The 1980s launched a ton of cartoon franchises, only to see many of them canceled mysteriously.
Was it because of network politics, low toy sales, or just sheer foolishness? It turns
out it was often all of those things, and more.
Long before every other podcast started to feature minor celebrities playing Dungeons
& Dragons, kids could watch Dungeons & Dragons the cartoon on CBS Saturday mornings. The
show followed a group of young teenagers stranded in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons. They each
played a role, like ranger, barbarian, or thief, and tried to get home while helping
the realm.
It was the highest rated show in its time slot for two years, and it lasted three seasons
before cancellation. Rumors built up over the years about why the show was cut, with
the violent content and the moral panic surrounding D&D considered possible culprits. A partial
answer came from writer Michael Reaves, who claimed,
"Unfortunately, problems with TSR, the D&D parent company, ultimately killed the plans
for a new season."
Mark Evanier, who helped develop the show for TV and wrote the first few episodes, finally
set the record straight in 2012 by pointing the finger at declining ratings. He explained,
"As far as I know, the protests were minimal and had no impact. The show simply began losing
its audience, as all shows eventually do."
RoboCop isn't the most violent movie to be adapted into a cartoon for children. That
honor surely goes to the Rambo series, which birthed Rambo: The Force of Freedom. But RoboCop
is a solid second.
"Please, put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."
Sure, the movie itself had plenty of toy tie-ins, but it's still a hard R action movie. Nevertheless,
Robocop: The Animated Series existed in 1988 and had a solid following.
The show did make several alterations in the name of being kid-friendly, such as replacing
bullets with laser beams. The original plan was to run for 13 episodes in syndication,
until the budget for episode 13 was rerouted. So the series finished at episode 12, with
the money for the planned finale going instead towards Pryde Of The X-Men, the pilot for
an X-Men series. While there would be many X-Men cartoons over the years, Pryde never
came to fruition, meaning one cartoon was canceled in a failed attempt to start another.
The title G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero can refer to two separate shows. The first is
the series made by Sunbow Productions that ran from 1983 to 1986. The second is the one
made by DIC that ran from 1989 to 1992. Why was there a gap between two studios telling
one continuous story? It turns out that the first edition was canceled after a bidding
war. After producing the first two seasons of the show, Sunbow had detailed plans in
place for a third. The Joes would go off to fight a new foe called The Coil, while Cobra
Commander would be in the background, biding his time until he could play The Coil and
the Joes off each other.
Before this could happen, though, Hasbro changed things up. The toy company had been self-funding
the show with Sunbow, and decided to cut production costs. According to G.I Joe story editor Buzz
Dixon, the syndication market was saturated in the mid-80s, with more shows than there
were time slots available. DIC was a big part of this problem, often underbidding competitors.
All this led to Hasbro deciding to cut costs by dumping Sunbow after DIC offered them a
contract too good to refuse. Dixon has no kind words for DIC to this day. As he put
it in an interview,
"These guys may not have been 100% responsible for the destruction of the animation industry
in the late eighties but they sure helped!"
Based on the long-running comic strip, Garfield and Friends was a massive success worldwide
and featured some of the best animation of its era. It lasted seven seasons, an eternity
in 80s cartoon years. It was finally cancelled in 1994 because of budget cuts due to a changing
TV landscape. The show was expensive to produce, but the producers figured that it was worth
it. Selling the show to CBS and in syndication deals across the country let them charge a
high license fee and rake in profits. Success upped the license fee each year, and eventually
CBS wanted to renegotiate.
When Garfield and Friends premiered, cartoons aired almost exclusively on CBS, ABC, and
NBC. As the series went on, however, Fox became a viable network, and entire channels dedicated
to animation like Cartoon Network popped up. More places to watch cartoons meant that the
audience was spreading thinner, which meant networks became stingier. CBS asked the producers
to cut the show's budget by two-thirds, figuring that they made enough in syndication to handle
a smaller cash flow. But the producers did the math and determined that it wouldn't work.
Syndication wasn't going to cover the deficit costs, and the show was doing well enough
in reruns, so Garfield and Friends was canceled.
"I don't have to put up with this. There are plenty of people who would love to have a
cat, especially one as adorable as me."
Voltron was one of the most popular cartoons of the 80s, spawning a franchise that exists
to this day. At its peak, it was the number one syndicated children's show in America.
After the second season, plans for another were in place, but they never materialized.
There were several reasons for this, but it all boils down to two major producers having
a falling out.
Voltron started because producer Ted Koplar realized there was a market for adapting foreign
children's shows to the American market. He hired Peter O'Keefe, an energetic man with
a real talent for the business, to help localize Voltron from a couple of anime shows and run
production. But then tensions boiled between the two, and it all came to a head in 1989
when O'Keefe sued Koplar over breach of contract, as O'Keefe felt that he was owed more money.
Bitter feelings persisted until the two men reconciled around 2010, just before O'Keefe
passed away. It was that peace that paved the way for today's modern Voltron properties.
