Child Of The 1980's

During the 1980′s there was a craze for role playing games, probably the most famous of which has to be TSR’s Dungeons and Dragons. The game was so successful it spawned a cartoon series, which at the time I thought was just a cool TV series and I had no idea of its original roots.

The cartoon title sequence (which you can see at the end of this post) explains what’s going on quickly and concisely.  Six kids board the Dungeons and Dragons ride at an amusement park, but find themselves hurled into an alternate world, the Realm of Dungeons and Dragons, where each is gifted with a variety of different powers.

Hank, the eldest, becomes the leader and becomes a ranger, armed with a magical bow that fires magical fiery arrows.  Next is Eric, the wise cracking coward, who is classed as a cavalier, and armed with a shield that can generate force fields.

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Over the years the good people at animation house Cosgrove Hall have produced some of my favourite childhood TV series.  From Chorlton and the Wheelies to DangerMouse they produced some of the shows that people my age look back on with immense fondness.  However, todays post is about one of their shows that you might not remember, and that is Alias the Jester.

Alias the Jester only lasted a single series of 13 episodes starting back in 1985, so that’s why you might not recognise it.  It wasn’t a bad cartoon by any means, but somehow it lacked that spark that their other shows had, and I think the main reason for that is purely because the main character himself wasn’t really very interesting to look at.  He’s the one in the jesters uniform, funnily enough.

Alias (voiced by the British institution that is Richard Briers) was actually a time traveller whose ship broke down leaving him stranded in medieval times.  In order to fit in he took a job as a jester in King Arthur’s court (and no, I don’t think it was that King Arthur, you know, the one with Excalibur and the Round Table) but when crisis came he could instantly revert to his red suit which gave him special powers including the ability to fly and have increased strength.  He was also accompanied by Boswell, who was obviously some kind of strange space dog (he was green), but he was a faithful companion who helped out when needed.

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The Shoe People was, as if you couldn’t guess, a cartoon series about a group of shoes.  Sounds pretty unlikely I know, but these shoes were ones that had been taken to be repaired by the Shoe Mender (not sure why he wasn’t called a Cobbler?).  For one reason or another these shoes were not able to be fixed, and obviously being a sentimental sort the Shoe Mender couldn’t bring himself to throw them away, so they were put in his back room instead.

Now, as luck would have it, every night some magic occured in the back room.  The back wall faded away to reveal a small village called Shoe Town, and the odd shoes came to life and lived out adventures within the town.  Perhaps this explains why sometimes when you wake up in the morning you can only find one shoe in the place you left them (though this probably has more to do with anything you may have consumed the night before).

Anyway, as you might expect the shoes of Shoe Town are a varied bunch, each with its own distinct personality related to the type of shoe they were.  There was P.C. Boot, the town policeman who was obviously a police officers boot before being relegated to the Shoe Menders back room.  Charlie was a long oversized clown shoe, whilst Trampy was a worn out old boot with holes, that for some reason had an Irish accent.  Margot was a soft and kind shoe, perfectly befitting the fact that she was a ballet shoe.  I’ll leave you to ponder on exactly what kind of shoes Baby Bootee, Wellington and Sneaker might have been.

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I was always a little confused by the naming of Disney’s Gummi Bears, since it always brought to mind those little jelly teddy bear penny sweets.  Apart from being bears I couldn’t understand why this cartoon was named after the sweets yet the bears didn’t seem to have much in common with their tasty namesakes.

The Gummi Bears in the the TV show were the remnants of a once great civilisation of bears gifted with magical powers, who were forced out of their native habitat by humans who were jealous of their abilities.

The cartoon centres around the six remaining Gummi Bears, who are Gruffi (the rather grumpy but very practical unofficial leader), Zummi (the eldest who dabbles in magic but is a bit forgetful),  Grammi (the motherly bear who makes their secret potion), Tummi (there always has to be a portly one, doesn’t there?), Sunni (the rebellious teenager) and Cubbi (the young headstrong knight in training).  In later series they were joined by Gusto, an artist who had been living on a desert island for many years.  Whether these bears were actually family members is not clear, but they seem to be keen on names ending in the letter “I”.

