Category Archives: Saturday Morning Cartoons

“Beetlejuice: The Animated Series” Is Still The Greatest Animated Ghost With The Most 35 Years Later

Image August 31, 2024 Patti PaulterGeist 1 Comment

Though I know I should be wary, Still I venture someplace scary; Ghostly haunting I turn loose… Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!!!

Before we knock around a bit of Beetlejuice cartoon history, let’s rewind our minds back a few years and remember what being a kid was like on a gorgeous Saturday morning.

Unlike my peers, I personally, was always up at a decent hour (around 7:30 a.m.). After crawling out of my Ninja Turtle sheets, I would make my way to the dimly lit kitchen and help myself to a bowl of cereal and whatever readily available juice box (preferably Hawaiian Punch or Ecto Cooler) my fridge held that morning. All placed accordingly on my TMNT (1990) movie tray in front of our mammoth of a television set. I was ready to seize the glorious Saturday with the start of some of the greatest goddamn must-see-TV. And one of many of those amazing Saturday morning animated gems was, of course, Beetlejuice: The Animated Series.

After the massive hit that no one saw coming in 1988, Tim Burton’s BEETLEJUICE left the year as one of the top ten grossing (how appropriate) movies of the year- so naturally Warner Bros wanted to capitalize on the Afterworld film graduate. A sequel WAS planned titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, oh yeah that was going to be a thing, but due to the immense smash that Tim Burton brought forth the following year with BJ star Michael Keaton in tow, BATMAN, Warner opted to shelve Beetlejuice in a grass skirt in favor of focusing on a sequel to the Dark Knight that brought in way more marketing profits for the company.

And for those dying of curiosity, here’s a cool fan-made poster by Redditor Coffin_House on what could have been.

Since WB is no fool, they still knew that had a hot commodity with BeetleGuise a less invasive to the studios’ cartoon was green-lit to be developed by the Juice maker, Tim Burton himself with pal Danny Elfman to compose a whole new theme for the toned-down Bio-Exorcist. Catering to a Saturday morning audience, Beetlejuice went from a slithering snake of a horn dog that manipulates his way into an attempted marriage with Lydia, to the pair becoming pals and the Bio-Exorcist harboring an actual moral compass, (sorry, no crotch grabbing anywhere here). I mean, hey it’s Saturday morning and every show needs a PSA and a message right? Like, lying to your parents might mean you’re going to let loose a hoard of ghostly skeletons that are ready to snitch you out.

Instead of Winter River, the Deetz family live in Peaceful Pines but it’s mostly set in Beetle’s home The Netherworld. The series ran around some silly adventure or problem week after week involving the duo pf Lydia and BJ. From roaming aforementioned skeletons in the closet ruining someone’s day with the hard truth or Beetlejuice’s entire skeletal system abandoning him in favor of a vacation. The show was a perfect Saturday morning mash-up of wackiness and just a hint of horror.

Lydia’s parents Charles and the eccentric Delia return in animated form as naive supporting characters that never seem to notice their daughter spends most of her free time in another dimension. Then again, in the film, she seemed to be mostly ignored by her self-absorbed parental units until the shit hit the fan- so the relationship stays a tad faithful in that aspect.

The void felt by the absence of Barbara and Adam was filled with new characters. Beetle’s neighbors in the Netherworld furthered BJ’s awesome sense of sarcasm with most of them being both clumsy and easy to poke fun at. In which case, ole BJ took advantage of on a consistent basis and was the source for a lot of the humor in the series. Jacques, Ginger, The Monster Across the Street, Poopsie, the Mayor, and on Earth, the snooty Claire Brewster, were often the victims of Beetlejuice’s embarrassing pranks. Even Lyds wasn’t immune to Beetle’s reign of practical jokes as his only friend was even the butt-of-the-joke at times. However, unlike Claire and the Netherworld residents, BJ’s pranks on the teenage Deetz were never meant to cause damaging feelings or humility, but rather all in fun. Which asserts the relationship between Lydia and Beetlejuice in the series. Unlike in the film, the pair was as close as friends could get and the unlikely duo’s friendship remained a constant crucial part of the show throughout the series’ short three-season span.

One newly added character, Barry MeNot, stood out as the only CGI character among the classically animated counterparts and was something a lot of us didn’t see too much of in this cartoon era. He was the TV (Neitherworld Television) personality who appears in various “commercials” that sometimes pop up to emphasize a particular plot point in the show. He sold the hell out of those Scream Puffs to me.

BEETLEJUICE: THE ANIMATED SERIES first premiered on ABC Saturday mornings on September 9th, 1989 running right behind SLIMER! AND THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS for a ghostly hour of fun on the weekend and later moved to FOX Kids weekday afternoon lineup as one of the FIRST animated shows to be added. And after 35 years since its debut, this little piece of netherworldly nostalgia has remained in our beloved hearts ever since.

The animated series is almost impossible to be able to find on streaming these days, unless you want to buy episodes from Amazon Prime and that’s just a damn shame. However, if you download the FreeVee app, there’s a channel called Cartoon Rewind that occasionally runs marathons of the show. Unfortunately, it’s not an On Demand thing so you’ll quite literally have to live like it’s 1989 and just wait for it like in the caveman days!

It’s more than worth it.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Saturday Morning Slams! Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling!

Image March 4, 2023 Patti PaulterGeist 1 Comment

Well, lemme tell you something Mean Gene: It’s been a hot minute since we covered any Saturday Morning slammin’ 80s cartoons and I can’t think of anything quite more that speaks to the decade than the shameless animated commercial geared towards kids. Yep, let’s dive into Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling!

