is a reference to The Princess Bride in this episode; when the Professor says, "No 'but's' and I mean it," Bubbles asks, "Does anybody want a peanut?" What makes it such a reference is that in the film, when Vizzini says, "No more rhymes now, I mean it!," Fezzik asks, "Anybody want a... peanut?" In fact, the main character in The Princess Bride is also named Buttercup.
- The Sandman's ditty is set to the tune and rhymes just like the nursery rhyme "I'm a Little Teapot."
- During the Sandman's nightmare scenes, stock footage from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s can be seen in the background. Some of the footage was from a Omega Experimental film, which was found in 16mm and put on YouTube with the said print.
- Also during the Sandman's nightmare, Bubbles acted like Jaws at one point, parodying the movie's certain scene.
- The second time the Girls became any kind of animal since "Monkey See, Doggie Do", though in this episode it only happened in the Girls' dreams.
- Both this episode and its partner episode, "You Snooze, You Lose", involve falling asleep.
- This episode aired on Day 3 of Toonami's Trapped in Hyperspace event. Swayzak, the main antagonist of the TIE who watched the shows with TOM in between episodes, liked this one specifically because of the Sandman's nightmare and the line "It seems like they're going to bed in Ukraine." (even though Swayzak has a New Zealand accent.)
- In addition, the narrator speaks in a Russian accent when he says that line, even though he should have a Ukrainian accent.
- Moral: Sleep is important for good health. If the Girls had managed to stay up all night, they'd be cranky, unresponsive and above all, too tired to fight crime.
- In MsMojo’s “Top 10 Darkest Powerpuff Girls Episodes” list, “Dream Scheme” was ranked at #8.
Home Videos Released[]
Production Notes[]
- Although this episode and "You Snooze, You Lose" were produced before "Beat Your Greens" and "Down 'n' Dirty", those episodes aired first.
- This episode was finished in March of 1999.[1]