1980's Saturday Morning Historical Preservation Society

By 1984, ABC had realized that these new-fangled VEE-dee-oh Games were all the rage with kids and brought yet another popular game character to Saturday Mornings at 10:00, DRAGON'S LAIR.

One of only *three* video games stored for posterity at the Smithsonian Institute, Dragon's Lair was a revolutionary video game with rich, delightful animation courtesy of Ex-Disney Animator Don Bluth. Just compare the above opening credits of the TV show (produced by Ruby-Spears on the cheap) to the "Trailer" that played on the old Dragon's Lair Video Game and you'll begin to see why the show may not have performed so well...


The Video Game had been cinematic quality animation, and the Saturday Morning cartoon was... well, TV Animation. And then to further doom the show, it was scheduled at the dreaded TEN O'CLOCK TIME SLOT, the time in the morning when every other network was showing the second or third half-hour of some extremely popular show such as The Smurfs.

Despite all this, the show was *extremely* popular! One gimmick they used that really helped connect the show to the video game was to end on a cliffhanger at each commercial break, having the narrator ask viewers "What would YOU do?" to insure that the kids would stay tuned to find out what happened. Coming back from commercial break would have the narrator show one or two possible "Bad Choices", followed by the heroic option that saved the day :)

At 10:00 on ABC in 1983, you'd find "Rubik The Amazing Cube" courtesy of the fine folks at Ruby-Spears. As is the case occasionally here at the SMHRS, once I started Googling to confirm or deny the information I knew about this show, I learned that I was WRONG. This is the second or third time I've had wrong information on something!

So first, let's start at the basics. The Early 80's were all about 3 things - Pac Man, MTV and The Rubik's Cube. The Rubik's Cube, for those who may not know for some weird reason, was a very popular cube-shaped puzzle with 36 squares of 6 different colors that could be rotated to create headaches and confusion.

So naturally, they made a cartoon about some Puerto Rican kids finding a magic one that could talk and help them with their daily conflicts while they helped the cube avoid being captured by the evil Gypsy Magician who would use the power of the cube to rule the world.

My INCORRECT INFORMATION on this cartoon was that the entire voice cast had been members of the popular Puerto Rican Boy Band "Menudo", along with Emanuel "Webster" Lewis as the voice of Rubik.


(Yeah, THOSE GUYS)

Ends up that Menudo only sang the theme song to the show, and the voice of Rubik was done by former Sweathog Ron "Horshack" Palillo from "Welcome Back Kotter" (a show that surprisingly holds up rather well after the passage of so much time).


Yeah, THAT GUY)

One story about this show that I've always heard that made me feel warm-n-fuzzy on the inside is that the Puerto Rican kids on this show wasn't some affirmative action, racial equality, diversification mandate from higher up; the show was pitched as specifically Puerto Rican in order to capitalize on the momentum of the popular "Menudo On ABC" segments. Instead of being forced to rework a character or characters in to ethnic roles for diversification sakes (which is why cartoons are so full of multi-racial casts that all act as white as a bag of mayonnaise & marshmallows), this show was *natural*.

I love that :)

In 1982 at 11am on ABC was a little slice of cult legend, misdirected ambition and same-old same-old in the form of the hour-long Scooby & Scrappy Puppy Hour. This show was the first (and I think only?) collaboration between the Saturday Morning Juggernauts, Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera. The first half-hour of the show consisted of three 7-minute shorts, a mix of "Scooby and Scrappy-Doo" (the version where Scooby, Scrappy and Shaggy travel across the country as the "Fearless Detective Agency" and get involved in typical spy or criminal cases) and "Scrappy and Yabba-Doo" (Scrappy-Doo's adventures with his uncle Yabba-Doo and Deputy Dusty in the wild west), followed by a full 30-minute episode of "The Puppy's New Adventures" in the second half-hour. The Scooby/Scrappy-related shorts were written and voiced at Hanna-Barbera Productions, but animated and edited by Ruby-Spears Enterprises.

(Also aired at 10:00 starting in the Spring of 1983)