The cut-out hoop on the back of the box. |
Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.
July 30, 2016
WHEATIES DUNK-A-BALLS CEREAL
July 23, 2016
SMF ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION (PART 10)
WWF SUPERSTARS CEREAL
The four circulated box designs. |
NASCAR RACERS
During prohibition
in the southern United States, bootleggers would use modified cars to get more
cargo space for their illegal booze as well as more speed to outrun police, and
later tax revenue agents after prohibition was lifted. All that racing around
the country backroads stuck and they began doing it for fun as well as for
business to create what would become known as stock car racing.
The origins of NASCAR. |
In 1947, Bill France saw the
potential for a unified series of racing competitors and created the National
Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC). The venture would oversee 40 events
over the course of a single season at the Daytona
Beach track, with a grand prize of $1,000 going to the winner. Attendance
ended up exceeding the venue’s capacity multiple times. By the end of 1947,
France and the other 35 men who represented the NCSCC gathered together to
bring France’s vision of an organized group of race car drivers to reality. On
February 21, 1948, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) was founded.
Bill France, Sr., the founder of NASCAR. |
NASCAR was originally split by three
divisions: Modified, Roaster and Strictly Stock, although Roadster proved
unpopular with fans and was soon abandoned. The first Modified race was held at
Daytona Beach later that month, while the first Strictly Stock race ran at Charlotte Speedway in
June of 1949. In 1950, Strictly Stock became the “Grand National” division,
allowing for modifications to be made to the cars to improve both safety and
performance. As foreign manufacturers took notice of their cars being used in
the races, they began to show interest in entering the races themselves. In
1952, NASCAR expanded beyond the United States with its first race in Canada.
A garage with Unlimited Division racers. |
Today, NASCAR is a major racing
concern still held within the France family and comprised of several different
series. In 1999, NASCAR partnered up with FOX Kids to produce an
animated series for the younger NASCAR fans. Developed by Saban Entertainment,
NASCAR Racers took place in the near
future in Motor City. Jack Fassler (Paul Dobson) had pushed for the creation of
a new Unlimited Division which would allow for cars that possessed various
technology to aid in the races along extreme reality-defying tracks. Amongst
these advancements were rocket boosters for speed and jumping, wings and
parachutes for gliding, and an inner Rescue Racer that could be ejected if the
car was in trouble. To train for these races, racers used an advanced virtual
reality simulator.
Team Fastex: Jack Fassler, Duck, Charger, Flyer, Spitfire and Stunts. |
The show primarily focused on
Fassler’s Team Fastex comprised of Mark “Charger” McCutchen (Ian James
Corlett), a second generation racer; Carlos “Stunts” Rey (Rino Romano), a
daredevil who raced in order to win money for his ill father; and Steve “Flyer”
Sharp (Roger R. Cross), a retired Air Force
pilot who suffered some brain damage from an explosion during a mission. After
some convincing, Fassler’s adopted daughter (a plot point that played out
during the second season) Megan “Spitfire” Fassler (Kathleen Barr) was allowed
to join the team. Megan was also responsible for the creation of the team’s
cars and their technology. Douglas “Duck” Dunaka (Dale Wilson) was the team’s
crew chief. Mark’s brother Miles (Andrew
Francis), also an aspiring racer, often helped Duck around the pit.
Spex with Rexton on his view screen. |
The primary competition for the Fastex team was Team Rexcor. The team was
owned and operated by Garner Rexton (Ron Halder) who attempted to do anything
in order to win races as well as destroy Fastex. Amongst his racers were Lyle
“The Collector” Owens (Philip Maurice Hayes) who was a spy on the Fastex team,
but with his ruthlessness and arrogance behind the wheel was ejected by
Fassler; Hondo “Specter” Hines, an incredibly sneaky and spooky driver; Zorina,
who was very ignorant and aggressive and often teamed-up with Specter to
destroy opposing cars; and Diesel “Junker” Spitz, a gang member recruited by
Rexton who managed to trash opposing cars despite being clumsy and very slow in
other regards. Spex (Richard Newman) was a cyborg and Rexcor’s crew chief.
Other racers included veteran racer Farrell Longstreet, Kent “Demolisher”
Steel, an android, and Eve “Wild Card” Kildere, a female stunt driver that
initially worked for Rexton.
