Robot Chicken

So, what’s the secret sauce in Robot Chicken, a zesty hodgepodge of pop-culture in-jokes that took its name from a Chinese take-out dish? After all, parodies — especially of the goofy Star Wars variety — abound, especially online, where Darth Vader has been drolly recast as a super market manager named Chad and a contestant on The Apprentice. But Chicken serves up a unique, killer combo of stellar geek cred and exquisitely crappy stop-motion animation. “The show looks like what nearly every kid did: You got out your cars and G.I. Joes and smashed them together,” says Chicken fan Mike Johnson, codirector of the 2005 stop-mo blockbuster Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. “The show works because it captures the joy of playing with your toys.”

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