For years, Saturday mornings in September were a respite for many kids from the sting that came with back-to-school season, seemingly erasing summer vacation.
In the midst of the stresses that came along with heading back to school, Saturday mornings brought much-needed “me” time with the introduction of a new season and a new line-up of animated shows.
In 2021, I wrote a three-part article that looked back at different years in Saturday morning TV history. This article continues that theme with another three-part series examining specific years of TV line-ups that are celebrating anniversaries.
Part one takes a nostalgic trip back forty years to the Saturday Morning Cartoons that debuted in September of 1985. At that time, even though Saturday Morning Cartoons had been a part of the television landscape for several decades, VHS was starting to encroach on the intended audience.
But in 1985, Saturday morning was still going strong with all the major networks introducing new shows, which will be the focus of these articles. As we came out of a summer where Back to the Future ruled the box office, and The Golden Girls were about to debut in prime time, here are the new animated series that premiered on Saturday morning that fall.
ABC
On ABC in the fall of 1985, George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars Galaxy came to Saturday mornings with the animated The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour. The former focused on the cuddly, teddy bear-like characters from the planet Endor, who made their debut in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, and the latter centered on C3PO and R2D2.
Both series were produced by Lucasfilm, in conjunction with the Canadian Studio Nelvana Limited, which brought audiences shows like Care Bears and Beetlejuice, and, unfortunately, recently closed. Interestingly, Ewoks was developed by Paul Dini, who would go on to co-create such shows as Batman: The Animated Series and such iconic characters as Harley Quinn.
That fall also saw the debut of The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, the final iteration of the popular Super Friends. Developed by legendary comic book writers and artists E. Nelson Bridwell and Carmine Infantino, this new version of Hanna-Barbera’s long-running show has become a favorite among fans for its more serious, sometimes darker story lines.
In 1985, Hanna-Barbera introduced another version of one of their Saturday morning favorites with The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. Iconic horror actor Vincent Price joined the series as the voice of Vincent Van Ghoul, who, in narration in the opening credits, announces the plot of this new variation on an old favorite: Scooby and Shaggy have accidentally opened the Chest of Demons. Thirteen ghosts are then released into the world, and only those who opened the chest can return them.
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo was a fun, entertaining take on a familiar favorite (and was paired with Scooby’s Mystery Funhouse, a re-packaging of classic Scooby-Doo episodes).
CBS
Over on CBS, Disney was making one of their first two forays into television animation with the debut of The Wuzzles, a series about a group of fantasy characters who are each a hybrid of two different animals (Bumblelion, a combination of a bumblebee and a lion, as an example). The series, created by Fred Wolf, featured a cast of voice acting luminaries, such as Stan Freberg, Bill Scott, Henry Gibson, and Jo Anne Worley, just to name a few.
The popular children’s book series, The Berenstain Bears, created by authors and illustrators Stan and Jan Berenstain, came to CBS in 1985 as a weekly animated series. Produced by Southern Star/Hanna-Barbera Australia, The Berenstain Bears Show was nominated for both an Emmy and a Humanitas Prize.
Also, this fall on CBS, the success of Muppet Babies gave way to Little Muppet Monsters, a live-action/animated series from Henson Associates and Marvel Productions, focusing on the title characters who lived in a basement, where they put on their own show, introducing cartoons that featured animated versions of such Muppet luminaries as Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Fozzie Bear.
Hulk Hogan was at the height of his popularity in 1985, which inspired the animated series, Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling on CBS. Produced by DIC Animation, the show featured animated versions of Hogan and his fellow wrestlers, such as Captain Lou Albano and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Sound-alike actors provided the voices for the characters, including Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brad Garrett as Hulk Hogan.
Hogan’s passing this summer was felt significantly by many, particularly the generation who grew up with the star wrestler during his heyday, and recount fond memories of the “Hulkster,” which includes Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling.
NBC
Over at NBC, a trend of translating popular prime-time shows into Saturday morning series continued with Punky Brewster (also referred to as It’s Punky Brewster), an animated version of the network’s popular sitcom from the Ruby-Spears Animation Studio, which added a fantastical character named Glomer (voiced by Frank Welker), who brought animatable elements to the show with his magical powers.
One of Disney’s other first forays into TV animation debuted in 1985 on NBC, Adventures of the Gummi Bears. This popular, long-running series, centered on the title characters, mystical beings who live in the medieval land of Gummi Glen.
