Hello there. I remember a cartoon (or at least an episode) with the following details (WARNING: some of these might sound controversial, but nevertheless, these are genuine memories of an actual cartoon. Also, I'll overexplain just to make sure what I remember is understood, so, be warned, wall of text ahead):
- Art style and animation similar to Animaniacs or Pinky and the Brain. It was one of those "segments" (5 to 9 min) in an usual 30 min show. I saw it on a local TV channel around 1994 - 2001 aprox.
- It kinda felt like those episodes that had nothing to do with the main characters of a given cartoon and had either new characters or been promoting a different set of main characters owned by the main company. Either way, it was episodic/selfconcluded.
- About the PLOT (I'll share what I am sure of. May be no a continuous timeline, but I am sure everything I will mention is in the episode):
I remember there was this Hero (cartoon superhero, typical muscular with its arms and torso overshadowing his flimsy legs. I think It was blond and usualy sporting a smile?, thou it gets frustrated and somewhat angry in some moments), and there was an Alien (Extraterrestrial) invasion.
The Aliens arrive on a Saucer. They are somewhat human in appereance but have teal skin and are wearing tight white spacesuits. A key detail is they have strong archetypical french accent. At the very least I remember there being 3. They demand, as usual, to see the leader of Earth.
The Aliens end up defeating the Hero (thou not forever/completely, but merely for enough time to make their demands heard and compeled), and strong cut/transition to the leader of the Aliens sitting in a table with a guy named "Larry" (directly addressed as that by the Alien. By all means is just a regular guy, but it may be a refference to a celebrity? or just a joke that they threw them any guy available). This Larry character has curly shor hair, glasses, and his head is similar to a verticaly inverted terdrop shape. He never utters a word. The Alien tries to reason with Larry by showing he needs to change something (iirc, is about changing the metric system. I think is linked to the ending of the episode, which I'll mention later, but could be something bigger also including the metric system?).
At this point, I don't remember fully how they got defeated, or scared, or simply reasoned with, but it includes the participation of the Hero and a chicken (a plain, normal everyday chicken. Minus the point it understands language, or at the very least the Hero). The Hero ponders how to get the Aliens away from Earth and how to make sure they never return to threat the planet, and he ends up deciding the chicken must pilot their Saucer (I may be wrong, but, I think the Aliens are instinctively scared of chickens?, I vaguely remember something like that, like chickens resembling something fromout space that is a nightmare to them or something, or simply for being a farm animal, or is again tied to Stereotypes or something, I am not sure). Then there's a frontal closeup of the chicken holding the controls and getting serious while looking at the camera (or the front screen of the pilot deck of the saucer, if you will), and then the Saucer flies off. The Hero says something on the lines of "your noble sacrifice will be forever remembered" and does a military salute.
Finaly, there's a black screen and, just when everything is supposedly finished, there's a hardcut to France (seeing from outside the planet), then the camera closes in, and there's the Eiffel Tower with the Saucer crashed besides it, and the Aliens on the street saying something along the lines of "Ah! civilization at last".
- I already tried searching for this, but, you know how search engines always end up with popular search as results (either that or I am so incompetent). AI asisted search ends up in the typical "is most likely an obscure or cult cartoon".