Let's get to that list, shall we?
In the order by which they appear in the book:
1. The Smurfs
Each respective series on the list has a chapter devoted to a condensed history of its production, with quotes offering insights on the development of the show. Interestingly, the spotlight shines on one person in particular, who is strongly suggested to be the reason for the series success...and in some cases, it's someone I didn't know much about before. Regarding Smurfs, it's Gerald Baldwin, who shepherded the first four seasons of the show. This was Hanna-Barbera's first major hit in over a decade; much of the 70's was wasted capitalising/cannibalizing the initial success of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (even Superfriends had it's genesis as a Scooby-Doo knockoff) or dull, gimmick-riddled new cartoons featuring faithful standbys Fred Flintstone or Yogi Bear. I liked learning that The Snorks was a dumping ground for rejected Smurfs story ideas, and that Baldwin thought The Smurfs and The Magic Flute was "crappy". To be fair, I thought the animation in Magic Flute was about as good as the TV series animation ever was, but the pacing of the story and the voices were poor.
2. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends
..in which Don Glut bemoans his lot, forever associated with the late Dennis Marks' apocryphal, yet charming take on Spider-Man that was inspired by the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby-Dorothy Lamour "Road to..." movies, in which Spidey had adventures and told/traded jokes while hanging out with Iceman & Firestar. Glut HATED Ms. Lion, Aunt May's pet dog, created by Marks as a mascot/pet for the series, and would insist on inserting scenes with her in scripts that Glut intentionally wrote her out of. Meanwhile, the rest of us fans of the series in the U.S. wonder if Disney will ever wake up and release the series on Region 1 DVD.
3. He-Man and The Masters of The Universe/She-Ra: Princess of Power
Lou Scheimer hit the jackpot, here. It just so happens a generation of incredibly talented artists and writers cut their teeth working for Filmation during this time - even taking advantage of a brief strike at the Disney studio, which resulted in some top talent in need of work. Both of these shows were better than they were likely conceived to be, with the push to be toyetic.
4. Inspector Gadget
Less than a handful of Bruno Bianchi's concept/development sketches of Inspector Gadget are reprinted in the book...Bianchi's style reminds me of Sergio Aragones - that got me imagining a great Inspector Gadget comic book that seems obvious, but we have yet to see, drawn by Sergio Aragones. That would be cool.
I recall the idea of Gadget's extendable arms and legs was based on Dynomutt, because Andy Heyward had worked on both shows.
5. The Transformers
As with He-Man, She-Ra and perhaps G.I. Joe, The Transformers has been the subject of coffee table books of its own, so the ground covered here has been well-tread, but inserted for posterity. The weakness of the book becomes more obvious in these sections, but I have a nice anecdote of my own to share: years ago, on the Comic Book Resources forums, series writer Buzz Dixon had responded to my question about the trailer that Optimus Prime is always shown towing when he's in the form of a truck..Where does that trailer come from? It's clearly a separate component/accessory, not part of Optimus Prime in his robot form. And yet, whenever/wherever he transformed into a truck, the trailer slides into place! Dixon confessed that none of the people could figure out an explanation for what that trailer's deal was(!)...and just let it go as something they weren't going to put much emphasis on.
6. G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
You do get a sense that the people who enjoyed working on these shows the most wanted the audience to believe that they believed in the series' concept. I'm tempted to look up the earliest, "improvised" episodes of G.I. Joe, then stare-and-compare with later "researched" episodes, since the animation for all the Sunbow-produced shows was rarely particularly good..and at the end of the day, this show was always about a bunch of guys dressed as The Village People vs. a bunch of guys dressed like the bad guys from Spaceballs.
7. Jem and The Holograms
This is a concept that probably would've been more popular than it was if the animation and stories matched the energy and pace of the title sequence. I don't know...the theme song/sequence was catchy enough to draw you in (though I wouldn't say that out loud) but the "Afterschool Special"/soap opera-feel to the stories was too earnest, imo. It should've been more like Josie and The Pussycats in story-style...that's probably the way it would go if there was ever a reboot.
Btw, Rich Morris did a truly truly outrageous unauthorized Jem/Doctor Who crossover webcomic years ago that's archived on his Shipsinker website, which established that Stormer and Eric Raymond were errant Time Lords from Gallifrey...believe that, true believer..believe that.