In the book, It’s Saturday Morning: Celebrating the Golden Era of Cartoons, 1960s-1990s, by Joe Garner and Michael Ashley, Jymn Magon, co-creator and story editor of Adventures of the Gummi Bears, shared how the series came about:
“I’ve told this story numerous times, and I still can’t believe it happened this way. When Michael Eisner took over the company, he asked to meet with a bunch of ‘creative types’ in his new TV animation department…a bunch of us (six or eight, I think) met at Eisner’s Beverly Hills home on a Sunday morning… Michael mentioned that his kids had eaten this great new candy at summer camp – Gummy Bears. Then, he turned to me – a total unknown, and said, ‘Make me a show about that.’”
And so as the song “Shout” by Tears for Fears plays on the radio, we finish off our bowl of Mr. T. cereal and look ahead to next week, for part two, when we travel back fifty years to Saturday morning in 1975.
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
Bumblelion, eh? I’ve never seen “The Wuzzles”, but on one of my trips to Japan I saw a kids’ TV show with an animated character called Nekoppachi, who was half cat (neko) and half bee (hachi). Coincidence? Yes, almost certainly. After all, mythology is replete with creatures like the griffin and the manticore, combining elements from two or more different kinds of animal. When I was in third grade a friend and I used to draw what we called “Cross-Betweens”, with names like Squirrelduck and Turtlebat.
It’s easy to imagine how “The Wuzzles” was conceived. A focus group was probably convened to find out which kinds of animal were the most popular among children in 1985, and a lengthy list was compiled. “We can’t use all of these! There’s too many of them!” “Well, how do we know which ones to cut? They’re not ranked in order, and we don’t want to cut the most popular animals by mistake.” “Why don’t we just mix them up and make each character a cross between two animals? Then we’ll only need half as many!” “Bullseye! Now you’re thinking like an eight-year-old!”
“Kids just want to have fun!” Now I’m imagining a cross between Cyndi Lauper and Hulk Hogan. Ye gods, what sort of unholy chimera of 1985 is this?
“The Wuzzles” was actually collaboration with Hasbro who were doing toys at the time (and partly own the rights). In fact, the whole reason why all the characters had wings (which baffled the animation crew) was, according to Hasbro, toys with wings sell more.
By ’85-86, I was about to turn 12, and had almost no interest in two of the three networks. I watched ABC almost exclusively out of loyalty to the ‘Superfriends’ and ‘Scooby Doo’ franchises(I found this season’s formats were an improvement over ’84).
On the other hand, I hated that ABC dropped ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ for the Mary Lou Retton ‘Fun Fit'(especially since it seemed like they only did 2 or 3 segments, and repeated them for a year, til the ‘Fun Fit’ fad died out).
The ‘cute’ and sci-fi fantasy-based shows didn’t appeal to me. ‘Charlie Brown and Snoopy’ was the only CBS show I had any interest in, but my local station kept moving it.
NBC’s Spider-Man and Mr. T were pre-empted locally, for one of those ‘Teenagers interviewing people’ shows, but the Smurfs, Snorks, and the rest of the ‘cute’ stuff carried on.
I’ll always have a soft spot for ABC’s ‘Turbo Teen’. It may have been dumb, but at least it was Smurfless.
Little muppet monsters, eh? I’m surprised there was a muppet show in the 80s I never heard of.
I’m also surprised the same actor would have played both hulk hogan and Jackie Gleason.
The wuzzles show sounded like it had a good voice cast.
“Little Muppet Monsters” only last three episodes before being pulled partly because Jim thought the concept wasn’t completely thought out (i.e. the combination between live-action Muppets and animation which was a bit more successful seven years later with the three-season “Jim Henson’s Dog City” based on an Emmy-winning episode of “The Jim Henson Hour”, another short-lived series) and partly because Marvel Animation couldn’t get the overseas animation done in time, in this case being, TOEI Animation which was completely swamped with work at the time (not only with doing commercial work with American studios, but with their own projects including an upcoming series based on the then new Manga, “Dragon Ball”).
I watched Little Muppet Monsters as it aired and then in recent years. As a kid, I was a huge fan of Sesame Street, the Muppet Show, and Muppet Babies. I was ready for a second Muppet series on Saturday mornings. I didn’t particularly enjoy the show. It was a bit scattershot. The animated segment with adult Animal was like watching a Sport Goofy short without the action. The puppet segments with the euphonious Little Muppet Monsters were not as appealing as Henson’s other shows. Animated Pigs in Space…. was okay.
After rewatching the show in the past decade, I felt the flaws were not as strong as the ratings suggested, but I kind of figured out the problem. Muppet Babies (and a lot of Muppet media) draws a lot of audience attention by referencing other properties. It parodies Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Ghostbusters. For its audience, Muppet Babies is like an open mic night at a comedy show. If you are not digging this Scooter and Gonzo bit, wait a minute and maybe this Back to the Future parody will draw your attention. Little Muppet Monsters is all-Muppets-all-the-time to its own detriment. If the bit isn’t working and the show lingers on the unsuccessful bit and overstays its welcome. This was an entirely fixable issue, but Henson just let reruns of Muppet Babies air instead and scrapped the project.
Some other aspects of the show probably should have been reevaluated. The Kermit and Animal character models for their animated segments are odd-looking. Animated Muppet Babies gave the baby Muppets thick legs. Animated Fraggle Rock a few years later gave the Fraggles furry legwarmer-like fur calves to add volume to what is basically a lifeless felt pipe. Of course, Kermit has thin long legs, but they look terrible when drawn and posed.
I wouldn’t say so about Kermit’s legs.
As for the show itself, to paraphrase what Jim Henson first said to Caroll Spinney after he did a puppet show that went wrong, “I like what they were trying to do”.
I liked the 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo mainly because of Vincent Price. The writers wrote funny lines for Price that often times targeted the main Scooby cast which delivered big laughs. I also liked that the series featured real ghosts and that Daphne was transformed into a werewolf in one of the episodes. The Mike Eisner Gummi Bear story is great which sounds similar to the Fred Silverman story of the executive being on vacation when he discovered the Smurf toys in a gift shop and greenlit the Smurfs animated series.The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians was one of the best Super Friends series ensuring the franchise went out with a bang!
To be honest, I was expecting a Birthday post regarding a certain canine character today, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering how “loved” he is from the comments of yesterday’s post.
If there’s any writer here who’s going to ignore whether a certain character or series is unpopular with the commentariat, it’s Michael Lyons. (And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing; personally, I rather like that there’s someone willing (eager?) to write about cartoons that I think are of negligible worth.) I’m hoping that the negativity shown in the comments of yesterday’s post towards today’s birthday boy is largely a function of the subject of the post; Pluto’s cartoons don’t rank among Disney’s best, but at their worst I think they’re bland stories with appealing execution. And I think Pluto is just fine as a supporting character
Nicholas and Jody, Thank you both for the comments. Let me say,first, that I think Pluto is a wonderful, iconic character. That said, with so many anniversaries, and only one weekly column, some very difficult decisions have to be made. Other anniversaries, of characters, TV shows, and films have been passed up this and other years, for that reason. In no way was it a slight against the character of Pluto, and any comments that have been left by others, certainly don’t reflect the admiration I have for the character, and the many talented artists who brought Pluto to the screen through the years. Thanks again.
Thank you for the reply. I just thought the dog might had one since “Flip” (at Iwerks) had one.
Scooby’s Mystery Funhouse was acrenamed edition of Scary Scooby Funnies which ABC quickly pencilled in to replace the very short-lived Wolf Rock TV.
The 1985 season of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show was only five episodes long. The reason given in “The Art of Peanuts Animation” was that Charles Schulz decided that he no longer wanted to write any more episodes of the series, feeling that doing all those shows plus the prime-time specials and of course, the Peanuts comic strip was too much work.
I don’t think that book is accurate on this point–Very few of the episode segments are original. The overwhelming majority of them were adapted from previous strips. Much more likely he was just disappointed in the quality of the series, as I certainly was.
So were the TV specials. Heck, most of the material that was used in the “Great Pumpkin” originated from the comic strip.
It’s sad to think how so many Saturday morning shows will never get home media releases. Lost to time.
Not lost in time. You’re correct that many won’t get an official release, but YouTube has a lot of those toons, in varying degree of quality. For example, there’s plenty of “Saturday Supercade” that available on YouTube.
By the 80s I would occasionally visit Saturday morning to check out new shows. My first thought on “13 Ghosts” was, are Shaggy and Daphne a couple now?
My second thought was the odd mix of character designs: Classic Scooby, Scrappy, and Shaggy, slightly modified Daphne, quasi-realistic Vincent Price and street kid, and goofy cartoony ghosts.
My third thought was, when did real ghosts become canon?