Disney was looking to
duplicate their success with Adventures of the Gummi Bears with another animated series exhibiting a higher quality of animation
generally found on television. They
looked towards the world of Duckburg,
largely created by cartoonist Carl Barks,
for inspiration and came up with DuckTales.
Developed by Jymn
Magon, the series followed wealthy Scrooge McDuck
(Alan Young)
as he went on adventures with his nephews, Huey,
Dewey and Louie (all Russi Taylor).
Often, these adventures involved discovering some lost treasure to increase
Scrooge’s fame and wealth, but other times it was protecting his businesses and
interests from rival Flintheart
Glomgold (Hal
Smith), his #1 dime
from evil witch Magica
De Spell (June
Foray), or his beloved money bin
from the Beagle
Boys
(Frank Welker,
Terry McGovern,
Chuck McCann
and Brian Cummings),
and sometimes one of inventor Gyro Gearloose’s
(Smith) inventions run amok.
 |
| From top: Gyro, Launchpad, Duckworth, Mrs. Beakley, Huey, Dewey, Scrooge, Doofus, Louie and Webby. |
While largely inspired by Barks’
comics, DuckTales did have some
differences. Scrooge wasn’t as much of a miser as he was extremely thrifty,
for example, as well as wearing a blue and red coat instead of a red and black
one (although, funnily enough, some of the tie-in comics for the show would use
the classic coloring). Other changes saw Donald Duck
(Tony Anselmo),
who played a large part in Scrooge’s adventures, only present for the first
episode to drop off his nephews; and Glomgold was depicted as Scottish rather
than South African due to American’s tensions with the country
at the time, among others. New characters included Scrooge’s butler Duckworth
(McCann), housekeeper Bettina Beakley
(Joan Gerber)
and her granddaughter Webby
(Taylor), accountant-turned-superhero Fenton Crackshell
aka Gizmoduck (Hamilton
Camp),
accident-prone pilot Launchpad McQuack
(McGovern), the boys’ best friend Doofus Drake
(Cummings), and more.
 |
| The family that steals together... Ma Beagle and her Beagle Boys. |
DuckTales premiered in syndication on September 18, 1987 with a 65-episode first season. The most memorable part of the series has proven to be the show’s catchy theme, written by Mark Mueller, which was commissioned by Disney looking for a pop sound over a typical cartoon song. A second season of 10 episodes and a third of 18 followed. In 1990, the series was given its own feature-length movie, Treasure of the Lost Lamp, which while successful didn’t quite reach Disney’s expectations, shelving any further entries. However, the show’s own popularity prompted Disney to look into producing further shows with their high-quality approach, leading to the debuts of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin and Darkwing Duck starring Launchpad. Together, these shows would be united into the syndicated programming block The Disney Afternoon, where DuckTales’ 7-episode fourth season debuted. DuckTales left the block in 1992 and entered into syndicated reruns, particularly on The Disney Channel, between 1995-99, while Launchpad and Scrooge made appearances on Raw Toonage in the interim. Almost exactly 30 years later, Disney premiered a reboot of the series with stronger inspiration from Barks’ work.
No comments:
Post a Comment