Garbage Pail Kids. Based on the popular Topps cards, Garbage Pail Kids the animated television series (a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids) meant to premiere on a Saturday morning in September 1987 was abruptly cancelled less than 24 hours earlier on Friday. The exact reasons for the 11th hour cancellation were never discussed although it was assumed that protests from several groups that the series ridiculed the handicapped, glorified violence, and was primarily just a commercial for the cards as well as sponsors and affiliates (also pressured by the same groups) pulling out support was the reason.
CBS stated at the time that “CBS is well aware of a variety of pressure groups that contacted the network to voice their concern. CBS has never reacted to pressure from groups in programming decisions. Basically, it was an internal decision. We had all the best intentions of being able to translate the cards into a program but it didn’t work. The fit just wasn’t right.”
While CBS claimed “no full shows were completed at the time”, the thirteen episode series was completed and shown in Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Trinidad, Tobago, United Kingdom, Iceland, Israel, Italy and the Philippines among other countries and was released on home video in 2006.
Director Bob Hatchcock said, “We could not use the really gross stuff. The show got pulled anyway. The protest was about the cards and they never saw a frame of film. If they had seen the show without prior knowledge of the cards there would have never been a problem. We were so close to being finished that it made more sense to get them in the can for possible future use.”
Another Forgotten Animator. In 1924, artist Bert Green sued showman Flo Ziegfeld for non-payment. Green had done portraits of some of the Ziegfeld girls upon Ziegfeld’s request and the famous producer felt they weren’t good enough to receive payment. The court agreed.
Green had been an animator working with Hy Mayer in 1912, Hearst (1916-1918), Path (1919), Moser Studios in the 1920s and MGM sometime in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He also did advertising work in the 1920s which is where Ziegfeld probably saw his work and offered him the job. Green also did a newspaper strip called Kids in 1928 and comic book work starting in 1946 for Novelty probably through Leon Jason’s shop who used Famous Studios as well as other New York animators to do comic book stories.
Mr. Potato Head. In a press interview at the premiere of Toy Story (1995) with reporter Mal Vincent of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper, comedian Don Rickles who voiced Mr. Potato Head in the film said, “I was very surprised. I thought this would be very Mickey Mouse. I did it just for the money. I thought I’d just hear my voice coming out of this doll, but look, this thing looks like no other movie. I thought when they called me it would be like Popeye and Olive Oyl or something.
“They wanted the character of Don Rickles so they asked me not to act. My motivation was the money so I said, ‘Fine, I won’t act’. I wanted the Tom Hanks part but they would have had to pay me more for that. They’re no fools.”
The Raggedy Ann That Never Was. In November 1993, Cambium Productions approached the Canadian animation company Catapult about doing a Raggedy Ann television series (The Magical World of Raggedy Ann) but it wasn’t until August 1995 that a promo piece was created consisting of costumed actors in a computer generated set being menaced by a computer animated bat. It was hoped that Children’s Television Workshop would pick it up for Cartoon Network’s The Big Bag show but it was not selected. Cambium also pitched the idea to another buyer who was only interested in cel animation holiday specials.
Glen Keane. From Premiere magazine November 1991, animator Glen Keane talked about working on Beauty and the Beast (1991): “I think we’re rushing too fast through it all. On Friday night, I worked – just racing, physically moving my hand across the page at lightning speed, just driving as fast as I could. The next day, I couldn’t hold a cup of coffee. My hand was shaking. At first, I thought I had palsy or something.
“I’ve grown to respect (Jeffrey Katzenberg). He comes up with as many ideas as animators can – and as fast. The fact that he throws out whatever comes into his head is valuable to me. You just kind of have to take it with a grain of salt.” One of Katzenberg’s suggestions was that one of the servants in the castle was transformed into a punching bag so he would be a human punching bag.
Ron Miller Ratigan. In the Wall Street Journal for July 14th, 1986, animator Glen Keane talked about the inspiration for Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective (1986): “Our first version of the villain was thin and sort of weaselly. But he didn’t have the power or presence we wanted. Then one day, we heard Mr. (Ron) Miller’s footsteps coming down a long linoleum hallway. You could hear the floor shaking as this 6-foot 6-inch guy with 260 pounds of muscle moved into the room.
“So we started doing caricatures of Miller as a huge rat. It wasn’t done to be derogatory. I sweated it out when I presented the first sketches to him but he didn’t recognize his own face and said, ‘Go with it’.” The Journal contacted Miller who was the former president and CEO of Walt Disney Productions and he replied, “That’s news to me.”
Phil Mendez at Disney. In a 1986 interview, animator Phil Mendez said, “I started work at the age of 19 at Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample (doing commercials) under Bill Tollis who was a great disciplinarian. He made me do a storyboard thirteen times. That’s how I learned to draw. When I left, I joined Disney as an animator. The seven months I spent there were the roughest, toughest of my life. I went there expecting it would be a friendly, wonderful place to work. It was a factory. I lost twenty pounds. I lost my job when I asked for a small raise.
