It's black and white and it sits there. Sometimes it chews on leaves, but mostly it just sits there. Still, there's no animal more exotic and cuddly-looking than the cute (but rare) panda. Pandamonium sought to capitalize on the panda's photogenic, monochromatic mug with an animated series about a trio of talking pandas who save the world from evil.

The evil manifests itself in Mondraggor, the villain of the piece, who longs to--what else?--control the world. He can do that with the help of the magical Pyramid of Power but the Pyramid reacts to Mondraggor's evil by shattering into several pieces. A young boy, Peter Darrow, witnesses the explosion through his telescope and marking where one of the pieces landed, he grabs his sister Peggy and hightails it to Tibet in order to retrieve the pyramid fragment. Peter and Peggy find the bit of pyramid guarded by three talking pandas: Chesty (no foolin'), Timmy and Algernon. Humans and pandas agree that the pyramid must not fall in the hands of Mondraggor and their adventures begin. When threatened by the evil mastermind or his agents, the three pandas had the unique ability to combine into the giant (really giant) Poppapanda.

Why this series didn't last longer than one season is anyone's guess. It had everything--pandas, evil, broken pyramids. CBS could do a lot worse than that collection of ingredients.