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 :)

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.

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)

In 1981 at 11:30 in the morning on ABC, you would see Heathcliff ANd Marmaduke (along with a very catchy theme song). Officially considered to be the second season of the 1980 Heathcliff and Dingbat Show only with Marmaduke instead of Dingbat (obviously), they made 25 episodes of this version ( as opposed to just 13 "Dingbat" episode) which is why you probably remember the Marmaduke titles better than the Dingbat ones, if you remember them at all. Also note that this is a Ruby-Spears joint, NOT the DiC "Heathcliff and The Catilac Cats" version that was syndicated a few years later.

The Plastic Man & Baby Plas Super Comedy Show was a continuation of the Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show that had debuted in 1979 in the time slot directly after The Super Friends. I am very sad to say that this version, with the baby version of Plastic Man (a very stereotypical Scrappy-Doo if ever there was one), was a BIG let-down from the 1979 version and yes I'm gonna gripe about it here.

Y'know what? NO. Looking back at the multitude of shows that made up the Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show, I've decided on YET ANOTHER WEEK-LONG EXPLORATION of the individual elements that made that show great, even if it was 1979. EVERY PART OF THAT SHOW WAS A FAVORITE OF MINE. So brace yourselves.

The Plastic Man & Baby Plas Comedy Show was a half-hour show comprised two parts, usually both of them being the Scrappy-esque adventures of Baby Plas. It mercifully died off in 1981.

However, the one *good* part of this show is that they made NEW episodes in 1984 that got first-run syndication along with a LIVE-ACTION PLASTIC MAN:

As you can see, this syndicated version of the show was kind of asweome not only because of the live-action, but because they packaged it with all the shows I used to love from 1979 and in to the early 80s! This is probably how most of us in this community became familliar with any of these shows...

Tune in to your local ABC affiliate at 10:30 on Saturday morning in 1980 and you'll see the HOLY GRAIL OF COMIC GEEKDOM, "Thundarr The Barbarian". That video embedded above is en espanol because all the US versions I could find have had embedding disabled... but the voice-over is perfect at setting the tone for the show:

The year: 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man's civilization is cast in ruin!
Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn...

A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil.

He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!

This cartoon has a pretty impressive comic book background! Created by Steve Gerber (the guy who created "Howard The Duck" which is SO MUCH BETTER than the movie would have you believe) with character design and story concepts from Alex Toth (Space Ghost, Super Friends) and Jack "King" Kirby (Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor, Nearly Every Marvel Comics Character)!

Ruby-Spears Productions would go on to make two full seasons of Thundarr before it went off the air in 1981, and if you've never watched it you really owe yourself a favor. Swords-n-sorcery-n-apocalyptic-dystopia has never looked better!

(Also aired at 10:30 in 1981)