(Click on some of the images in this post to go to their respective sites)
The Raccoons was an animated Canadian TV show that ran from November 11, 1985 to March 19, 1991 on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The original cartoon revolves around a trio of anthropomorphic raccoons including Bert Raccoon and his friends and married couple Ralph Raccoon and Melissa Raccoon. Their adventures involve saving the forest from the evil efforts of the industrialist forces of Cyril Sneer, a greedy aardvark millionaire who wants to destroy the forest for his own personal wealth and selfish desires. However, the trio always come out on top and save the forest from Cyril and his goons. The animated series is known for pushing an obvious environmentalist message for its audience.
The main lovable furry characters of the franchise.
According to rumors online, the adventures of The Raccoons characters may not have always been so family-friendly behind the scenes. While it hasn’t been confirmed by the crew of the show yet, apparently the animators created lewd drawings of the characters, including putting them in pornographic and adult situations, and put those drawings all over the walls of the Hinton Animation Studios, which was the Canadian animation company responsible for the second, third, fourth and fifth seasons of The Raccoons before being closed down due to debt problems. The animators then created printed collections for themselves titled Off the Walls, and in volumes 1, 2 and 3.
Below is a video by YouTuber GeraldMee showcasing footage from Hinton Animation Studios of an animator discussing cel animation from The Raccoons TV show.
I first learned about Off the Walls on Listal, a website and social networking site for reviewing movies, tv shows, video games and other entertainment media. A page titled “Kids’ cartoons with dirty secrets” was uploaded by user Max the Movie Guy, an avid reviewer of movies and tv shows, including animated shows. The Raccoons entry only has one sentence in the list, but Max mentions that the animators had a secret stash of pornography of the characters that they kept somewhere in the studio (presumably the Hinton Animation Studio).
Max’s list doesn’t seem to have a date when it was first published, but I remember accessing the page sometime around the late 2010’s, possibly around 2018. TV Tropes also mentions Off the Walls on their page titled “Rule 34 – Creator Reactions”.
A few threads on 4chan’s /co/ board also mention Off the Walls, and their description are exactly the same as the one on TV Tropes.
Despite a few mentions of Off the Walls on some websites, the pornographic drawings of The Raccoons characters have still not been seen in any capacity or even acknowledged by the show’s creators themselves, so it’s best to treat Off the Walls as a possible rumor for the time being. Nevertheless, the fact that these inappropriate drawings are mentioned at all is intriguing, but it’s also unknown where this information originated from in the first place. It could’ve been an interview that’s no longer online, though so far we seemingly have no clues yet. The best case scenario then is to reach out to the team behind the franchise and see if they are willingly to shed more light on this mystery.
On a website titled Tomorrow, an interview with the crew of The Raccoons mention self-deprecating and show-deprecating sketches by the storyboard artists. It’s unknown if Off the Walls was a part of these sketches, but it could be a possible lead.
*The sentence mentioning the sketches is highlighted in blue and can be found in the “Run with us” section of the article.*
One more interesting detail is a rather provocative image I found in the same /co/ thread on 4chan mentioning Off the Walls. It appears to show Bert and a female raccoon (possibly Lisa Raccoon but I’m not sure) playing basketball, with Bert being dunked on by the female raccoon who appears to be in the middle of successfully putting the ball in the basketball net. This image stands out because it prominently shows the female raccoon’s right breast, with Bert looking straight at it with a happy expression. Also, some words on the bottom right of the image appear to say “Polo Sasso. 07”. Maybe that’s the signature of the animator who made this drawing sometime in 2007, but that’s unconfirmed at this time. It’s unknown as well if this image relates to Off the Walls in anyway, but it’s an interesting find in itself.
Sources
The Hidden Vault 
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