SOUP'S HOOP

The Pratt Falls Wombats, confidently expecting to wipe up the basketball court with the Learning Groundhogs, prove no match for Soup's chaos-producing schemes. It looks bad for the Groundhogs: ""Shorty"" Merrill, ""Shorty"" Lynch, ""Shorty"" Pierce, and ""Shorty"" Fenner are ready, but ""Shorty"" Smith (at 4'11"", he's the tallest on the team) has sprained his ankle. Salvation appears in the 7-foot person of Piffle Shootensinker, visitor from little Pretzelstein. Unfortunately, as he explains, ""Mein hooperdunken izt no goot stinken. Ich missen der hooper."" Ah, but let him hear the music of his native land (played on the ""spitzentootle"") and he becomes another Kareem Addul-Jabbar. Can Soup simultaneously whip together a spitzentootle from found materials, give arch-nemesis Janice Riker a proper comeuppance, throw the Wombats into disarray, and turn the championship game (final score: 4--3, Groundhogs) into a grand melee? No problem. Peck sometimes tries too hard for laughs--sheep-clip figures repeatedly, and Piffle is uncomfortably close to stereotype--but the action is nonstop, and the series has plenty of loyal fans.