Tasty Time With Zefronk (2008-2011)

The Emmy-nominated series about a wiener dog with a cooking show!

In 2007, while half-asleep, a crystal clear voice in my head started screaming “I…am LeFRONK!”. My eyes popped open and I leapt out of bed and sprinted to the computer. With pencil in hand, I quickly sketched out a cartoon chihuahua. It looked pretty good so I showed it to my wife, Heather. She paused for a second and said “Cute! But his name is LeFronk. That sounds more like a wiener dog.” And she was right! So I whipped up this two-page pitch, and changed the first letter of his name, because it sounded funnier:

From there, I pitched it to my agent at the time, who didn’t know what to do with it since there was no real story to go along with it. So I sighed and tacked the two pages to my wall.

About two weeks later, I got a call from Emily Hart at Disney (who I had met while living in Orlando years earlier) saying she saw my book Tickle the Duck while vacationing in Hawaii. She asked me if I had any projects to pitch. I had already been working on some other show concepts, so I sent them to her. She said those weren’t quite right for Disney, so I paused, then gazed at the Zefronk pages tacked to the wall. Then I spoke. “Well…I’ve got this other idea that you might like.”

And she did like it. In fact, she loved it. She asked if I was okay with Zefronk making kids snacks instead of meals, and of course I said “Um…yeah!”

From there it was a whirlwind.

I was asked to create more flushed-out drawings of the characters and setting.

The image I created shows a simple doghouse from the outside…

But inside is a TV studio with a high tech, gourmet kitchen. (Our daughter, Katherine, chose colors for the kitchen. Now she’s an interior designer in Los Angeles!)

Then I was asked to come up with some supporting characters. Here’s Dom, the sneaky neighbor cat and Sue, Zefronk's sous-chef!

I asked to write the episodes and they were kind enough to let me give it a whirl. But my drafts were bad. So they hired the great Craig Shemin (of Muppets fame) to come in and write them, all. Then…they brought in music wizard Jeff Zahn to write the theme song and music. Then…to my astonishment…they hired voice legend Rob Paulsen (Pinky and the Brain and many others) to voice Zefronk, and Mark Hamill (of Star Wars fame) to voice Dom the cat. Crazy, right?! The simple, yet exquisite, animation was done by Odd Bot animation in Los Angeles, and boy, did they do a great job!!

Twenty episodes were produced and ran in repetition from 2008-2011 on various Disney channels. It was even nominated for Daytime Emmy!

Watch my favorite episode below. You can also do a search on Youtube for more Tasty Time with Zefronk videos.

Apprécier! (Enjoy!)

Some of the episodes ended with these short live-action sequences! Fun!

Zefronk was internationally known!