Read more about Bionic Bunny at: Wikipedia

Official Site: PBS Kids

Bionic Bunny is a fictional rabbit superhero created by children's author and illustrator Marc Brown. Although Bionic Bunny is most associated with the Arthur characters, he has appeared in his own book as well. Bionic Bunny is always fictional even within the context of the Arthur world, and is portrayed by fictional actor Wilbur Rabbit. Bionic Bunny physically appears to be a tall, strong anthropomorphic white rabbit who wears sneakers and a red-and-blue superhero costume with a red cape. Although in some ways a parody of various different superheroes, and of superheroes in general, Bionic Bunny is most directly a reference to Superman. Like Superman's weakness to Kryptonite, Bionic Bunny's weakness is salt.

In both the Arthur books and cartoon series, Bionic Bunny is the favorite superhero of most of the characters, especially Arthur Read and Buster Baxter. In addition to being portrayed as a (live-action within the Arthur context) television series, he has also been the star of a movie series and a popular comic book. Bionic Bunny is also heavily merchandised in Arthur's world, with his poster hanging prominently in Arthur's room, as well as countless other references. Some viewers believe that Arthur wears Bionic Bunny slippers, but this is actually half of a larger joke: Arthur, the aardvark, wears bunny slippers, while Buster, the bunny, wears aardvark slippers. Other notable Bionic Bunny merchandise includes Arthur's walkie-talkie system and soup. Arthur is also revealed to wear Bionic Bunny underwear in the episode Arthur Goes to Camp (this piece of information was also one of the many quotes programmed into an Actimates D.W.). Arthur also dresses up as Bionic Bunny for Halloween

In later episodes, Bionic Bunny's show had been spun off into a second series, Dark Bunny. Dark Bunny is a darker, scarier, and gloomier portrayal of the Bionic Bunny universe, and is comparable to Bionic Bunny in the same way that Batman is to Superman. In particular, Dark Bunny is in reference to the post-Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns version of Batman, and most of all to the Batman: The Animated Series cartoon of the 1990s. The first episode mentioning Dark Bunny says he is Bionic Bunny's cousin, but a later episode reveals them to be brothers. Arthur and his friends are at first fascinated with this more mature spin-off (except for D.W., who considers it scary), but soon become bored with it and watch the Teletubbies-inspired "Love Ducks" show instead.

Conejitos Mechanicos is the Spanish version of Bionic Bunny, and is roughly a literal translation as well. Seen in the episode "Arthur and Los Vecinos", Arthur's Hispanic teenage new neighbor has a stack of Conejitos Mechanicos comic books in Spanish, (except that they are called Conejo Bionico) which he gives to Arthur because he's outgrowing them and losing interest in the character. Arthur gladly accepts, but proceeds to pester his new friend by asking him to translate nearly every word. This is a realistic simulacrum of the real-world comic book industry, where heroes often have different names in non-English markets (Spider-Man, for example, is El Hombre Araña in Spanish) and the stories are either translated or completely different.

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