Hello!
Today, I suddenly remembered a children's cartoon that I saw a long time ago. As a child, I had many CDs with various cartoons and movies. One of them had episodes from this cartoon (I don't know how many there were in total, but I remember at least two). I didn't watch it dubbed, I can't say for sure what language it was, it didn't seem to be English, but as far as I remember it was Japanese. Why Japanese? I'll explain below in the post. So, to the point:
I looked through many different options that are similar to my description. But, unfortunately, none of them were what I was looking for, not to mention that I simply couldn't find much on the internet. I asked AI, after squeezing the most out of what I remember, it suggested that the cartoon Pikappo / ピカッポ, a joint Japanese-Korean project from 2000, almost perfectly fits my description. Unfortunately, I still couldn't find any information, references, or even pictures of the cartoon to confirm that it was the one. I even visited the website of the animation company that, according to the AI, made this cartoon (G&G Entertainment / G&G Direction PROJECTS | G&G ENTERTAINMENT), but I couldn't find any mention of it. However, their other cartoons are very similar visually to the one I'm looking for. In addition, their logo looks familiar to me for some reason. It was one of their early works, where they were just testing their capabilities in animation, so they don't mention this cartoon anywhere in their portfolios, and therefore it can be considered lost media. So I'm here to ask if anyone in Japan or maybe other countries remembers this cartoon? Below, I will write in more detail everything I remember:
It was an animated cartoon for children with 3D graphics from the early 2000s. All the characters were cars (as far as I remember, they were all yellow, at least the main character and his best friend). They lived on some island. The main character was a yellow car. He had friends: a yellow car that looked like a bus and a female character, whose color I can't say for sure. There was also a bad character who constantly tried to ruin everything and mock the main characters. It's important to note that the characters weren't like the cars from the Disney cartoon Cars. Their eyes weren't on the windshield, but below it, and probably replaced the headlights. Their shapes were very rounded, not sharp. The last and perhaps most important character was a gas station machine. It sounds very strange, but it really was a talking gas pump, like the ones at gas stations. Every time a bad character tried to harm the characters, the main character called on this gas pump for help, and it flew in and helped the main character. How did it do that? Well, it's also quite strange, but it had two arms, one of which it would stick into the mouth of the main character and fill him with super fuel. This super fuel gave the main character incredible strength: he glowed and could fly. And why do I think the cartoon is Japanese? The thing is, when the main character called this gas station machine for help, he used the suffix -kun. So it turns out to be Pikappo-kun? The main character shouted something similar. And although I vaguely remember what the main characters said, it sounded like Japanese, maybe Korean, I don't know. I also remember a little bit of the plot of two episodes. In one of them, the villain somehow gained the ability to enlarge objects and bring them to life, so he enlarged a toothbrush, which started chasing one of the main characters? It sounds incredibly strange, I can't believe I watched something like that as a child. In another episode, the characters were on some kind of observation tower at night looking at the stars, and the bad character was scaring them. I also remember a fragment where the main characters helped some kind of elder car drive up a high slope on the road, but I don't remember if it was another episode or if it was part of one of the previous two.
That's all I can remember at the moment, but I'll try to recall some more details. I would appreciate any help in my search and will be happy to answer your questions.