ABC Weekend Special Season 8: 1985

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The 1985 season of The ABC Weekend Special brought us another 9 new half-hour episodes, including the experimental live-action "The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin" (embedded above). WHAT?!?! LIVE-ACTION TEDDY RUXPIN? That's CRAZY!

Ken Forsse was the man who created Teddy Ruxpin, the first domesticated animatronic produce for childhood companionship. Ken had gotten his start at The Walt Disney Company and with Sid & Marty Krofft, and had helped to create a new kind of kids show that combined puppetry, animatronics and green-screen animation in to something completely new and different. See "Welcome To Pooh Corner" from the earliest days of The Disney Channel for a prime example.

Now that mister Forsse was striking out and making a name for himself with Teddy Ruxpin, he went ahead and made a "pilot episode" of sorts for a show featuring his creation, using the new show format that he had helped develop. It was AWESOME, but it quickly became apparent that without the deep pockets of a corporation like Disney behind it, a show like this was just too cost-prohibitive.

Lucky for us, too, because they scrapped the whole thing and gave us one of the most epic episodic animated programs of all time with the animated "Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin" that went directly in o syndication (but more on that another day, when I'm writing about non-network Saturday morning stuff).

Days Of Wonder (the company selling Teddy Ruxpin) recouped their losses by taking the live-action footage they had and selling it to ABC for use in their ABC Weekend Special.

The full line-up of new episodes included:

• The Adventures of Con Sawyer and Hucklemary Finn (Part 1 and 2)
  
• Jeeter Mason and the Magic Headset
  
• Cap'n O.G. Readmore's Jack and the Beanstalk
  
• Pippi Longstocking (Part 1 and 2)
  
• Columbus Circle
  
• The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin (Part 1 and 2)