The Dic Animation series premiered originally on CBS in 1985 and only lasted for two seasons, but even a short-lived cartoon of such a popular subject left its imprint on 80s kids. Wrestling in the mid-80s was peak entertainment for pretty much anyone and everyone with Vince McMahon bringing the sport mainstream with soap-opera dramatics and a superhero archetype for the kids to worship- Hulk Hogan. Love him, or hate him, he made the sport a rite of passage for every man, woman, and child during that time and you just have to respect that. I’m not even sure Wrestling would be as mainstream today if it wasn’t for ~~Thunderlips~~, I mean Hogan. At night, we had Saturday Night’s Main Event, and in the morning, we had Rock ‘n’ Wrestling.

Image via Mercari

Of course, we can’t have a superhero without a bad guy and the man for the job was Roddy Piper– the man, the mouth, the legend. Each episode took the basic formula that wrestling had of good guys vs bad guys and would feature Hogan leading the good guys against a group of rogue wrestlers led by Piper. Like with other cartoons at the time, we usually had a happy ending and with the good vs bad trope, each episode put both groups into wacky situations that would always result in the goodies coming out on top.

As a young Piper fan, this kind of pissed me off. Yes. I was the little sociopath who really loved seeing Hot Rod get wild and slam coconuts into the skull of Superfly, (and if you know anything about Snuka’s murder charges- that sweet coconut music slaps even harder). But, this was the formula and so it shall be that Piper didn’t get on that goodie-two-shoes train until a bit later. But never wavering with his smartass remarks. I respected that. Don’t get me wrong, as a young girl, I loved the shit out of Wendi Richter because, well as a girl I felt represented. Of course, I didn’t find out until years later how the company did her dirty as she seemed to disappear from the ring almost as fast as she entered it. Which is a damn shame, but I’m happy she was at least immortalized in this crazy cartoon alongside the greats.

Anyways, the show would also feature live-action segments with the wrestlers and songs from their WWF album. “Land of 1000 Dances” which I totally loved at the time and still sing very loudly, “Hogan’s such a yoyo” to anyone that would hear it.

Although we got to see our heroes in the show in these weird live segments, they themselves didn’t provide the voices of their animated counterparts and professional voice actors were brought in. Most notably, Brad Garrett voiced Hogan.

As stated, the series didn’t last beyond two short seasons and that was simply because the cartoon couldn’t keep up with the real-life events of the wrestling world. Most noticeably, Andre, the Giant turned heel shortly after the cartoon started airing, so in the animated series, it just didn’t make much sense. The plan was indeed to keep the cartoon in line with current stories in real-time wrestling but animating at the time, was a slower process and just couldn’t play catch-up.

After its short run on CBS Saturday mornings, the series still continued with reruns on alternate networks. I mostly remember watching it on the USA network around 87-88 in my area, just before one of their late-morning Saturday programs of matches. It was a pretty great cartoon for what it’s worth even with all the flaws, and it serves its purpose of grabbing our attention in a sea of Saturday morning cartoons while also making Hulkamaniacs into those who hadn’t yet caught the wrestling train to 24-inch Python-ville.

So let’s raise our glasses of vitamin D milk to Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling, this badass Rocky-inspired intro, and the poor lady that got trampled towards the end of this intro that never even bothered editing out.

Fantastic, man.

Horror Nostalgia, Saturday Morning Cartoons

Retro Halloween Treat! Donald Duck and the Gorilla

Image October 4, 2022 Patti PaulterGeist 2 Comments

Nightmare Nostalgia originally started as an ode to the nightmares of our childhood and lemme tell you growing up in the 80s, I still don’t know how we were spoon-fed things like The Secret of NIMH or The Neverending Story as a family flick. AND LAWD HAVE MERCY DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON E.T. So it only seemed fitting that we revisit this little Disney nightmare I watched quite a bit growing up- Donald Duck and the Gorilla!

Originally released to theaters as part of the cartoon shorts campaign in March of 1944, Donald Duck and the Gorilla played in pretty heavy rotation when I was a kid in the 80s via Disney programming such as Good Morning Mickey! and Donald Duck Presents. Also, was pretty much the best part of Disney’s Halloween Treat (1982) beyond the Sleepy Hollow segment. It quickly became a favorite after a brief stint of this cartoon absolutely scaring the piss out of me as a toddler.

That Gorilla was scary, OK?! He was out for blood man and it gave me some fucked up nightmares.

The gorilla, actually named Ajax, has escaped from the zoo on a stormy night as reported by a radio announcement that Donald and his nephews are listening to. The kids are obviously horrified at the thought of a giant gorilla on the loose, and in true Donald fashion, Uncle ~~Asshole~~, erm Donald makes a mockery of the situation pranking the ducklings and laughing the whole way. However, the kids prank Donald right back, as hey, Uncle taught them well, by dressing up in a life-like gorilla suit which turns into a scare-fest of terrifying each other- until the real thing shows up at their front door.

Ajax breaks into the house and with Donald still assuming that Ajax is merely his nephews’ fucking around, grabs the giant monkey by the face to try and pull off the “mask” only to discover this is indeed the real goddamn thing. Donald looks the ape straight into the eye, as per the radio announcer in an attempt to subdue the animal, but only sees a tombstone in the eyes of the animal that read, “Here Lies a Dead Duck.”

Chaos ensues as the chase around the house is tense and electrifying and I gotta say it left me on the edge of my seat as a kid. It helps that there’s a transition from the initial jump-scare scenes to you laughing your ass off during the maze-like house chase and ending as a real “tearjerker”.

Also released in 1983 VHS and Laserdisc style, the short was included in the Disney Scary Tales Volume 3 release and is a national treasure if you can ever get a hold of one.

I have some pretty fond memories of this as a kid, from the nightmares as a young Patti, to the fun of watching this one, especially during Halloween time. Both are equally tangible to me. So let’s revisit this little gem together.

That is all. Brekenridge.