By all means there are better Pink Panther cartoons out there than Pink Bananas, both in the 1978 output and overall, but it's nowhere near among the weakest of the series, it's at least colourful, has some amusing moments and thankfully it's not as pointless as cartoons like Pink-In, Pinkologist and Yankee Doodle Pink.
The animation in Pink Bananas is pretty good. Not great, mind you, some of the backgrounds do look a little simplistic and rushed-looking, but mostly it's smooth and vibrantly coloured rather than flat and garish. Pinky and the gorilla are well drawn and both do a great job carrying the cartoon. Pinky has been funnier but he is still likable and cool, while the gorilla is cute and its reactions and facial expressions when dancing to the music make the humour more amusing than it could've been. The two of them work beautifully together. And the humour while never hilarious and mostly one-joke is enough at least to raise a few smiles. The theme tune as ever is a classic, despite me having heard it too many times to count it has yet to irritate.
Where Pink Bananas doesn't fare so good is in the pacing, sometimes the cartoon feels rushed with a few of the gags feeling too brief and then there are other times where the lack of variety and the thin and formulaic story(even for Pink Panther) give the sense that the pacing could have been sharper. The music, apart from the theme tune of course, did have a tendency to be in-your-face and repetitive in the pro-1975 Pink Panther cartoons and the music had a tendency to be both in Pink Bananas as well as lacking in energy.
Overall, colourful and reasonably amusing but nowhere near classic Pink Panther status. 6/10 Bethany Cox
The animation in Pink Bananas is pretty good. Not great, mind you, some of the backgrounds do look a little simplistic and rushed-looking, but mostly it's smooth and vibrantly coloured rather than flat and garish. Pinky and the gorilla are well drawn and both do a great job carrying the cartoon. Pinky has been funnier but he is still likable and cool, while the gorilla is cute and its reactions and facial expressions when dancing to the music make the humour more amusing than it could've been. The two of them work beautifully together. And the humour while never hilarious and mostly one-joke is enough at least to raise a few smiles. The theme tune as ever is a classic, despite me having heard it too many times to count it has yet to irritate.
Where Pink Bananas doesn't fare so good is in the pacing, sometimes the cartoon feels rushed with a few of the gags feeling too brief and then there are other times where the lack of variety and the thin and formulaic story(even for Pink Panther) give the sense that the pacing could have been sharper. The music, apart from the theme tune of course, did have a tendency to be in-your-face and repetitive in the pro-1975 Pink Panther cartoons and the music had a tendency to be both in Pink Bananas as well as lacking in energy.
Overall, colourful and reasonably amusing but nowhere near classic Pink Panther status. 6/10 Bethany Cox