NASCAR Racers promotional paint jobs on actual NASCAR racers. |
The first three episodes aired as a preview movie on November 20, 1999
before the rest of the season began that February. Interestingly enough, the
actual NASCAR wouldn’t be seen on FOX until
the show’s second season when it began airing in February of
2001. The series blended 2-D traditional animation for the characters
designed by Joel Adams with 3-D computer
animation used for the racing and action sequences by Creative Logik and VanHook Studios. It was written by Michael Edens,
Mark Edens,
Steve Cuden, Scott Peterson
and Matthew
Edens, with music composed by Alexander
Van Bubenheim, David Hilker,
John Costello, Jeremy Sweet, Shuki Levy and Haim Saban (as Kussa Mahchi). To promote
the series, four racing teams were tapped to have their cars done in a scheme
representative of one of the four hero characters for a photo op. The cars were
unveiled at a Winston Cup
event on November 14th, 1999. Jeff
Gordon’s #24, Bobby Labonte’s #18
and Terry Labonte’s
#5 were all involved with the promotion early on, with Andy Petree’s #55 coming
on board after some initial challenges navigating around car sponsor
commitments. Each design had to be approved by the racing teams, Hasbro, who was handling the toy
merchandising, and FOX Kids.
Duck and Spex fighting over tools. |
The series was renewed for a second season, and some changes followed.
The Unlimited Division cars were replaced with new atomic-powered XPT racers,
which looked like sleeker versions of the original cars. The second half of the
season saw the introduction of Nitro Racers with high-flux fusion units, many
of which had a six-wheel design. Feeling betrayed over not being told about her
adoption, Megan left Fastex to form her own team: The Spitfires. They were an
all-female team comprised of her, Eve, Zorina after she was booted from Rexcor,
and an intimidating racer named Chrome. Replacing Zorina was Tanker, an army
veteran whose car resembled a tank. Phil “Octane” Knox worked clandestinely for
Rexton and frequently employed a hallucinogen to his foes. The mysterious
“Redline” O’Rourke was also introduced and provided competition for Charger
both on the track and for Megan’s affections. Fastex also gets a new mechanic
in the form of the klutzy “Lugnut” Gooch.
After the second season, the show was cancelled. Despite its short run, a
strong merchandising push was made. Hasbro created a variety of
cars and tracks featuring the characters and designs from the show. Harper Entertainment published a series
of books by Gene Hult under the name
J.E. Bright. A set of regular
and deluxe
foil valentines were made by Paper Magic Group, as were sticker
sheets and vending machine sticker
cards.
Back cover to the video game. |
Hon2 Games, Inc. developed a game based on the show for the PC and Game Boy Color released
by Electronic Arts. A PlayStation
version was planned from Hasbro Interactive
but ultimately cancelled when the studio was sold. Fox Home Entertainment released two VHS
collections of the show in 2000. The pilot movie was released on Start Your Engines, while Maximum Overdrive featured the episodes “Always” and “Boy
vs. Machine”.
SMF ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION (PART 9)
July 20, 2016
GARRY MARSHALL DEAD AT 81
July 16, 2016
SMF ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION (PART 8)
NOTE: Not all intros available at this time.
HULK HOGAN'S ROCK 'N' WRESTLING
Professional wrestling, for the
uninitiated, is basically a violent soap opera in spandex. There are good guys
and bad guys, and not only did they fight in the ring, but basically anywhere
the two sides came together; all while moving along an ongoing storyline from
match to match. Originally, wrestling was broken up amongst several regional
divisions that maintained their own territory. In 1983, Vince McMahon purchased Capitol Wrestling
Corporation from his father and combined it with his own company, Titan
Sports, Inc. Together, they became what would be known as the World Wrestling Federation (known as World
Wrestling Entertainment since 2002 after a name
dispute with the World Wide Fund for
Nature).
McMahon went against tradition and
sought to get WWF programming on syndicated television nation-wide; violating
the boundaries of the other organizations. He wanted to take full advantage of
the growing cable television and video tape trading markets. His goals were
given a significant boost when he hired Hulk Hogan, who had gained notoriety
for his appearance in Rocky III, away from the American
Wrestling Association. Rowdy Roddy Piper was signed on as Hogan’s rival and
Jesse “The Body” Ventura
as an announcer. McMahon’s ranks were further bolstered by talent from the AWA
or National
Wrestling Association.
The next innovation came after WWF
manager Captain Lou Albano met Cyndi Lauper,
a self-proclaimed wrestling fan, on a trip to Puerto Rico and was asked by the singer to appear
as her father in the video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”.
