1980's Saturday Morning Historical Preservation Society

I try not to go back to shows that ran for multiple seasons, preferring to focus only on the shows that premiered each year. But this... this deserves special mention. For this, the 985 season of The Smurfs, was the season that the Smurfs Jumped The Shark; the show started it's downward spiral here and never recovered.

The culprits, as is often the case with shows that Jump The Shark, was the inclusion of children and animals.

"The Smurflings" were a group of adult Smurfs who had been de-aged by Father Time's clock running backwards, and a little girl Smurf created the same way Smurfette had been made, only using less magical clay. Long story short - The Smurfs was now a show about dealing with these young Smurfs, rather than a show about the Smurfs themselves.

Also joining the cast this season was "Puppy", a thousand-year-old dog who remained young due to the magic locket he wears on his dog collar.

Saturday morning at 8:30 on NBC in 1985, Disney's Adventures of The Gummi Bears sparked a HUGE CHANGE in the way that Saturday Mornings and Television Cartoons would operate from this point on. But first, a summary:

Medieval bears cook Meth in the forest outside a kingdom, have to avoid being captured by the evil Duke Igthorn. It's basically a cartoon version of "Breaking Bad".

SO! The importance of this show! Last week I discussed the importance of The Wuzzles and how Disney was jumping in to television animation like never before. Whereas The Wuzzles was a standard Saturday Morning cartoon with standard 11-minute conflict-and-moral story lines, The Gummi Bears (pitched at the last minute by Michael Eisener because his kid asked for the candy and it made him think "Hey, THEY could be a cartoon character") was a semi-episodic, progressive story with character development.

This cartoon served as an example that was copied all through the rest of the 80's and in to the 90's. Ongoing story lines, plot threads that would weave through multiple episodes... other companies followed that mold from here on out.

After 3 years on NBC Saturday Morning, the show moved to ABC for one final season before becoming the established elder statesman of The Disney Afternoon, a collection of Disney animated half-hour shows that all followed the same template of character development and long, weaving plot threads.

In 1985, Disney was desperate to get back in to the Television Animation business. A series of underperforming animated movies since the death of Walt Disney in 1966 had left the once powerful House Of Mouse a slowly rotting corpse of a company being picked apart by corporate scavengers.

Then came Michael Eisner who said "Screw that, we're DISNEY!" and with that they pumped new money, new talent and, unfortunately, new 1980's greed-fueled corporate policies in to what had once been a tight-knit "Family" corporation of sorts.

Regardless of the greed-fueled motivations, though, Michael Eisner got the company back up and running for a whole new generation of kids, starting with Saturday Mornings in 1985 because Saturday Morning cartoons were cheap, easy to make, and could be turned out FAST to get the Disney name back in to homes that weren't tuning in to the Disney Sunday Night Movie every week out of habit for family-friendly viewing.

The first cartoon that was made ready was "The Wuzzles", with a concept that was created by Michael Eisner himself for his new Disney Television Animation Studio to create. Because Michael was such a good 80's businessman, he had the toy rights sold to Hasbro before they even had a storyline, full name, concept sketch or really anything beyond "It's a show about mixed-up animals, like part giraffe and part elephant". It had the Disney name behind it, so they bought it and BOOM! An 80's classic was born!

The Wuzzles only lasted one season (13 episodes), making it the shortest lived Disney Television Animated show ever, but the following year ABC bought the reruns of that first season as a part of an experiment which we will discuss next week when I tell you all about Disney's Adventures of The Gummi Bears :)

It is generally accepted and agreed upon that THIS SHOW was "The Beginning Of The End" for Saturday Mornings. Up till this point the Parental Watchdog Groups, Marketing Executives and Overzealous Censors had only had an effect on NEW cartoons being produced... but at 8:00 Saturday morning in 1985 on ABC, a precedent was set that changed the entire dynamic of Saturday Morning Cartoons FOREVER.

After numerous years of volleying the Looney Tunes cartoons back and forth between CBS and ABC (resulting in a few seasons where there were Looney Tunes cartoons on both channels under different names), CBS finally backed out of the bidding and let ABC snatch up the exclusive network broadcast rights - but at a cost. Marketing, Censors and Watchdogs had just a few simple requests...

No Speedy Gonzales (because he was racist), and no Tweety Bird (because he was GAY).

Speedy was racist because he spoke with an accent, and Tweety was Gay because he spoke was pretty and spoke in a high voice.

Despite the ludicrous accusations, ABC went ahead and pulled the Speedy and Tweety cartoons that had been running for the past 15 years without question or hesitation. The Censors had their foothold - NOTHING was safe from this point forward. They could now retro-actively censor, edit and otherwise ban whatever they liked for any old reason, knowing that there would be no questioning of The Great And Powerful Standards & Practices Board.

Saturday Morning, was doomed :(

Where do you begin with this? In 1983 at 11:00, the folks at NBC brought us the adventures of Mister T as animated by the Ruby-Spears studio.

If you don't know who Mister T was/is, I have nothing but pity for you and think you somewhat akin to a Foole.

