1980's Saturday Morning Historical Preservation Society

Here's a link to Mark Evanier's blog where he reflects on his involvement with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and the Garfield & Friends Cartoon which marked their 30th and 25th anniversaries yesterday. It's a quick read and pretty informative!

Mark Evanier is the guy who wrote (among other things relevant to our interests) the pilot episode, another episode and the "Series Bible" for the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, as well as the vast majority of all the Garfield cartoons you've ever seen :)

Another year down! This list includes all the new 1983 cartoons as well as the returning ones from the previous seasons. It should be noted that my Master List posts are based on the line-up that premiered in the Fall of each year, and does not reflect any of the minor scheduling tweaks that may have happened in the Spring. Cartoons that debut in the Spring line-up (which are very rare) will be included in the following year's Master List.

So here's the hotlink-filled OFFICIAL SATURDAY MORNING MASTER LIST OF 1983:

ABC
• 8:00 - The New Scooby And Scrappy-Doo Show
• 8:30 - The Little Rascals and Richie Rich Show
• 9:00 - Monchichis
• 9:30 - Pac Man
• 10:00 - Rubik The Amazing Cube
• 10:30 - The Littles
• 11:00 - The Puppy's Further Adventures
• 11:30 - Best Of Scooby Doo
• 12:00 - ABC Weekend Specials

NBC
• 8:00 - The Flintstone Funnies
• 8:30 - Shirt Tales
• 9:00 - The Smurfs
• 10:30 - Alvin and The Chipmunks
• 11:00 - Mister T
• 11:30 - The Incredible Hulk / Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends
• 12:30 - Thundarr The Barbarian

CBS
• 8:00 - The Biskitts
• 8:30 - Saturday Supercade
• 9:30 - Dungeons & Dragons
• 10:00 - The Dukes
• 10:30 - The Charlie Brown And Snoopy Show
• 11:00 - Benji, Zax and The Alien Prince
• 11:30 - The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Show
• 1:00 - Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids

(I defy anyone to find full episodes of this show in English!)

On Saturday Morning in 1978, the ABC Weekend Special aired an animated adaptation of Jane Thayer's "The Puppy Who Wanted A Boy", the story of a puppy named "Petey" who becomes attached to a young orphan named Tommy. One of the most heavily repeated of all the ABC Weekend Special episodes, the next 4 years of ABC Weekend Specials included such titles as "The Puppy's Great Adventure", "The Puppy's Amazing Rescue" and "The Puppy Saves The Circus". In 1982, The Puppy got a co-starring title role in The Scooby And Scrappy Puppy Hour, and then finally in 1983 he got his own half-hour show at 11am on ABC. See? If you start at the bottom, you CAN work your way to the top!

This cartoon featured The Puppy and his friends searching all over the world for Tommy and his adoptive family, then in the second season opener they FOUND the boy and traveled all over the USA with them having adventures where they met and teamed-up with a flying puppy named "Glyder" (his ears were so large he could use them to fly like Dumbo the elephant).

No matter who I ask about it, nobody seems to know why there's such an embargo on this beloved Ruby-Spears classic other than "I dunno, I think it's something with the rights being tied-up?" This is really sad, because this was an incredible series of cartoons!

Reruns were later picked up and aired on CBS as "The Puppy's Great Adventures".

I'd have to do too much googling to confirm or deny this so I'll just let all y'all correct me if I'm wrong; 1983, 10:30 on NBC brought us the first ever Saturday Morning "Reboot" of a cartoon*, Alvin & The Chipmunks.

Back in 1961, Alvin & The Chipmunks looked like this (please feel free to ignore the Nickelodeon branding):


Produced for prime-time television, this version of The Chipmunks was a fast-paced half-hour "Gag" show, with 2 musical segments, a "Clyde Crashcup" cartoon and a single, quick joke featuring The Chipmunks.

But here in 1983, the show was refined. The musical segments were gone, replaced by actual storylines and character development. The character of Dave Seville was finally established as an adoptive father rather than an ambiguously disassociated record producer with anger management issues. The artistic style of the 1983 show was smoothed out and standardized to fit in with all the other cartoons of 1980's Saturday Morning thanks to the involvement of Ruby-Spears, as opposed to the highly stylized 1961 version that had been crafted solely by Bagdasarian Productions.

This was a completely different cartoon.

From the very first episode of the 1983 version, they distanced themselves by having a guest appearance by Mister T and also by introducing "The Chippettes". Even the theme song (one of the best ever on Saturday Mornings) implied that this was an all-new, all different approach to the Chipmunks and it REALLY WORKED!