This led to what’s been called the Rock
‘n’ Wrestling Connection, which featured a period of intermingling between
WWF and the music industry. It was kicked off on Piper’s interview show, Piper’s Pit, by Albano and Lauper entering into a “feud”
to be settled by a match between female wrestlers of their choice. MTV would go on to broadcast this match; the
first live match on cable and the first live women’s professional wrestling match between
Wendi Richter and The Fabulous Moolah. Other celebrities began participating
in events, and Lauper continued to use wrestlers in further music videos.
McMahon’s make or break innovation came in 1985 with the debut of WrestleMania, which is
essentially the World
Series of wrestling. The show ended up becoming the WWF’s most successful
promotion and catapulted the WWF to the top of the wrestling pile.
With Hulk Hogan’s popularity at an
all-time high, it was decided to use him to try and make a project to appeal to
the younger wrestling fans. Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling was
developed by Jeffrey Scott and
produced by DiC
Entertainment. It featured two groups of wrestlers: the faces (the good
guys) and the heels (the bad guys). Hulk (Brad Garrett, making his lead debut
in an animated series) led the faces comprised of Junkyard Dog (James Avery),
Captain Lou Albano (George DiCenzo), Andre the Giant (Ron Feinberg), Wendi
Richter (Jodie Carlisle), Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka (Lewis Arquette), Hillbilly
Jim (Pat Fraley) and Tito Santana (Joey Pento). Piper (Charlie Adler) led the
heels, which featured the Iron Sheik (Aron Kincaid), Nikolai Volkoff (Ron Gans),
the Fabulous Moolah (also Carlisle), Big John Studd (Chuck Licini) and Mr. Fuji
(Ernest Harada). Originally Mad
Maxine was meant to be one of the heels, but while the show was in
production she suddenly left the WWF and was replaced by her manager, Moolah. Announcer
Mean Gene Okerlund (Neil Ross) also made an appearance in several episodes. While
the various wrestlers would appear in live-action segments between stories,
professional actors voiced their animated counterparts (interestingly enough,
Albano would go on to become a voice actor himself on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show in 1989). A lot of the live material would be excised when the
series entered reruns in order to pare down the episode running times. Although
WWF Magazine’s August/September
1985 issue showed some earlier more realistic character designs, the final
models used on the show were a bit more simplified and exaggerated. Each character
also drove a vehicle that matched their theme, such as Piper driving a hot rod
with bagpipe-like exhausts and Junkyard driving a truck with a doghouse on the
back.
Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling
debuted on CBS on September 14, 1985 and was
aired in an hour-long block of two episodes. Most episodes featured two
11-minute segments while several were full 22-minute stories. Episodes would
depict the wrestlers getting into wacky situations that often led to a competition between the two teams. Because of FCC
regulations at the time, actual wrestling was very minute in presence in favor
of delivering slapstick-laden pro-social messages. Scott wrote the majority of
the episodes with additional scripts from Larry DiTillo,
Sandy Fries
and Michael Maurer. Jim Steinman’s “Hulk Hogan’s Theme”,
which served as Hogan’s entrance theme at the time, was used for the cartoon’s intro.
Score Productions
handled the rest of the show’s music. The series was animated by HanHo Heungup Studios, Wang Film
Productions and Studio Shaft.
Because of the long production times
in making an animated series, the storyline of the show couldn’t keep up with
the events transpiring at the WWF. In July of 1985, Snuka left the WWF and went
to wrestle for New Japan Pro Wrestling
before returning to America in the AWA. That November, Richter left after
McMahon orchestrated an
unscripted defeat of her using Moolah in disguise over disagreements about
her compensation. However, both characters remained throughout the show’s
two-season run.
Much like its wrestling inspiration,
the show was heavily merchandised during its run. Winston Toys released six erasers
(eight if you count the Hulk and Snuka variants) that resembled action figures
(in fact, four of them better resembled the LJN bendable figures than
the show’s character designs). Other merchandise included a bed
sheet set, lunchboxes by Thermos, a collectible
sticker album by Diamond, a raincoat,
a card
game, puzzles
and a series of coloring
books by Golden
Books, and a schoolbag.
In 2020, Beardy’s Toys began releasing a
limited-edition series of 7-inch
resin action figures based on the cartoon.
One of the VHS covers. |
DiC released several
episodes to VHS during and after the show’s run, which were later repackaged
and re-released by WWF Home Video in the 1990s. In 2014, episodes were made
available on the WWE Network.
However, all content featuring Hulk Hogan was removed in July of 2015 after he
was fired
and blacklisted for racist comments he made in a leaked video. While some
content was eventually restored, Rock ‘n’
Wrestling was not amongst them beyond concept
art and a photo
gallery.