Plasmo (partially found supplementary material of Australian stop-motion cartoon; 1981-1997)

Screenshot from the "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo" excerpt that is currently on YouTube.

Status: Partially Found

Plasmo was a 13-episode stop-motion series for children that was first aired on television in Australia and abroad in 1997. The series followed the story of "Plasmo"; a small alien creature, and his friends, as he tried to find a way back to his home planet. The entire series was compiled into a graphic novel format in 2009.

Lost Content

The creator of Plasmo, Anthony Lawrence,^[1] has uploaded the entire Plasmo television series to YouTube. What is apparently much harder to find, however, are the several Plasmo cartoons that preceded this animated series. There are four in total; "Plasmo versus the Space Bullies", "Plasmo and the Space Party", "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo", and a short that featured the first animated appearance of, "Coredo"’; one of the main characters in the animated series. Additionally, two of the episodes of the animated series have deleted scenes.

Plasmo versus the Space Bullies & Plasmo and the Space Party

Nothing is currently known about what these cartoons were actually about, other than what is implied in their respective titles. "Plasmo versus the Space Bullies" was Plasmo's first animated appearance; this short was released in 1981 and was 8 minutes long. "Plasmo and the Space Party", which Anthony Lawrence described as having been a sequel to the first short, was released in 1983 and was 12 minutes long. In the August 2011 issue of Stop Motion Magazine, an interview with Anthony Lawrence about Plasmo is included.^[2] One of the pictures included in this article shows an unusual-looking Plasmo who looks very different from his appearances in both "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo" and the Plasmo television series (see gallery). Presumably, this picture is a screenshot from one of the two early shorts, but unfortunately the picture is not captioned in any way (and it was not included in the Plasmo graphic novel).

The available information about these two shorts suggests that neither of them is truly "lost", but as they are not on the internet and were apparently never included in a DVD release, it is difficult to know where to look for them.

Happy Hatchday to Plasmo

This 27-minute-long short film was released in 1989. Screen Australia describes its plot as such:

Plasmo, a three-year-old alien, has his hatchday party gate crashed by the two mercenary bounty hunters Brucho and Coredor.

A YouTube user has uploaded six minutes of this short film, though some of it appears to have been edited for comedic effect, and this user has already clarified that they no longer have the rest of the short film. In addition to what is shown in the six-minute-long upload, there are two pictures in the Plasmo graphic novel which have accompanying captions that say that the pictures are screenshots from "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo" (an expanded version of one of these screenshots was also included in the August 2011 issue of Stop Motion Magazine) (see gallery). A page on the now-expired Plasmo TV website shows two more screenshots that are probably also from the feature (see gallery).

"Happy Hatchday to Plasmo" did get a limited DVD release, but used copies of it have proven are incredibly rare. The full 27 minute short was recently uploaded to YouTube. The short is a total of 27 minutes long. The short that was uploaded to YouTube was upscaled to 4K and is the first full online copy of 'Happy Hatchday to Plasmo' uploaded to the internet.

Untitled Coredor short

To quote the Plasmo graphic novel; "Coredor began his life in 1985 as a puppet for a short animation that had nothing to do with Plasmo". A picture of what Coredor looked like in this animation is included. This picture was also included in the August 2011 issue of Stop Motion Magazine, but there it was not captioned. Nothing more is known about this short.

Deleted Scenes

A page in the Plasmo graphic novel shows that episodes 5 and 10 have deleted scenes. In episode 5, a deleted scene showed the characters Plasmo and, "Parsty", tricking a character named, "Professor Sashimi", into thinking that they were under attack by snake-like creatures. This scene was deleted because it made the runtime of the episode too long. In episode 10, there was originally a scene in which the character Coredor harmed the character named, "Brucho", by momentarily holding Brucho's hand over a hot plate. This scene was deleted because the television censors believed that it was too cruel. It is unclear whether there is currently a way to view these scenes; Anthony Lawrence did not upload them to his YouTube account.

#	Media Title	Status
1	Plasmo versus the Space Bullies (1981)	Lost
2	Plasmo and the Space Party (1983)	Lost
3	Untitled Coredor short (1985)	Lost
4	Happy Hatchday to Plasmo (1989)	Found
5	Plasmo episode 5 deleted scene (1997)	Lost
6	Plasmo episode 10 deleted scene (1997)	Lost

Gallery

A screenshot featuring Plasmo that was featured in the August 2011 issue of Stop Motion Magazine; possibly from the 1981 short or the 1983 short.
An excerpt from the Plasmo graphic novel; showing a picture of Coredor's first design with a caption about his first appearance. The picture was also featured in the August 2011 issue of Stop Motion Magazine.
An excerpt from the Plasmo graphic novel that shows a screenshot from "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo" that features Brucho.
An excerpt from the Plasmo graphic novel that shows a screenshot from "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo” that features Coredor.
A picture from the August 2011 issue of Stop Motion Magazine that shows the previous screenshot, but with Brucho included.
A probable screenshot from "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo" that was featured on a page of the Plasmo TV website; featuring Plasmo.
A probable screenshot from "Happy Hatchday to Plasmo" that was featured on a page of the Plasmo TV website; featuring Coredor.
A partial scan of the page from the Plasmo graphic novel that discusses the deleted scenes from the Plasmo television series.