The credits for Best Fiends Forever
Recently, creepy kids across the country began tuning into Netflix’s new show The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell. McConnell is best known for her treats and decorations that over the past couple years seem to go viral around Halloween. For fans of the Youtube Channel Fiend TV, home of the show Best Fiends Forever, some of the content seems a bit too familiar. Co-creator of Best Fiends Forever and voice of Cubbie the bat, Anjelica Abejuela, was heartbroken to discover that many of the concepts she and her partners Cameron Vamp, Kevin Cable, and actress LeeAnna Vamp had put together were showing up with a bigger budget on Netflix. We interviewed Anjelica to get the Fiends side of the story.
Intro for McConnell’s show
FGN: How long have you been working on FiendTV?
Abejuela: FiendTV is actually newer, we put that up about 3 years ago just for the Fiends content. Before our episodes were out on LeeAnna Vamp’s regular channel. So FiendTV is only about 3 year old, but our content goes back to 2012
FGN: What creatures does FiendTV feature?
Abejuela: We have Vamptress LeeAnna who plays our caretaker, teacher, big sister/mom; DeeKay, who is a constantly hungry Zombie, especially for sweets like cake and cookies; Cubbie is our fruit bat that loves apples; We have Boo, who is our speechless spirit; and Howlin our big brother, laid back wolf.
FGN: You and your co-creators, Kevin Cable, LeeAnna Vamp, and Cameron Vamp hand-made your puppets, correct?
Abejuela: Yes. Cameron was the original brains behind the concept. He and LeeAnna brought it to Kevin and Me. Kevin and I hand built our puppets from Cameron’s vision. Except the wolf; he’s human sized and we commissioned him from a friend.
FGN: When did you first find out about Netflix’s The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell? What was your response?
Abejuela: A friend messaged me this week regarding the show and if I had seen it. I told her I had not and she told me ‘it’s your show’ and I didn’t quite understand her. She had said to me that she began watching it and she felt like she was watching our show and I needed to check it out. So I did, and I was flabbergasted. Right out of the gate with the beginning and the Halloween concept. I get we aren’t original with the spooky theme, but the baking creepy dishes with puppets in a spooky mansion was too close to our Creepy Treats & Spooky Eats segment of our show. The more I watched it, the more similar the look and format got, and even the characters. I mean, I get it, Christine McConnell does her baking and she’s really good at it, but when they threw puppets into the mix and the house and kitchen and the interactions of her also being a caretaker to these creatures, it really threw me for a loop.
FGN: When you watch the show are you able to find images that are close to yours? Like set design and episode concepts?
Abejuela: Oh absolutely.
Best Fiends Forever (top) and McConnell (below)
Best Fiends Forever (top) and McConnell (below)
Best Fiends Forever (top) and McConnell (below)
FGN: Have you had a chance to speak with Netflix or McConnell’s PR team?
Abejuela: We have not. We haven’t, we posted in social media but no one has said anything.
FGN: How have fans of the show and LeeAnna Vamp responded?
Abejuela: LeeAnna and I have received a lot of comments saying they also noticed the similarities. Many of LeeAnna’s close friends have messaged her as well telling her about the show. We all kind of found out about it around the same time and looked into it together and are hearing from more and more people that they feel the same, that they’ve seen it before and are now realizing it’s our show, or it instantly reminded them of our show. Same goes for the others, Cameron, Kevin, friends have all pointed us towards the show because of its clearly similar content and concept.
FGN: So what does this mean for Best Fiends Forever and Fiend TV? What are your next steps?
Abejuela: As of right now, we’re just going to continue what we are doing. We’re definitely not stopping anytime soon. What they copied is only part of our entire show. We have our Imagination segments, and Our Adventures Segments that just debuted (with special intro by Nathan Fillion), we also have our ABC’s & 123’s we’ve been working on. So we’re not going to stop. We just know we were the first and we definitely aren’t out there for money. We’re doing this because we love it and our characters. They mean a lot to us. And they may try and steal our ideas and capitalize on it, but we know they can never be us. We know the concepts and our storylines work because we have the chemistry between our characters to make it work. So the fiends are just going to keep making our content. We have other things in the works, including our cartoon versions and more songs we’ve written. So we have plenty to keep our creative juices flowing.
Cubbie the Bat can be seen in the back center on a shelf after Abejuela gave a mini version to her hero Paget Brewster in 2014.
At time of publication, Netflix has yet to respond to our request for comment.
I don’t want to badmouth Christine because she is undeniably ridiculously talented but I really see the similarities between LeAnna’s & Christine’s shows. This really disappoints me, because this isn’t the only instance of her copying ideas: if you want to see someone that The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell lifted the entire concept of a cooking show from, do a simple search on YouTube or Google for a girl called “Homicidal Homemaker”, a well known horror themed recipe website and cooking show that Christine was absolutely aware of prior to her show premiering on Netflix. I think it’s sad that because Netflix has a bunch of money they think they can just get away with ripping off ideas from independent filmmakers.
Before the homicidal homemaker, there was Martha Stewart and all the other Crafter and Bakers on tv who did 30 days worth of Halloween specials. The homicidal homemaker does not have the presentation style of McConnell. The difference between those two are obvious unless it’s only that the both halloween themed goods? Mcconnell’s videos are in the persona of the 50’s in her style, she also sews her clothes for that style, refurbishes furniture, and builds large theme decor, so unless there can be only one halloween baker on the internet, I disagree with the comment above.
Before the baking and crafting reality shows, there was also a show for kids about a caretaker named Pee-Wee Herman with lots of puppets in a house. Before Fiendtv there was the Addams Family which had people in creepy costumes, creepy puppets, and creepy characters that didn’t speak. Before Best Fiends Forever, there was the Munsters that had a full on science lab in the spooky basement with the lab coats, potions, and the one normal, perfectly dressed woman who faced the public for the creepy family. The Munsters also opened the show with a creepy house. I’m like 99 percent sure that the talking mirror was published in a fairytale long before it made the Disney screen…and has popped up in horror movies galore since then. The point is, this is like Facebook v. Myspace. Neither were the first because the idea of connecting people online had been done by others before. What was different was who they chose to connect and how. BFF is a kids’ show, McConnell is not for kids. BFF is not dark, McConnell has murder, arson, and a serial killer. BFF makes easier cookies and crafts, McConnell makes ellaborate cookies and crafts that are used as plots in the show. I hope BFF’s new 123’s segment does not involve a puppet with fangs and an accent, like Sesame Street does…unless they come up with a new twist which makes it their own. That’s how it works.