1981 11:00 on NBC: SPACE STARS

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

At 11 in the morning on NBC in 1981 was a brilliant bit of cartoon recycling and pop-culture leaching that went by the name "Space Stars". Watch those opening credits and just try and figure out what super-popular movie franchise they were trying to ape (HINT: it wasn't "Battle Beyond The Stars").

This was, in my opinion, an excellent twist on the old Hanna-Barbera tradition of packaging a few reruns of different shows together and calling it "New". Here you had two classic HB cartoons - Space Ghost and The Herculoids - packaged with two new cartoons - Teen Force and Astro & The Space Mutts - for a full hour. But instead of just dipping in to the pre-existing back catalog of Space Ghost and Herculoids cartoons, they actually MADE NEW CARTOONS! And on top of that, they had the four cartoons actually do quite a bit of criss-crossing and guest-starring! I loved this concept A LOT, and if the first half-hour of it weren't up against The Super Friends, I would have been totally addicted to it!

Comments

[artytoons.livejournal.com]

Not really sure if Alex Toth himself was involved with the designs in the new episodes of Space Ghost or Herculoids...but it could have been.

The Phantom Cruiser was redesigned for the Space Ghost stories.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Bummer :( I can always tell the difference in episodes by how the ships on the show look (including the Phantom Cruiser), and despite a WEALTH of information on Space Ghost stuff I've never been able to confirm or deny that those ships were designed by Toth or by somebody jut doing a Toth-esque style :(