"Wax Museum" is the second segment of the fifth episode of the second season of Amphibia, and the forty-ninth episode overall.
It premiered on August 8, 2020, alongside "Swamp and Sensibility".
Synopsis
The family visits a mysterious roadside oddities museum where every treasure comes with a price.
Plot
Anne doing tricks in front of the townsfolk.
The Plantars arrive in the town of Stony Gulch, but with a low money budget, they cannot buy anything and can only afford window shopping. Anne takes off her hood due to the excessive heat, startling the onlookers but Anne shows she is friendly by doing parlor tricks and acts. The townspeople are invested in Anne and tip her with money. Anne performs to the crowd until sunset, when the Plantars collect enough money from tips. They decide to visit the Curiosity Hut, though the Plantars insist that Anne needs to keep her hood up to avoid detection. Upon entering, they are greeted by the hut's eccentric owner, the Curator. He gives them a tour of his wax figures of creatures and monsters of Amphibia, one of which freaks out Polly when she sees its eyes moving. Unsettled by the museum, the Plantars decide to leave while Anne continues on the tour.
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The Skipman.
Before she leaves with the family, Anne notices an exhibit of a CD player from the human world. She decides to cut a deal with the Curator to give her the Skipman in exchange for being his human display for one day. The Curator deviously accepts the terms, and they agree to meet back later. However, Hop Pop bans her from going, so Anne sneaks out later that night after the Plantars fall asleep.
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The Curator showing The Planters around the Curiosity Hut.
As Anne returns to the hut where the Curator is waiting, he places Anne on a grandiose stage with an X marked on the floor. When Anne steps on it, the Curator drops a large tube over her. He reveals that the wax statues in his museum are real creatures he froze in wax, and Anne will soon be among them, much to her horror.
Sprig handing Anne the Skipman after leaving the Curiosity Hut.
Back at the Fwagon, Hop Pop and the others wake up and find Anne is missing. They rush to the museum where Anne is moments away from being coated in wax. The Curator begins to fight with Sprig and Hop Pop over Anne's life. Polly spots the wax figure from earlier looking at her again, and confronts the creature with a torch, freeing it from the wax. Hop Pop and the kids melt the rest of the statues. The monsters proceed to gang up on the Curator and drag them to the storage room where red liquid then leaks from underneath (which the Curator humorously ensures is simply wax) as the Plantars rescue the nearly-frozen Anne. The wax over Anne melts next to a fire by morning, and Anne apologizes for her rash decision with Hop Pop telling her that she needs to be careful. Anne remarks that the Curator got the Skipman from Newtopia, to which Sprig reveals he acquired it, and gives to her. Excited with it, Anne shows off its laser pointer, which she accidentally shines into Hop Pop's eye.
Cast
- Brenda Song as Anne Boonchuy
- Justin Felbinger as Sprig Plantar
- Bill Farmer as Hop Pop Plantar
- Amanda Leighton as Polly Plantar
- Alex Hirsch as Curator Ponds
Additional voices
- Eden Riegel as Green Pollywog, Pollywog's Mother
- Fred Tatasciore as Mustache Frog & Deformed Monster
- Sam Riegel as Ushanka Hat Frog
- Alex Hirsch as frog Soos & Frog Shmebulock
Title in other languages
| Language | Title | Translation | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
 Latin American Spanish
|
El museo de cera | The wax museum | |
 Bulgarian
|
Музей на восъчните фигури | The wax figures museum | |
 German
|
Das Kuriositätenmuseum | The curiosity museum | |
 European Spanish
|
Museo de cera | Wax museum | |
 French
|
Musée de cire | Wax museum | |
 Italian
|
Il museo delle cere | Wax museum | |
 Japanese
|
へんてこ博物館 | Strange Museum | |
 Korean
|
수상한 박물관 | Suspicious Museum | |
 Dutch
|
Wassen museum | Wax Museum | |
 European Portuguese
|
Museu de Cera | Wax Museum | |
 Polish
|
Muzeum figur woskowych | The wax figures museum | |
 Thai
|
พิพิธภัณฑ์หุ่นขี้ผึ้ง | ||
 Vietnamese
|
Bảo Tàng Sáp | Wax Museum |
Transcript
| For a full transcript of "Wax Museum", click here. |
Gallery
Click here to view the gallery.
Trivia
- Viewership: This episode was watched by 0.32 million viewers on its premiere.[1]
- This was the final episode to air on Disney XD's regular programming schedule on July 28, 2023.[2][3]
- This is the first episode to use the stock crying sound effect most notably used for Baby Kate on Arthur, which can be heard by the polliwog with a flower hat who gets frightened by Anne.