The premise of this show was the Mister T was the trainer/coach of a teenage gymnastics troupe who for some reason drove around the country solving mysteries. They also had a dog with a mohawk and a red-headed white boy who wanted to be Mister T.

Unlike other celebrities who got their own cartoon series (Chuck Norris, Hulk Hogan, Muhammad Ali, etc) Mister T was pretty heavily involved with the creative end of this cartoon series. Each episode opened with Mister T explaining the set-up of the episode, and ended with him explaining the moral of the story in a live-action segment. There was a big struggle between the story writers and T, where the story writers wanted Mister T to perform some super-human feat of strength each episode (the entire reason behind making a cartoon about a muscle-bound hero, after all), but T insisted that his role be more of a mentor and not doing things that kids would try to imitate at home. This is why many episodes end with The Bad Guy just SEEING Mister T and deciding to give up rather than fight.

The show ran for 30 episodes over the course of three seasons, but because of contractual negotiations that fell through at the last minute Season 3 ended up being 100% re-runs of episodes from the first two seasons; they never even made it to the plotting stage of Season 3 because at that time, Mister T was trying to develop his standing in the WWF Professional Wrestling Federation - distancing himself from his established "Good Guy" persona.

The Littles, the first cartoon to be produced by the legendary DIC Entertainment for American Network Television, premiered in 1983 at 10:30 on ABC. The story centers around a civilization of little people with mouse-like features who live in our walls and under our homes. They are discovered by a human boy named Henry Bigg, who helps protect them and keep their secret from the Men-In-Black-esque Dr. Hunter and his assistant, Peterson.

This show was/is one of my obsessions. The year I discovered The Littles, I spent all my free time building miniature furniture from toothpicks and popsicle sticks, hiding them around the house and then "finding" them, recording my findings on my portable cassette tape player/recorder (you know the kind, with the one giant speaker). I wanted The Littles to come out and reveal themselves to me SO BAD, I was willing to frame them and then blackmail them in to it!

So here's a mystery that I've never been able to confirm or deny... according to Dick Clark on the 1983 ABC Weekend Preview Special, The Littles made their debut as an episode of the ABC Weekend Special. Check it out:


Evidence that I didn't just imagine it!

Dick is referring to The ABC Weekend Special episode #55 from 1982, "The Joke's on Mr. Little" - WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LITTLES!!! To quote the IMDB summary,

"Two boys decide they don't like a teacher, Mr. Little (the grossly underused and under-appreciated Richard Sanders), so they set out to play little pranks on him, but Mr. Little always manages to rise above each joke. In the end, the jokes backfire, endangering the boys and Guess Who! - has to come to their rescue."

You will never know or appreciate just how much of my pre-internet life was wasted in pursuit of this mythical "First Episode" that never existed!!!

The Littles *technically* lasted for 3 seasons, though there were only 29 episodes (13 for the first season, 8 each for the remaining 2) as well as a few specials such as the theatrically release "Here Come The Littles (which is an excellent jumping-on point that explains the origins of The Littles relationship with Henry Bigg) and the made-for tv movie "Liberty & The Littles" which was split in to three episodes and packaged together with te rest of the run for syndication.

The Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon that debuted at 9:30 on CBS in 1983 was a historically significant milestone for Saturday Mornings on many levels, and I hope I can keep my thoughts collected/organized enough to convey the importance of this cartoon to you.

First of all, it was a milestone for the team at Marvel Productions. Since their inception just over a year ago, their cartoons fell in to two categories - Marvel Super Heroes, and Hanna-Barbera Rejects. When they made animation for established Marvel super-hero properties it was a huge hit, but when they tried to make original stuff like the other big names of Saturday Mornings we got forgettable stuff like "Pandamonium" and "Spaghetti & Meatballs". Dungeons & Dragons was their first non-comics property to become a HIT, consistently winning in the ratings for it's time slot for its first two seasons against shows such as Pac-Man and The Smurfs!

Second, it was a milestone in Voice Acting. This show had a star-studded cast full of folks who were actually on prime-time television shows at the time! Willy Ames from "Charles In Charge" (as well as movies and other TV shows at the time), Donny Most ("Ralph Mouf" from Happy Days) and Adam Rich (from "Eight Is Enough"), all considered to be "real actors", provided lead character voices for this show (Hank, Eric and Presto). Unlike other celebrity voice acting in cartoons, this was a real novelty to have professional actors providing voices for characters that they didn't already play on another show - the cast from Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy provided the voices for their animated counterparts, but never for original characters like this.

Third, it was the first (and as far as I have been able to tell, the ONLY) cartoon that the National Coalition on Television Violence (BOOO! HISS!) demanded that the FTC run a warning during each broadcast stating that "Dungeons & Dragons had been linked to real-life violent deaths". Their demand was ignored, but it had the effect of many scripts never even making it to the storyboard stage. As a result, the orders for new episodes each season kept dwindling - 13 episodes the first season, 8 for the second season, 6 for the third season. Basically, they starved the audience away :(

Fourth, this show had one of the best legends of all the Saturday Morning Cartoons, namely a fabled FINAL EPISODE that never aired but many kids SWORE they had seen it. The final un-produced episode would have revealed that the latter is Dungeon Master's corrupted son, and would have explained that the children were brought into the realm to help redeem Venger and restore balance. Want to read it? It's right here AND they even made an audio play of it for the deluxe DVD release of the full series so go pick that up if you're interested!