8. Thundercats
I think YouTube still has this audacious fan-made trailer for a live-action Thundercats film, culling footage from Troy, The Chronicles of Riddick, Stargate, and I don't recall offhand what else, then digitally coloring Brad Pitt and Vin Diesel to resemble Lion-O and Panthro. Vin Diesel is a movie producer, YouTuber; dare Vin Diesel to make a live-action Thundercats movie and he'll do it!
9. Muppet Babies
This is one of those shows where you'll have to trust me was actually good; it has Jim Henson's fingerprints on it - the Henson heirs are trying to "Walt Disney's"-brand name recognition on new stuff that didn't even exist as incoherent scribbles in any of Jim's notebooks, but Muppet Babies has his stamp proper...this, Fraggle Rock and the first live-action film with the Ninja Turtles were the last truly commercially successful projects completed during his lifetime.
..and I wish they revived Kermit the Frog P.I. - I have vague memories of seeing that cartoon and that was the only part of Little Muppet Monsters that worked for me. They should try it again...I think the Dog City TV series came from that, somewhat...but no...let's do this again with Kermit and Fozzie proper this time.
10. The Real Ghostbusters
The irony for artists and writers working on animated cartoons airing in "Seasons" is that production on these series made the work itself seasonal; they hopscotched from one animation studio to another. Any show made during this decade will likely have the same five or ten guys on average with their names on the credits. To read Tom Sito gently slam Filmation's Ghostbusters while praising DIC's The Real Ghostbusters is pretty funny, since he appears in interviews and commentary on the DVD box set of the Filmation show. The franchise is such a fallow state since the Paul Feig reboot blew that I've half-jokingly suggested adapting the 1980's animated incarnation with Jake, Eddie and Tracy the Ape into live-action. The stories may just be recycling He-Man tropes with a lighter tone, but the animation and character designs and more attractive than the Real version, which is pretty creaky-looking.
11. The Disney Afternoon (this is a cheat, as the author is actually talking about Disney's Adventures of The Gummi Bears, Ducktales and Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers )
..and "The Disney Afternoon" didn't officially premiere until September of 1990, unless people want to count it as part of the 80's, but 1990 felt like a new start at the time to me...aside from fashion designers attaching neon colors on clothing...
The Disney shows from this decade get short-changed, imo, as there's "Before Disney Television Animation" and "After Disney Television Animation". This was a game-changer that deserves a book of it's own. The chapter was an interesting introduction to Tom Ruzicka, whom I hadn't read much about before, or his and Fred Wolf's critical contribution to the early days, when Gummi Bears was actually going to tie-in with a line of candy (how come Haribo makes "Gummy Smurfs" but no "Gummy Gummi Bears"?) and that The Wuzzles and Fluppy Dogs were specifically designed to sell toys, whereas Ducktales was actually created to capitalize on the success of Gummi Bears moving away from its toyetic origins and becoming more story-based (the Gummis themselves were going to be named after candy flavors...is that why Gruffi Gummi is sometimes depicted in red on licensing instead of brown? What would've been his name: "Redd Gummi"?).
12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The 1980's cartoon incarnation is still the best. All the credit really goes to three people: Fred Wolf (for selling the show), Dave Wise (for giving us an entertaining show) and Chuck Lorre (for giving us that iconic theme song - I liked learning that it was actually Chuck's voice that's shouting "We're really hip!"/"Hey! Get a Grip!"/"He's a radical rat!"/"Gimmee a break!" - I remember thinking that was Rob Paulsen, the voice of Raphael, because that's who it sounded like).
13. Garfield and Friends
On his website, Mark Evanier opts for writing about celebrities/writers/artists he knows and politicians he dislikes rather than stuff he's actually worked on. Oh, and dispensing career advice for would-be freelance writers, I guess, though it comes off more interesting than useful. And obits for people he knew...and people who he never knew (to which he writes, "I don't have any stories about Austin Tasseltyne because I never met him or worked with him, but people liked him and his movies/TV shows/apple pies were quite popular, so he had that goimg for him."). Rarely does he divuge actual stories about his work...or at least without filing the names off beforehand. So it was nice to get him to talk of his time writing Garfield and Friends episodes, because he doesn't talk shop much on his blog about his work, which is unfortunate, because I think it's better-produced than the more-acclaimed TV specials that preceded it. Garfield reached the zenith of his popularity around this point. Ironically, the comic strip is more popular without him, assuming you haven't checked out Garfield Minus Garfield.
