[It’s baaaack! That’s right, it’s the return of our Strange Kid Roundtable! In the spirit of Saturday mornings gone by we’ve assembled a few of our fellow nostalgist bloggers to ask which of their forgotten favorite toons are in serious need of a DVD/Blu-Ray release. Joining us are by MANNY GALAN, SHAWN ROBARE, JASON GROSS and TOMMY DAY… here’s what they had to say!]
What forgotten cartoon would you most like to see get a complete series release on DVD/Blu-ray?
MANNY GALAN: Growing up I was a doughy, financially destitute and unpopular nerd. This was long before being a nerd was socially acceptable and worn as a badge of honor. My only escape from my dreary, latch key life was comic books and cartoons and because of my unpopular standing in society I obviously related to Peter Parker, A LOT. Here was a handsome young guy with 2 beautiful girls fighting over him and amazing abilities yet he could never win. The whole world was against him, constantly. I loved the comic and the 1966 animated series that gave us the classic, “Does whatever a Spider can…” theme song that everyone remembers but when SPIDER-MAN and his AMAZING FRIENDS came along in 1981 I became downright obsessed.
To this day I can still remember many of the audio signatures from the show, from the way the amorphously shaped collection of bees called SWARM would eerily repeat his name over and over “Swaaaarmmmm. Swaaaarmmmm” to the music they would play when ever they went to a dance or Ms. Lion would enter the room. Also I would lose my mind whenever there was a guest appearance by Iron Man, Daredevil, Captain America or the X-MEN. Remember, things like this weren’t commonplace back then.
I know I’m not alone in my passion for this show so I just can’t understand why it’s never been released on DVD. I keep hoping that since Disney bought MARVEL that they would just throw piles of money at whatever obstacle is keeping this from happening and release a deluxe DVD box set with behind the scenes vignettes and commentary by the voice actors and Stan Lee and maybe a limited edition Ms. Lion action figure?
JASON GROSS: One of my favorite cartoons of the 80s was Saturday Supercade. Debuting in the fall Saturday morning lineup in 1983, it featured a compilation of short episode cartoons based on popular arcade and video games. The first season featured Donkey Kong, Frogger, Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, Jr., and Pitfall Harry. In the 2nd season, the latter two shows were replaced with Space Ace and Kangaroo. Even though the Pac-man cartoon series debuted a year earlier, I believe Saturday Supercade had more of an impact on combining the gaming and cartoon worlds.
One of the five games featured on the show was guaranteed to be in every kid’s top 5. My personal favorite was Q*Bert which had a 50s Happy Days-like feel to the show with the characters wearing letterman jackets and dealing with bully bad guys like Coily. The Q*Bert segment (as with all the other segments) also featured all the elements from the arcade game like the flying discs, color-changing squares, and of course the swear bubbles. Saturday Supercade was the arcade Avengers of its time. Its success along with Pac-man enabled more game-based cartoons to be produced throughout the 80s and early 90s like Pole Position, Sonic, Double Dragon, and Captain N: The Gamemaster. However due copyright issues, a DVD release has sadly never happened.
SHAWN ROBARE: Even though so many of my Holy Grail cartoons have been seeing releases on DVD over the past decade, there are a few stragglers that have yet to be revitalized. There are some toons that aren’t out either because they’re way too obscure (Turbo Teen), have way too many rights issues (Muppet Babies), or are just neglected even with property re-launches (Teen Wolf), but off all the unreleased series there is one at the top of my list right now, and that show is The Visionaries.
Action cartoons where my bread and butter growing up in the 80s, and there were really only a handful of companies producing them. Filmation gave us a great stable from Masters of the Universe to Bravestarr, while the unlikely Rankin/Bass introduced us to the Thundercats and the Silverhawks. But, head and shoulders above both was Sunbow who brought us classics like G.I. Joe, Dungeons and Dragons, Jem, and the Transformers. Pretty much every Sunbow series has seen the light of day on DVD with one glaring exception, The Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light.
The short lived Saturday morning series lasted only one short 13 episode season, and was produced in conjunction with a pretty awesome toy line that also never really found its footing. Loosely based on Arthurian legends, the Visionaries followed the heroic Spectral Knights in their magical battles against the Darkling Lords. The characters all had mystical totem animals and creatures that they drew their specific powers from and could turn into after reciting specific incantations. Though it was only on TV for a short time, I remember the show having a pretty big impact on me, and I still find myself singing along to the theme song to this day.
TOMMY DAY: Without a doubt, the cartoon from my childhood that I would most like to see released on DVD is Muppet Babies. It was always one of my favorite cartoons, and it has never had any episodes released on any format since VHS. I’ve always read that it’s never been released due to rights issues with all the clips they used, particularly the Star Wars/Indiana Jones clips, but hey, Disney owns the Muppets and Lucasfilm now so make it happen! Muppet Babies deserves to be enjoyed by a whole new generation of kids.