In 1983, CBS started their official broadcast offering at 8:00 with the Hanna-Barbera show THE BISKITTS. The Biskitts are a group of tiny anthropomorphic Robinhood-esque dogs who live on Biskitt Island and guard the crown jewels of Biskitt Castle while also performing good deeds for the underprivileged inhabitants of their tiny island. The villain of the series is the king's mean-spirited, wasteful, younger brother King Max who rules the neighboring Lower Suburbia. In lieu of a proper coronation, Max constantly schemes to steal the royal treasure with the help of his hench-hounds Fang & Snarl and his jester Shecky. The Biskitts are also in danger of being captured and eaten by a large wildcat named Scratch.

And then they were almost killed by ANOTHER group of anthropomorphic animals, The Shirt Tales

See, when The Biskitts was first ordered and presented to advertisers, they all thought they had a genuine hit on their hands. LITTLE ROBIN HOOD PUPPIES!!! It looked like The Smurfs, only with TALKING PUPPIES! How can you go wrong with PUPPIES???

PUPPIES!!!

Provided that the show could pull in the ratings, The Biskitts were poised to be the next Smurfs, with toys, comics, posters, books, sheets, tissues, school supplies - you name it! Provided that the kids would tune in...

The mid-season rating came in and it seemed that children everywhere agreed - The Biskitts ranked somewhere between "The Morning Farm Report" and "Just turning off the TV so we can go outside and play". They tried for a FULL SEASON ROTATION (Fall and Spring) to make this show click with the kids, but it just didn't happen.

Meanwhile, some magical shenanigans were underway behind the scenes! The fickle finger of fate was stirring things up in several place at once to make sure that this show reached the proper audience! All at once, these seemingly unconnected thing happened:

• CBS was pestering Hanna-Barbera over misrepresentation of this show, insisting that H-B "Fix it".
  
• NBC, realizing that they couldn't win the Saturday Morning Ratings Game with re-packaged reruns, were looking to streamline and modernize their Saturday Morning line-up.
  
• Patriotism in America was on the rise thanks to The Cold War.

SO! CBS cancelled the second season of Biskitts at the last possible moment. NBC Cancelled Shirt Tales to make room for stuff like Kidd Video. Hanna-Barbera pledged to provide the Armed Forces Network with more "fresh" programming than ever before, "for the troops".

Hanna-Barbera said "Hey CBS! We've got a proven performer for you, SHIRT TALES!"

Hanna-Barbera said "Hey Armed Forces Network! We've got a super-fresh cartoon for you, THE BISKITTS!"

So come Fall of 1984, The Biskitts were replaced by The Shirt Tales AND The Armed Forces Network started showing The Biskitts to the children of our troops stationed abroad, primarily Europe and Asia. That SHOULD be the end of the story, but...

The Biskitts achieved a level of popularity on the Armed Forces Network that they had hoped for here in the States! CRAZY! CBS was supposedly FURIOUS and said something akin to "How DARE YOU take away our wonderful show and replace it with this mediocre cast-off from NBC? GIVE US BACK OUR BISKITTS!"

And so in the Spring of 1985, The Shirt Tales went away and were replaced with re-runs of The Biskitts. Theory was that The Biskitts had just been "before it's time" in the US, but once again it tanked in the ratings and was gone by Fall of 1985.

HOWEVER, as a happy footnote for all you Biskitts fans? The Armed Forces Network continued to rerun the 13 episodes (26 11-minute segments) all the way through the 80's, giving them an international notoriety rarely seen by a single-season cartoon :)

(Sorry for the poor sound quality, it was the only ORIGINAL 1981 OPENING with the voice-over that I could find)

Saturday morning at 8:30 in 1981, NBC and Hanna-Barbera made history with the debut of The Smurfs. What can I tell you that isn't already common knowledge (to people like us) about this show? Fred Silverman (President of NBC at the time) had bought a Smurf doll while on vacation in Colorado (the toys started hitting US shelves as early as 1976) and Fred thought "Hey, I'll bet that would make a good cartoon".

Anybody else know any good stories about The Smurfs?

The Legendary Super Powers show was the first BIG CHANGE that The Super Friends had seen since the introduction fo The Wonder Twins back in 1977. Two great big changes, in fact; first of all, the introduction of new team member FIRESTORM (aka "The Guy In The Creamsicle-Colored Band Uniform With His Head On Fire"), the other being the introduction of a main Super Villain (DARKSIED). An epic change in direction and tone for what would become the shows penultimate season.

Leave your own personal memories or reflections regarding this version of The Super Friends in the comments below, and if you haven't already taken the time to do so, be sure to go and vote for this cartoon in our Best of 1985 Poll!