Poof Returns, Reintroduced As Peri On 'Fairly OddParents: A New Wish'
Poof Returns, Reintroduced As Peri On 'Fairly OddParents: A New Wish'
Wowza Bauza, the boy is back and the new 'Fairly OddParents' series continues to deliver
The Fairly OddParents: A New Wish is back, and so is the franchise’s biggest ratings trap, all grown up! This week has begun Nickelodeon’s Big Summer Vacation. And that apparently means putting on Steven Bombs not just continuing with new episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants and Rock Paper Scissors for a second straight week, but The Patrick Star Show, new-to-cable Kamp Koral, and yes, A New Wish after 5 weeks away. Monday’s return episode, the two-parter “Lost and Founder’s Day” saw Cosmo and Wanda bring up their son Poof substantially for the first time not only all series, but since the end of the original series in 2017. This culminates at the end where he shows up as a fully grown adult to Dev Dimmadome and reveals he has been assigned to Dev as his fairy godparent. And things have very clearly changed.
Poof now goes by Peri, short for Periwinkle, either grown by his parents’ 10,000 years of retirement time travel adventures or that it’s at least 15-20 years since the original series. He’s now smooth, cool, confident, showy, and charismatic dressed in all-purple suspenders and with purple hair where he inherits both his mother’s swirl and his father’s tufts, one of which rests atop the swirl. He’s also got his dad’s thick eyebrows and his wand is fashioned out of his old rattler In the original series he was born in the series’ return episode “Fairly OddBaby” in February 2008, which as it stands will likely be Nickelodeon’s fourth-highest rated episode for the rest of existence. The first fairy born in 1,000 years, voiced by Tara Strong, just like big brother Timmy. A season after he was born, his Anti-Fairy, Foop was, and they’d go to Spellementary School together. He started fully speaking in season 9. He was there a lot, and didn’t appear in season 10 until the switch to Flash, where he was on spring break and returned home. Now, after 15 years he and Foop finally have the same voice actors, as Peri is voiced by Eric Bauza. Back when Foop first debuted, the role was easily one of his seeds of eventual ubiquity in major roles before he truly exploded (again, it was 2009 and the four seasons that followed the debut of Foop didn’t finish for eight years).
As for Dev Dimmadome, he is the grandson of Doug Dimmadome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome. But Dev’s dad is Dale Dimmadome, who you might remember as the boy Timmy rescued from slavery from Vicky’s lemonade stand in “Nectar of the Odds”. He’s now a tech billionaire jerk who owns Dimmadome Global, Dimmazon, Dimm n’ Out Burgers, and probably a whole bunch of businesses in the empire. Dev’s part in distributing data-harvesting and otherwise-harmful bracelets for his dad puts him in bad standing with her, and he is genuinely upset. The Founder’s Day Festival turns disastrous with charmed robot statues, and of course that affects his dad’s bottom-line, which he is far more concerned with, continuing to neglect Dev. He gets pretty lonely, and is frequently compared as a “more developed” Remy Buxaplenty. All these factors leave Dev miserable enough to warrant fairy godparent assignment. Dev is voiced by Kyle McCarley while Dale is now voiced by JP Karliak.
Ashleigh Crystal Hairston, series co-developer and voice of main character Hazel Wells, has stated the name change came about in recognition of “poof” being a slur in many countries, making it unusable. In Britain, it’s specifically an anti-gay slur. She also revealed that refraining from using the term for anything appearing by magical means took some getting used to, where he stands with his parents and how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other will be answered.
What does Butch Hartman have to say about all this?
Did he choose to name himself Periwinkle or was it thrust upon him? Few people voluntarily adopt that name.