- This episode pays homage to the Disney Channel series Gravity Falls, featuring Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch as a guest actor.[4]
- In the tradition of Gravity Falls' use of cryptograms, there are two cryptograms deciphered in the episode, one on the clown frog painting's top left corner that says "There is a Soos in every dimension" and another near the closet door's downright corner that said "Dipcifica 4 lyfe," referring to a fandom ship between Gravity Falls characters Dipper Pines and Pacifica Northwest. Both use Caesar cipher ROT+3, the inverse of the ROT-3 normally used in Gravity Falls.
- In the scene with Frog Soos and Curator Ponds, Frog Soos breaks the fourth wall saying "Say Mr. Ponds, do you get the feeling that we exist simultaneously in multiple parallel universes, completely unaware of the other's very existence?"
- This could also hint to the Gravity Falls lore, in which the character Ford Pines traveled and discovered the existence of multiple dimensions other than his. This likely means that the series takes place in an alternate universe from Gravity Falls, or, at the very least, the world of Amphibia itself.
- The Curator eats canned meat, which is what Stan ate and mentioned throughout Gravity Falls, being almost a running gag in the show.
- Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal, the respective voice actors of the series' main characters Dipper and Mabel Pines, would later guest star in "The Core & The King" and "The Plantars Check In" respectively.
Revelations and significant events
- Anne finds a Skip Man from Earth.
Continuity
- Sprig's action figures from "Flood, Sweat & Tears" and "Handy Anne" appear in this episode.
- Hop Pop sleeps with his eyes open, just like he did in "Best Fronds".
- However, in other episodes, like "A Night at the Inn", he can be seen sleeping with his eyes closed.
- Hop Pop doesn't like Anne revealing her human look to the frogs of Stony Gulch due to them treating her like a monster, the way the citizens of Wartwood did earlier on in the series.
Errors
- The Disney+ captions claims Frog Shmebulock said "Wish me luck!" instead of "Shmebulock!"
Allusions
- House of Wax - The wax sculptures from the Curiosity Hut being actual living beings encased in wax is an homage to the House of Wax horror movies (1933, 1953 and 2005) wherein the story revolves around a mad sculptor kidnapping people and transforming them into wax sculptures. The Curator trying to turn Anne into a wax statue mirrors the movies' climax where the female-lead is nearly turned into a statue herself.
- Air Bud - Air Bug, the Bugball-playing praying mantis, is a parody of the film's basketball-playing golden retriever. The line about there being rules against a mantis playing Bugball refers to a line from the movie regarding a dog playing basketball.
- Gravity Falls - Several references and homages are made to the series, with the episode itself being a huge homage to the show.
- The "Curiosity Hut" is based on the Mystery Shack.
- Curator Ponds and Frog Soos are based on the characters Stan Pines and Soos Ramirez.
- The surname "Ponds" is even a reference to Stan's last name "Pines".
- Bill Cipher can be seen on the carpet of the Curiosity Hut.
- The "living wax figures" concept, and Polly melting them, references the plot of the Gravity Falls episode "Headhunters".
- The "Fromes" serve as the Amphibia versions of gnomes. One of the Fromes said "Shmebulock" as he's freed, a reference to the gnome of the same name in the series, who is only capable of saying his own name.
- The clown painting in the back room references Stan's love of clown paintings that was established in the episode "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel".
- The concept art of the Curiosity Hut is designed like the Mystery Shack.
- The Curator references "I'm not going back to frog prison" when attacking Sprig, which is what happened to Stan in Gravity Falls throughout his life.
- Loch Ness Monster - The 1934 hoax photograph of the fabled Loch Ness Monster is framed in the Curiosity Hut.
- Sony Portable CD player - Anne finds a CD player called "SKIP MAN" in the Curiosity Hut and the Curator said it costs a million coppers, which is a reference to the popular Discman.
Memorable quotes
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Metcalf, Mitch (August 11, 2020). Top 150 Saturday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 8.8.2020. Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on 2020-12-08.
- ↑ Disney Schedule Archive [@DisneySchedules] (Jul 23, 2023). "Disney XD's schedule for 7/24-7/30.
New to XD episodes of Moon Girl, Hailey's On It!, Beyblade Burst, and Yu-Gi-Oh! continue." (Tweet). Archived from the original on 2023-08-15. Retrieved 2023-08-16 – via Twitter. - ↑ Disney Schedule Archive [@DisneySchedules] (Aug 4, 2023). "Forgot to mention this but Amphibia is off the Disney XD schedule now. Don't know if it'll return. Full series is streaming on Disney+." (Tweet). Archived from the original on 2023-08-15. Retrieved 2023-08-16 – via Twitter.
- ↑ Disney TVA [@DisneyTVA] (Jun 23, 2020). "From risky robotics to museum mishaps, we can't wait for you to watch these brand-new episodes of #Amphibia, #BigCityGreens, and #TheOwlHouse! Which ones are you most excited for?" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 2020-06-23 – via Twitter.