PREMISE: In the rough and tumble world of sentient foods, it’s up to the edibles of the dirt to keep processed foods in line. This claymation series, based on the cult comics of crazed cartoonist J. Flake, followed a gang of fruits and vegetables who escaped from a grocery store and are bent on maintaining their own twisted agiculturo-moral code. Setting up their own judicial system, the vegetables begin to police the secret, tribal world of sentient foods–the dark underbelly of restaurants, farms, and warehouses that humans never see. Equal parts dystopian science fiction and detective show, Crops never failed to deliver a balanced diet of whoop ass.

CHARACTERS: The ring leader of the vigilante veggie enforcers is Broccoli, who curses like a sailor and is quick to the violent solution. Broccoli lost most of its stalks in a knife fight with a gang of Ho Hos (“Due Processed” – S01E06). It still carries one of their wrappers as a macabre trophy and a reminder of where it came from.

NOTABLE EPISODE: The vegetables discover that a group of factory baked croissants are claiming to be hand-made. This sets off a chain of events that leaves two rookie cherries pitted on the floor of a riverside warehouse. In the end, the croissants are thrown before a vegetable tribunal and sentenced to a gruesome scarring with boiling butter (“‘Til the Butter End,” S01E04.)

CATCHPHRASE: “Fucking corn syrup.”

TRIVIA/MISCELLANY: “Crops” had more blood on camera than any other claymation show. The production and effects studio, Machine-Made Magic, had to figure out a series of new techniques to render the show’s grisly scripts in clay.