14. Mighty Mouse (actually, this was billed as Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, but that was the author's choice on how to identify it in the chapter heading).
With anything from Ralph Bakshi and John Kricfalusi...the superb character design and background stylings will always be marred by the inability to realize that neither can write anything worth a damn. I was most disappointed in this section, because it was fuzzy on details as to how Doug Moench contributed to the writing of the show...I have to hazard a guess that it was his job to transcribe a presentable script from the final layouts that would be passed along to other production/post-production staff - voiceover/music/editing/sound/overseas animators. Most of the people who worked on that show have had long careers since then, but Bakshi and Kricfalusi are infamous for downplaying the craft of writing as an art form that has it's own technique and discipline. As a result, everything they've done has always come off amateurish and slapdash, storywise, because they focus everything on the drawings.
So...I enjoyed this book, it's good, but not great. Something's missing. The presentation is attractive - I like how there's samples of production notes and artwork from several series reproduced and attached ontop of pages, like they've been paper-clipped, giving the book a feel like you're reading a dossier with supplementary information thst could literally spill out. However, with a book like this, you'd think the author would present a stronger defense/commentary in his text for why these shows deserve to be the greatest cartoons of that decade. The title doesn't even specify that it's necessarily just cartoons on television, but could imply animated feature films, of which I could think of six that could bulk up that list to 20:
15) The Secret of Nimh
16) The Castle of Cagliostro
17) The Great Mouse Detective
18) Transformers: The Movie (although this could be lumped in with the TV series, ad it is discussed in the chapter devoted to that show, but it's strong enough to be a separate contender)
19) Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
20) The Little Mermaid
Yeah! And I didn't even get to include animated short films, of which I would suggest Night of The Living Duck and A Grand Day Out as worthy of inclusion. That would make 22.
And then there's a curious happening with (13) and (14) on the book's list: he switches the order by which the series debuted. Up until then, the list follows a timeline; Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was old news when Garfield and Friends debuted the following year. Maybe that's a reflection on how the cartoons debutingthe following take their aesthetic cues from Mighty, particularly the Nickelodeon cartoons. That's left for us to infer. In fact, the author leaves it to the people who worked on each show to offer their conclusion as to why the respective series is considered great; it's like, "Hey! Here's my list. That's it. 'Nuff said." At a price of 50 bucks, I wouldn't mind more insight on what made these 14 cartoon shows better than other programs offered. There's no sidebars devoted to "Memorable Episodes" or "Honorable Mentions: Good Cartoons That Didn't Make The List". Those would've been cool things to add. There's unanswered questions..why isn't Fraggle Rock in there? Voltron? A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (the template for every new Scooby-Doo cartoon made since the 1990's). How about the 80's revival of The Jetsons? Or Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats? Or Thundarr (I don't care much for that one; the talent behind that series was more interesting than what they produced, but it has a loyal following). I might've been incorrect about the last two, but if I had seriously disagreed with any of the choices in that book - and I didn't, for the record; I agree with all the choices in there - then I would've thought this was just cobbled together by someone who had taken a light survey on social media and his content is grounded on the results of that. The text is just perfunctory and the only fun in reading it is the quotes from the people who worked on each show.
Curious thing I found while preparing this post: I found an alternate cover photo of the book - most likely a mockup for early solicitation purposes; there's a disclaimer on it saying it's not the final image...this cover has images of Voltron and the guys from muh-muh-muh M.A.S.K. on it. Perhaps they were just thrown in there to create suspense and surprise when the final cover was revealed, but I can't help feel we might have some alternate chapters that didn't make final cut...or it was just a ruse to prevent spoilers from leaking.
I'm trying to imagine how a follow-up book devoted to the 1990's would look..
Darkwing Duck
Ren and Stimpy
Beavis and Butthead
Gargoyles
Batman: The Animated Series
Animaniacs
Pinky and The Brain
Freakazoid!
Rocko's Modern Life
Rugrats
Daria
Dexter's Laboratory
The Powerpuff Girls
Johnny Bravo
The Simpsons
See that? That's pretty close..some of those choices I don't even care for, but I don't doubt the authenticity of their being on that list. He should totally do it...and hopefully add some flavor to his rhetoric along with it this time.
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