Thundarr the Barbarian followed Thundarr and his friends across a post-apocalyptic Earth.
The show was created by Ruby-Spears Productions in 1980, and comics legend Jack Kirby helped
with the design of the show. It was ostensibly a children's show, but the writers aimed for
slightly older audiences. Despite its popularity, it was canceled after two seasons in 1981.
Joe Ruby, one half of the namesake of Ruby-Spears, has his own ideas about why. As he put it,
"It was not canceled from a lack of ratings, I'll tell you that right off the top. It was
canceled, I guess, because it was too violent or something like that."
That may well have been part of it, but there was an even bigger factor in play: Garry Marshall
wanted its slot. Marshall oversaw ABC's three biggest shows at the time: Happy Days, Laverne
& Shirley, and Mork & Mindy. What he wanted, the network gave him. And what Marshall wanted
was animated versions of his shows, so as to cover every possible audience. Thus, to
make room for Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, Thundarr was kicked from the airwaves. Fonz
and the Happy Days Gang was gone one year later, and a series of shows based on other
Marshall properties took its place. None did as well as Thundarr, though.
"The danger is over. For now."
Sunday funnies mainstay Heathcliff appeared in two cartoon adaptations by two studios
two years apart. The first, simply titled Heathcliff, was created by Ruby-Spears Productions
and ran on ABC from 1980 through 1981. The second, best known as Heathcliff and the Catillac
Cats, was produced by DIC and ran in syndication from 1984 through 1985. There hasn't been
a new Heathcliff cartoon since, because of the loss of legendary lead voice actor Mel
Blanc. In an era when most voice acting was done by character actors and anonymous voiceover
artists, Blanc was a legitimate superstar on par with anyone in Hollywood. He was the
voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and many others, including Healthcliff on both of the
cat's shows.
Blanc was also a heavy smoker. He smoked a pack a day from when he was nine until he
was 77. He quit after developing emphysema, and spent most of his last decade revisiting
characters he played for years. Heathcliff was his last new character. According to Donna
Christie, who voiced Iggy and Cleo on Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats, the show ended because
Blanc became too ill to keep doing it. His death in 1989 meant that nobody had any reason
to make more Heathcliff episodes. Any attempts to revive the show later were pointless, as
nobody could follow Blanc.
Most of the shows on this list were canceled after they got popular. But The Garbage Pail
Kids was popular entirely because it was canceled, before a single episode had even aired, in
fact. The Garbage Pail Kids brand started as trading cards that were created as a parody
of the Cabbage Patch Kids. The Garbage Pail Kids were chock-full of gross-out humor, and
they stirred up a decent amount of controversy in their heyday.
"Take a card, any card, you'll probably wish you hadn't. Terry Drinkwater explains that
American children these days are obsessed with the whole disgusting deck."
When word got out that there was going to be a cartoon based on the cards, morality
enforcers swooped in to strike. The National Federation for Decency took up arms with particular
zeal. These protests led to advertisers backing out and some affiliates refusing to air the
show.
Ultimately, CBS pulled the plug on The Garbage Pail Kids before it could air in America.
They attempted to sanitize the show, but it just didn't work. The show aired in several
other countries and gained a cult following through bootlegs and eventually a proper DVD
release. One unlikely person who was happy to see it cancelled was Mark Newgarden, who
was part of the team that created the trading cards. He said,
"I've seen the pilot episode, and it's a lame, castrated version of the Garbage Pail Kids,
carefully avoiding everything that made our cards work."
Inhumanoids followed a team of Earth scientists fighting off the title subterranean beasts.
It ran for 13 episodes in syndication, and was noted for its monstrous designs and surprising
amount of violence. Though it had a following, it was canceled after one season due to a
few factors, particularly money. The show also generated some protests due to its brutality,
which certainly contributed to the cancellation. While opposition of this nature didn't help
matters, the nail in the coffin could be found in the toy aisle.
Like many cartoons of the era, Inhumanoids was designed to sell toys. There was just
one problem: the toy line bombed. The toys were large in size, heavy, and too grotesque
to be mainstream. They were so top-heavy, in fact, that they were infamous for falling
over. The show also appealed to a slightly older audience, one that tends to be less
interested in toys. Clearly not much was expected of the toy line, either, as the show was canceled
before the toys were even released.
Though it's mostly remembered for its live action bits starring Lou Albano as Mario and
Danny Wells as Luigi, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was half-cartoon. The show was
nevertheless labor-intensive for the actors, who had to work six days a week to produce
a new episode every single weekday. It was a huge hit with kids, who were almost certainly
thrilled that they could get their fix of video games and cartoons from the same source.
At the end of the first season order, Nintendo simply didn't have any more interest in the
show and didn't renew their agreement with DIC for it. In 1990, Nintendo and DIC teamed
up again for The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, doing essentially the same show but
without the live action bits. But that show didn't last very long either, as only 13 episodes
were produced.
"No more pasta for you."
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