My Lion King Forum

Yep, it's happened again...someone has dug up some tie-in TLK material with four more semi-canon cubs. Not surprisingly, they're from Simba's generation (bringing the total number of cubs up to about 2 squillion or so).

Rarsa from DeviantART gets credit for this find. It's an activity page from an issue of the Swedish children's magazine Disneykul ("Disney Fun") that (according to Rarsa) was published in the mid-00's.

The object of the game is to order the cubs by their coat colors, going from lightest to darkest. This scan isn't the best, but there are individual scans of the cubs in Rarsa's gallery that are slightly sharper (they're still pretty bluish, though)

Cub A: Anyone else think this looks like a cub version of Nala as she appears in Simba's Pride? She's got the chunky build, the pale fur, and of course, the bright blue eyes. I've seen a lot of post-SP blue-eyed Nalas appearing in TLK comics, but this is the first time a blue-eyed Nala and the real Nala have appeared together. I guess Nala really did have a stunt double.

Cub B: Obviously Nala.

Cub C: I initially suspected this magazine of being published after SP was released because this guy's color scheme matches the ones from some of the non-movie versions of Kovu almost exactly. I mean, look at the Kovu from Disney's Gamebreak! in this collage I did (the one on the far right) -- he's got the same slightly lighter belly fur as this new cub. It's like Active Play Kovu and Gamebreak! Kovu's colors got mushed together and slapped onto a Simba-like cub. (Though that is a unique nose shape, I must admit.) EDIT: And holy cow -- I just realised how huge his right foreleg is.

Cub D: This guy reminds me a little of the cub Nuka beanie tag. He's got a pretty pale tail tuft, too.

Cub E: Looks like a washed-out version of Kula, with Kiara's looks. ("Kulara?")

And something I just realised: Cub A and B look like they could be Kovu and Vitani's parents. Maybe not as good a match as these two, but still...

Sweden

Interesting, Cub D seems so awesome.

Nice find, although there was only one thought running through my mind as I read this.

It's Disney. Knowing the way they've screwed up in the past, D, or even E, may have been intended to be cub Mufasa.

[quote="Regulus"]Nice find, although there was only one thought running through my mind as I read this.

It's Disney. Knowing the way they've screwed up in the past, D, or even E, may have been intended to be cub Mufasa.[/quote]
E? Pretty sure E is female.

Probably not Mufasa. O.O

Thanks Rarsa for finding this, and thank you again, Akril, for sharing this with us! I don't know about you guys, but i'm going to play Akril's game from lighest to darkest:

Cub C has the darkest of them all with the dark brown fur. To me, it looks like an alternate version of Kovu with lighter belly fur, no ear rims, and doesn't have darker hair tuft. Who knows, it would be an excellent picture of what Kovu's father looks like.

Cub D has a lighter brown fur than from C had. And is it just me or does Cub D's fur from his head to his shoulders looks strikingly different from the rest of his body. If you look closely, there's a clear line dividing the different colors. Other the cubs which looks like knockoffs of movie lion characters as cubs, this is a quite an original design.

Cub E's fur falls in the middle of the color spectrum of the cubs. Her fur is much lighter from the Cubs C and E, but is darker from Cubs B and A. Thanks to the close-up of the cub from le0, it's looks like a knock-off design of cub Kiara: same red eyes, same ear shapes, same nose, same chin, and the same head structure.

Cub B is a perfect drawing of cub Nala.

Cub A looks like cub Nala, but her fur is much paler than Cub B, and has bluish eye to me.


On a final note, I would be careful on using the label, "semi canon". Canon means the original source material, and in case of TLK, the canon source is The Lion King. The canon filmmakers are the directors Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, producer Don Hahn, the screenwriters, and the animators. If the other forms of LK media had a small capacity of their involvement or their approval, then, we could be this characters "semi canon".


[quote="Akril"]And something I just realised: Cub A and B look like they could be Kovu and Vitani's parents. Maybe not as good a match as these two, but still...
[/quote]

Nah, Zira and an unknown (Outsider) male still holds Simba's Pride's vision of who Nuka, Vitani, and Kovu's parents. Appearance isn't just everything, but their genetics also play a role in how their cubs look like. Then again, we are talking about animated anthropomorphic lions; they don't really have genes.

That was an exaggeration.

[quote][quote="Akril"]And something I just realised: Cub A and B look like they could be Kovu and Vitani's parents. Maybe not as good a match as these two, but still...
[/quote]

Nah, Zira and an unknown (Outsider) male still holds Simba's Pride's vision of who Nuka, Vitani, and Kovu's parents. Appearance isn't just everything, but their genetics also play a role in how their cubs look like. Then again, we are talking about animated anthropomorphic lions; they don't really have genes. [/quote]
You don't really think I was being 100% serious when I said that, do you?

Oh, and nice breakdown of the cubs' colors...but you ordered them from darkest to lightest, not lightest to darkest. Nice try, though. ; )

I would love for these comics to be released one day!

[quote="TheLionPrince"][quote][quote="Akril"]And something I just realised: Cub A and B look like they could be Kovu and Vitani's parents. Maybe not as good a match as these two, but still...
[/quote]

Nah, Zira and an unknown (Outsider) male still holds Simba's Pride's vision of who Nuka, Vitani, and Kovu's parents. Appearance isn't just everything, but their genetics also play a role in how their cubs look like. Then again, we are talking about animated anthropomorphic lions; they don't really have genes.
You don't really think I was being 100% serious when I said that, do you?[/quote][/quote]

Yeah. I take a lot of things seriously sometimes.

[quote="Akril"]Oh, and nice breakdown of the cubs' colors...but you ordered them from darkest to lightest, not lightest to darkest. Nice try, though. ; )[/quote]

My bad.