*(You may point out various Hanna-Barbera shows of the 70's such as "Yogi's Space-Race", "The New Scooby-Doo Movies", "Yogi's Ark" and/or "Laugh-A-Lympics" as previous reboots of cartoons, but those weren't reboots so much as sequels that just used the same characters in new situations. It's like the difference between "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" and the more recent JJ Abrahms "Star Trek" movies)

At 10:30 in the morning on CBS in 1983, you got something pretty darned special - The Charlie Brown And Snoopy Show! These characters had been around since 1950 and been the subject of several movies and seasonal television specials, but never before - not even during the HEIGHT of popularity in the 1960's - had there ever been a weekly cartoon!

The show was pretty straightforward and easy to produce, as they had over 30 years of "storyboards" to pull from - and that's exactly what they did. Direct adaptations of the comic strips. It was quite brilliant! Produced by Bill Melendez, whose animation studio generally specialized in specials, these episodes fit seamlessly with all the existing movies and specials that had already been produced!

(This video includes both versions of the opening credits, watch to see the differences and similarities - it's fun!)

Most of what needs to be said about The Dukes (the cartoon based on the popular "Dukes Of Hazzard" tv show) has already been said in the Speed Buggy post from 1982, but in summary...

Cartoon was nearly complete thanks to Hanna-Barbera, actors went on strike, replacement cartoon was late, Speed Buggy was aired instead, The Dukes debuted in the Spring of 1983 with "Coy and Vance" instead of "Bo and Luke".

Now, further fun stuff :)

This cartoon was doomed from the moment CBS decided to use it as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with the actors. Putting it on the air with two guys who WEREN'T the Duke Boys that everybody knew and loved drove away the viewers, and by the second season (once the real Duke Boys had returned) nobody was willing to give it a chance, probably because no one actually KNEW that the real Dukes were back on the show.

And speaking of that second season... the entire two-season run worth of 20 episodes ran in one year - Spring of 1983 till Spring 1984. Since H-B already had most of the second season (which had been intended to be the first season) completed, turnaround for getting these episodes on TV was no problem. Poor ratings were blamed for the quick cancellation.

Monchhichis was yet another "We want another show like The Smurfs" cartoon series produced by Hanna-Barbera for ABC that premiered at 9:00 in 1983. The Monchhichis were monkey-like creatures who lived in some weird forest land called Monchia at the very top of some very tall trees high above the clouds. The tribe's leader was Wizzar, a magical wizard who could make up spells and potions to defeat their enemy, the evil Grumplins of Grumplor.

Much like The Smurfs, The Monchichis were already a beloved property elsewhere before we got hold of them and made them STARS. The Monchichis were a line of Japanese stuffed toy monkeys from the Sekiguchi Corporation, first released in 1974. They became so popular that they even got their ow cartoon series in 1980, "Monchhichi Twins", which was nothing like the Hanna-Barbera Monchichis cartoon of 1983.

Moved to 8:00 in the spring of 1984, when it was combined with the Richie Rich and Little Rascals show.

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 :)

I figured I'd launch my listing of 1983 with a special mention of NBC's "One To Grow On", my own personal favorite of all the 1980's Saturday Morning Public Service spots!

Schoolhouse Rock over on ABC was good, don't get me wrong... but those were most assuredly a product of the 1970's.

In The News over on CBS... did anybody actually ever watch that on purpose? And once again, it was very much a product of the 70's.

But One To Grow On? That's ALL 80's, BABY! Beginning in 1983, these two-part, 1-minute commercials usually came at the end of some cartoon. Unlike the "The More You Know" campaign that replaced it in 1989 with its "Hi I'm a celebrity, Crack is Wack, stay off drugs" shooting star log and finish, One To Grow On had the celebrity in question watch the video, then comment on what we should learn from it, and then finish the video.

1982 was the second season of the hit NBC cartoon Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends only NOW it was joined by a second popular Marvel Comic character, THE INCREDIBLE HULK.

The Incredible Hulk is basically the story of a careless scientist with rage issues.

But the COOL PART of this serie was the narrations by my close personal friend STAN (THE MAN) LEE!


(CLOSE PERSONAL FRIEND)

They even had good ol' Stan go back and record word-for-word narrations of the first season episodes (which had been narrated by Dick Tufeld) so that the series seemed cohesive. These narrations (for the first and second season) are unfortunately not on the current masters. They have not aired since the NBC airings :(