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Since I first saw it at the pictures all those years ago Ghostbusters has long been one of my favourite films, so I was pretty excited when my Dad came home one day after a visit to the video library with a box marked “The Real Ghostbusters”.  This particularly video library always gave you the tapes in boxes that just had their logo and the video title written on in felt tip pen, so I was even more curious about what this might turn out to be.

I popped the tape in the video recorder and up came two episodes of a well animated TV cartoon series featuring Dr. Pete Venkman, Dr. Ray Stantz, Dr. Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore.  The characters were pretty much the same as in the film in terms of their character, but they didn’t exactly look much like the original actors, so in order to help tell the difference between them each team member wore a different coloured uniform.

Funnily enough, this lack of looking like the Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and the other members of the film cast was used as a joke in one episode, which explained the Ghostbusters film as being a film made about the exploits of the cartoon gang, with the animated Ghostbusters acting as advisors to the film makers.  The cartoon Venkman proclaims that the actors don’t look anything like them, and also uses the name of the cartoon as part of the joke, as he refers to the cartoon Ghostbusters as being the real ones.

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Sport Billy (He’s a hero from another planet, as the theme music stated) was a cartoon series that aired in the early 1980′s in the UK and US.  It was originally made in 1979 by Filmation for the German market, as Sport Billy was originally a comic book character who was popular there.

The series was about a young boy named Sport Billy who came from a planet called Olympus, a place that was modelled around the myths of the ancient Greek Gods.  Sport Billy was sent to Earth to try and stop the evil green skinned Queen Vanda, a hater of fair play, and her henchman Snipe from removing all sports from history.

Sport Billy is aided in his task by his friend Lily and his talking dog Willy (why is it all these cartoon characters end up having talking dogs?).  Since Queen Vanda is trying to destroy sports the only way for her to do so is travel back in time to when the sport in question was first invented.  Sport Billy therefore has a big yellow spaceship/time machine combination, that looked something like a giant alarm clock with a big winding key sticking out the back, which he used to track Vanda and stop her in her tracks.

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Henry’s Cat was a slightly overweight looking, bright yellow animated feline who, like many cats, was a bit on the lazy side most of the time.  His favourite hobbies were eating Jelly Baby sandwiches and day dreaming (often about eating Jelly Baby sandwiches).

His best friend was Chris Rabbit, a rather hyperactive blue bunny who had obviously had one too many glasses of orange squash.  Chris Rabbit would bound furiously around the screen filling Henry’s Cat’s head with barmy notions about doing strange activities, which the hapless cat usually ended up carrying out.

Whilst he had a great many other friends including Douglas Dog and Sammy Snail, he also had a number of enemies, foremost of which was the villainous Rum Baa Baa, who was unsurprisingly given the name a sheep.  Quite why Rum Baa Baa was so against our feline friend I really don’t know, but he was always hatching schemes to get the better of the yellow puss.  There was also the permanently bright pink faced Farmer Giles who had it in for Henry’s Cat, usually urging law keeper Constable Bulldog to arrest him.

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Count Duckula first hit our screens as a villain in fellow Cosgrove Hall cartoon DangerMouse but in 1988 he was graced with his own TV show where he was the hero. Duckula is the latest in a long line of vampire ducks, who in keeping with traditional vampire law can only be killed by exposure to sunlight or a stake through the heart. However, he can be resurrected once every century by the means of an ancient rite when the moon is alligned in a particular position.

Unfortunately, the resurrection didn’t go according to plan this time round. The Duckula clan had always been blood thirsty vampires, but a mistake with the ingredients for the magic resurrection spell (tomato ketchup being used in place of blood) resulted in the reincarnated Count Duckula becoming a vegetarian. He also lost all his other evil desires which instead were replace by a desire to become an entertainer!

Duckula has two servants who cater for his every whim. Butler Igor is an aged old vulture who yearns for a return to “the good old days” of previous Counts, with all the maiming and torture that would entail. He has served the Duckula family for many generations, which given that the resurrection spell can only be done once a century makes him very old indeed. Nanny is a giant, dim witted chicken who is both Duckula’s housekeeper and nanny. Her arm is always in a sling for some reason, and she has a habit of walking straight through walls rather than using doorways. She isn’t at all evil-minded though, unlike Igor, and insists on calling Duckula her “Ducky-poos”.

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