“I was told that I should be grateful that as a black I was given an opportunity to work there. I told this man that Mickey Mouse was black. He instantly fired me and barred me from the lot for four years until he left.”
Jim Korkis is an internationally respected animation historian who in recent years has devoted his attention to the many worlds of Disney. He was a columnist for a variety of animation magazines. With his former writing partner, John Cawley, he authored several animation related books including The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars, How to Create Animation, Cartoon Confidential and Get Animated’s Animation Art Buyer’s Guide. He taught animation classes at the Disney Institute in Florida as well as instructing classes on acting and animation history for Disney Feature Animation: Florida.
Not sure if ‘The Garbage Pail Kids’ show is offensive…but’s it’s painfully unfunny.
Watching it today, it certainly hasn’t aged well.
The irony is that they got sued in court by the makers of Cabbage Patch Kids … who stole the idea for that from a woman named Martha Nelson Thomas who created the concept first with Dollbabies but didn’t copyright it.
The cancellation of CBS’s Garbage Pail Kids cartoon is probably the only time an entire show has been taken off the air before even a single frame could be shown due to the PO’d parents getting their way. As is mentioned in the article, they didn’t even have much to go on. Maybe they looked at the cards (which obviously don’t have to deal with FCC regulations, leaving it up to the producer’s what’s appropriate or not) or saw that godawful movie from the same year (kind of a crappy year for the property) and thought that the show would end up being the same way. All that noise over what (as far as I can tell anyway) ended up being a bog-standard 80s Saturday morning kids’ show.
The Young Astronauts animated series from Marvel Productions was scheduled to premiere on CBS Saturday morning in Fall 1985 and then moved to February 1986. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred in January 1986 a week before the scheduled CBS debut of the show. The show was cancelled as the NASA program was put on long term hold. No episodes of the series were ever broadcasted, released on official home video, or found online since.
@Adam “MadMan” Martinez
I dunno, maybe the naysayers were misguided, but I think it worked out fine – it looks terrible!
That must’ve sucked for the guys behind the show to see it simply canned like that due to those circumstances. Assuming how good said show was, I don’t know, but I’m sure someone knows!
I suppose we’ll never know for sure. Of course the following year would see Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse series hit the airwaves via CBS as well, and we’ve see the direction TV cartoons would take after that. Perhaps GPK simply couldn’t live up to the hype the original cards dished out in celluloid form.
I recall hearing this was in one of Jerry’s earlier “Worst Cartoons” shows at Comic-Con if I’m not mistaken. I believed this was the most recent thing he showed in one of those shows (it came out after “Turbo Teen”). .
I think the real flaw of the series was that the producers were trying really hard to create a kiddie style sketch comedy show in the vein of Saturday Night Live, mostly consisting of parodies of movies, TV shows and commercials, and other pop culture references. The results obviously turned out dubious at best. At times, the gags on the show were so surreal and bizarre, you almost wonder if the writers had been experimenting with certain substances instead of with ideas for stories.
How did Hoyt Curtain got mixed-up on that unaired show? I thought he was still at H-B?
I had no idea that Hoyt Curtin was on anything mentioned above!
Nic, you’re right, he was at HB, I guess YOUNG ASTRONAUTS was the unaired show, not sure of how you found out..maybe he sneaked away or was lent out…!
Or was it RAGGEDY ANN you’re talkin’ about??
He’s mention in the credits on the otherwise Canadian “Garbage Pail Kids” show.
Hoyt Curtin also composed the main title and several themes for BATTLE OF THE PLANETS … likewise not an H-B show. Though, some of his BotP themes bore more than a ‘passing resemblance’ to his SUPER FRIENDS underscores..!
There’s a reasonable explanation for Hoyt Curtin’s involvement with the series, as well as Bob Hathcock’s. At the time, H-B had a majority stake in Wang Productions, the studio that animated the series. During that time, Joe Barbera would arrange to have veteran animation directors and other staff flown to their Taiwan HQ to oversee the progress of their productions, while, at home in LA, H-B’s execs took care of negotiations with the networks.
On the subject of the networks, you’ll notice in the end credits that CBS held the IP rights to the series. The thing about CBS at the time was that they were busy creating a marketing brand for themselves by buying out licensed properties that they decidedly felt had some sort of potential selling power with the juvenile market. What CBS saw in GPK, I suppose, was a trend in properties that were catering to the then-emerging counter-culture revolution, and wanted to get a piece of the pie while it was still fresh out of the oven, so to speak.
I suppose in the end it wasn’t a total loss for the network if they were able to sell the show to other countries anyway, regardless of the efforts of those splintered groups who should’ve known better, but again, things just happened and it did.
I recall Cambrium for at least one show they had produced that aired on Nickelodeon back in the 80’s called Sharon, Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show”. I still think of the fun opening sequence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXLGHyGxY2E
And while Cambrium couldn’t get the Raggedy Ann TV series they wanted, the titular doll did however found herself, and Andy, stuck in several Xmas specials a few years later produced for Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target) based on their holiday mascot, Snowden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T37qJ-2lFvE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEjETfXswLI