Stay Tooned!!!--The End!?????

[packerbacker180]

With cartoon #24, It's crime fightin' time!



COPS hit syndication in the fall of 1988 from DIC Animation. Realizing crime was out of hand, Empire City Mayor Davis requests federal assistance. Special Agent Baldwin P. Vess is sent to help stop Big Boss Babel and his crew, but is severely injured in a car wreck (he made out better than Officer Alex Murphy!). The only way to save his life was a with a cybernetic bulletproof torso. Realizing he can't do it alone, Vess, now codenamed Bulletproof (as in Bulletproff Vess! Yes, this show is full of puns) forms the Central Organization of Police Specialists bringing in the best of the best in law enforcement agents from around the country, or basically the animated Village People.

But whats better than that intro? Toys! Toys! Toys! Why else make a cartoon in the 80's unless it's to sell toys?

See? Cybernetic, baby! It's science! The future's so bright...if only we all live to see that day!


Alongside Buletproof were:

PJ "Longarm" O'Malley of Empire City's Finest (he's a cop so he has to be Irish, right?)


Mutt and Junkyard, er, I mean, Bowser Pointer and his robot dog Rex from Chicago PD:


Walker "Sundown" Calhoun, Texas Sheriff--yeehaw!:


Sgt. "Mace" Howard from the Philly PD (pretty sure that big hand was for catching batteries that people threw at him):


Highway Harlson of the California Highway Patrol (wonder if he knew Ponch?):


Stan "Barricade" Hyde of Detroit Metro Riot Control:




Also you had Susie" Mirage" Young of the SFPD (no figure ever made), Donny "Hardtop" Brooks, Hugh "Bullseye" Forward Miami PD, Tina "Mainframe" Cassidy, Robert "A.P.E.S." Waldo Boston PD, Roger "Airwave" Wilco LAPD, Francis "Inferno" Devlin SF Fire Dept., Max "Nightstick" Muluklai Alaska PD (just kidding, Honolulu PD), Hy "Taser" Watts Seattle PD (stop, you're killing me with these puns!), and Wayne "Checkpoint" Sneeden, and if that name sounds vaguely familiar it might be because the COPS filecards were written by a certain someone named Larry Hama, and Checkpoint's file card states that his father "was a member of a top-secret military team in the ’80s and ’90s".

Yo Joe!


The main feature of the toys were that they all came with caps. No, not baseball hats, caps!


But heroes are only as good as their villains and in Empire City it got no worse than Brandon "Big Boss" Babel (sounding an awful lot like early Chief Wiggum doing Edward G. Robinson.


And bringing the trouble with Big Boss were his cybernetically enhanced crooks like Buttons McBoomBoom (just an awesome name!), Berserko, Ms. Demeanor (her actual name is Stephanie Demeanor, and she's single and ready to mingle, boys!), Doctor Badvibes, Nightshade, Turbo Tu-tone (I don't think he was related to Tommy but Mean Gene Okerlund says you can call 867-5309 and find out!), Koo-Koo the bombmaker (a descendat of Crazy Harry?), Rock Krusher, and Hyena wih his own henchmen Bullitt and Louie the Plumber (no, he didn't sell crack, he's a plumber, so seeing his crack is just a free bonus}.



I can't even speak much on the cartoon because I don't remember it that well. I mean, I remember it being on, and I know I watched it, but nothing beyond the intro really jogs my memory. By then I was heavily invested in Nintendo games and didn't sit down to watch shows regularly like I may've just a few short years earlier. Who has time for cartoons when SuperMario Bros. 2 just came out? But what an intro! I think it's a lot like GI Joe the movie as in if only the show was as great as that intro.

GI Joe the movie opening credits? Amazing. The movie itself? Eh.

Seriously, if they could've stretched that out into 80 minutes you would've had something, but Burgess Meredith and his whacky bug and snake people, sigh...not so much.

But I digress. COPS took place way off in the future, I'm talking way way off in the distant future of...<checks notes>... 2020? Oops. I dont get why shows hold themselves to dates so close. I mean, sure in 1988 the year 2020 seemed far off, but here we are and there it went and I ain't seen nothing on the news about torso transplants (unless there's an update on George Hodel). With Back to the Future II you had to stay relatively close to 1985 because you needed Marty to meet his progeny in the future, so 2015 makes sense (Back to the Future was 30 years into the past so BFII was 30 into the future) but if you're making a cartoon about a futuristic police, why not make it 2120? 2220? None of us will live to see that day. None of us will be alive in the 25th century to say, nope,Go-go boots and opened-shirted hairy-chested men didn't make a comeback, Buck. But if Erin Gray is there, then drop me in a time warp...




See, Robocop got it right. Robocop takes place "in the near future" so when is that? Who knows, but there's still time to see if Detroit becomes a crime ridden hellhole. Oh, wait...



Anyways, COPS even had a fairly decent DC Comic back in the day that ran 15 issues

Nooooooooooooooo! Not Rex! Damn you, Anti-Monitor!

COPS the show aired for two "volumes" (each episode was treated like a case file, entitled "The case of..." and then the show would end with Bulletproof saying, "Case Closed") for 65 episodes. It would also return in 1993 on CBS for Saturday mornings but was renamed CyberCOPS to avoid confusion with the Fox show that had since begun airing (bad boys, bad boys, whatchagunna do?).

But what I'll remember most about COPS is the toys. I think they were one of the last toylines I really liked as a kid. I remember having several cops including Barricade, Mace (who also spent time as a baseball player from the future--c'mon, look at that glove and tell me you don't see it!), Highway, Longarm, and I remember having Buttons McBoomBoom (awesome name!) and Krusher. They were cool looking toys, and the caps were a neat feature. Until you ran out of caps, and then it was, "Mom, I need more caps" and if you didn't get more caps they weren't quite as fun. But man, I'll tell ya, there's nothing like the smell of a just busted cap, the little wiggle of smoke rising and that smell of flashed sulphur. I've bought cap guns for my kids when I've come across them, and boy they bring back the memories. Both types. You had the ring of caps for guns, and then those rolled up red sheets of fun! Kids today just don't know, amirite? When you snipe someone in Fortnite where's the sweet aroma of destruction?


Plus you could bang on caps with a rock like a monkey and still have fun! Try that with a $70 controller. Oh oh, grandpa, tell me 'bout the good ol' days.

I'd love to see someone make some COPS figures for collectors these days. I'd certainly be interested if they weren't insanely expensive. Aesthetically, I think the designs hold up and look great.




Sadly, in our current climate I don't think we'll see a kids cartoon about the police or toys for them anytime soon, and that's a shame. Hell, they're making overpriced Silverhawks toys right now and for my money, COPS was a much better toyline, but at least you can get the entire series on DVD.

Or get it on VHS!


That was worth it just to see the intro again.

COPS may've just been the second best "Cop" show of it's day.

[AcidDragon]

YES!!! COPS! Fighting Crime... In a Future Time... You can't stop it here! Haha!

[packerbacker180]

Crimes a wastin'!

When I say I'd buy figures of these guys if done right, I'm serious. There's a customizer over at hisstank.com named "Flint rocks", and he's been posting a thread chock full of 80's goodness in 3.75 scale, and he's shared these amazing customs based on COPS, and man, if these were on the shelf I'd buy them in a heartbeat. They're so good, I'm jealous. His whole thread is pretty amazing so if you have time I'd recommend checking it out, you'll feel like a kid walking through Toys R Us circa 1980-something.



I've asked for his permission to share a couple group shots over here because I dig them so much. I'd love to say that someday I'd try something like these but there's only so much time in the day and I'm already pretty ADHD when it comes to customs so I'll just look at these and drool, and like Dr. Sam Beckett, hope that just maybe someday...







Outstanding. No no. Amazing. No no...



Here's the start of his thread, and it's like going through 97 pages of my childhood. Give him a look!
https://www.hisstank.com/forum/g-i-joe- ... oject.html

[AcidDragon]

Oh yeah, man. I've seen his COPS customs. They are terrific. I'd definitely be down for new figures with modern articulation. Of course, I'd still want the caps action features. Hehe.

[BrandonDaCollector]

Sorry Packer, can't say I'm familiar with those new shows. I stopped watching animated shows after the MOTU & TMNT reboots.

Now to your COPS section here. I thought it was a really cool show. I never saw all of the episodes and I never got any of the figures but I do think it needs to have a reboot series and like AcidDragon said, a modern articulated line with caps action feature would be really, really cool

[packerbacker180]

I'm sure there'd be Karen pushback on action figures with cap busting action. Little Johnny might get hurt.

[packerbacker180]

They were tiny, they were toony, they were a little looney, and in this cartoony, #25 invaded your tv...



I almost skipped over Tiny Toons, but they were such a big part of the early 90s, and really we only touched on them with the movie, so I thought it was still appropriate to speak more on the subject since several people responded postively to the shows mention.

Maybe it was nostalgia, maybe it was to cater to a new generation, but the mid 80's saw many popular cartoons that introduced audiences to younger versions of popular characters. With shows like Muppet Babies, A Pup Named Scooby Doo (cancelled by Red Herring, no doubt), and The Flinstone Kids children met familiar friends who were now portrayed more as peers facing similar problems of growing up (who amongst us hasn't learned to power our automobile barefoot for the first time?). So who was keeping Warner Bros. from de-aging the Looney Tunes?



Yes, it's always Red Herring.



So the story goes that the then WB president Terry Semel wanted to reinvigorate the Looney Tunes franchise in similar fashion be introducing younger versions of their famous properties. In 1987 WB approached Steve Spielberg, not to be confused with his non-union Mexican equivalent...



Anyway, WB asked this guy:

to see if he'd be interested in doing a Looney Tunes film with younger versions of the characters. However, it's said Spielberg (not Spielbergo) didn't want to use established characters, but instead create new characters.

Enter the gang:

They're Babs and Buster Bunny. Montana Max had money. Elmyra was a pain. There's Hamton and Plucky.Dizzy Devil's yucky. Furrball's unlucky and Go-Go was insane. But they forgot Shirley the Loon, and a skunk named Fife la Fume, Sweety Pie was a canary, Calamity Coyote wasn't scary. LIttle Beeper was a scooter, and Lil Sneezer's nose a hooter, on Tiny Toon Adventures there would be lot's of fun.

But at the tail end of 1988 Tiny Toons was changed from a movie to a television series that debuted on CBS primetime on September 14, 1990, before entering syndication where it would go on to run for 98 episodes and win numerous awards (hell, with Spielberg and Paul Dini working on the show what else would you expect?) but it also ran on average 25,000 cels per episode vs the animated standard of the time of 10,000 cels, giving the characters a much more natural looking movement (contrast that to the 1960's Spiderman that I believe used about 10 cels per epsiode--warning: may not be completely accurate!)



Tiny Toons managed to garner better ratings than many Disney cartoons of the same era, because it was far superior. Don't get me wrong, I loved Ducktales and Rescue Rangers as much as the next person, but Disney could never hold a candle to the comedy of Looney Tunes, both from a slapstick point of view, and a topical comedy, not just during the Tiny Toon era, but pretty much for both their histories. But alas, WB Stores are no more, and Disney has conquered the world. Duck season makes you laugh, princesseses make you money, I suppose.



Personally, I grew up a much bigger fan of Looney Tunes. Give me funny over fairy tales, anvils falling on heads over fairygodmothers, and Merrie Melodies over Silly Symphonies!



Tiny Toon Adventures setting was ACME Looniversity, but it's reach far exceeded just that one locale. Where else could you learn what Istanbul once was?



Ok, yes you could learn that from a Four Lads album, or a They Might Be Giants album, or even a Big Muffin Serious Band album, but then again, dad, what's an album?



Tiny Toon Adventures had a ton of merchandise back in the day, from toys, to comics, to some really fun video games for various systems.




And Baby Plucky. Who didn't love Baby Plucky? I still say things go down holes at various times (giggidy!)...


In the third season Charlie Adler, the voice of Buster Bunny, left the show after he was passed up for roles in the upcoming Animaniacs show, and was replaced by John Kassir, and even as a kid the change in voice was noticable. Between season 2 and 3, the previously mentioned movie How I Spent My Summer Vacation debuted and became one of the highest selling videos of that year. Sadly, the show ended after three seasons, but would eventually see a Christmas and Halloween special air posthumously on prime time in 1994 and 1995. But Tiny Toons did usher forth several spinoffs including The Plucky Duck Show (that I vaguelyy remember) and Pinky, Elmyra, & the Brain (really? no clue) that would eventually lead to just the more well-known, Pinky & the Brain.



In recent years I've seen DVD versions on the front shelves of the DVD section at Walmart, and while I've been tempted to pick them up, I haven't yet. But for all the fans of Tiny Toon Adventures, fear not, there's a reboot of sorts in the works called Tiny Toons Looniversity that will air on HBO Max (or Horrible Body Odor, as we called it as children) and the Cartoon Network, that will supposedly involve the gang as a little bit older and trying to graduate ACME Looniversity to become professional toons. What's a professional? Professional wrestler?



The cast is listed as Buster Bunny, Babs Bunny, Plucky Duck, Hamton Pig, Shirley the Loon, Fifi La Fume, and Fowlmouth to crack up all the censors. But hopefully we'll still see the rest of the crew like Calamity Coyote and Furrball. According to his twitter account, Charlie Adler will not be back as Buster Bunny.



Sadly, Elmyra (according to the voice actress) will not be on the show, so I still have to explain to my daughter why I sometimes call her Elmyra because she likes to really hold our cats.



But even good things must come to an end...



And now my post is done.

[BrandonDaCollector]

That was wonderful Packer Out of the kids ones, I really only remember the Muppet babies and the young Scooby-Doo characters. I don't know how you did all of this but gosh that was super, super clever. I love it...CONGRATS

[AcidDragon]

Wow. This is quite an achievement, PB! Actually, Warner Bros. did de-age the Looney Tunes in the early 2000s. It was somewhat of a Muppet Babies kind of concept but definitely more geared towards little kids.

[packerbacker180]

That was wonderful Packer Out of the kids ones, I really only remember the Muppet babies and the young Scooby-Doo characters. I don't know how you did all of this but gosh that was super, super clever. I love it...CONGRATS

Ha, I'm glad you liked it. I'm kind of scattered brained myself, and like to write stream of consciously (it's probably why I could actually enjoy James Joyce) so I just write and things come to mind and I just post whatever strikes my fancy no matter how far off topic it goes (see my Wuzzles post, lol). I just enjoy cartoons and writing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Wow. This is quite an achievement, PB! Actually, Warner Bros. did de-age the Looney Tunes in the early 2000s. It was somewhat of a Muppet Babies kind of concept but definitely more geared towards little kids.

baby-looney-tunes.jpg

Yeah, I've seen that a few times in the listings on teh Cartoon Network but I never actually watched it.