Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Toby Danger (1995)

Toby Danger was created as a satire/homage of the 60's adventure series, Jonny Quest, and was a short-term backup feature on Freakazoid!, one of the last series that Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment would produce in collaboration with WB.

The producers reunited most of the voice cast of the 1985 Quest revival, but the one big difference was that unlike Jonny, Toby has a sister, Sandra, who seems to be in the right place at the right time.

Here's the intro:



Regrettably, Toby Danger would be one of Don Messick's last gigs, as he passed away 2 years later. As the opening shows, the animation was a combination of the toon noir created by Paul Dini & Bruce Timm 3 years earlier, coupled with a homage to the original Quest character designs by its series creator, artist Doug Wildey. While low ratings ultimately doomed Freakazoid!, it also ensured that Toby would not be spun off into his own series, although he certainly deserved it.

Rating: A.

4 comments:

magicdog said...

This was comedy gold!

I loved Jonny Quest and to see a worthy spoof of it was just magic! I nearly fell off my chair when I heard Don Messick and Mike Road voicing the roles of the Professor Danger and Dash O' Pepper!! They were such a big part of my cartoon childhood!

It truly is a shame we didn't get more adventures with Toby and the crew but this short is enough for me!!

hobbyfan said...

Sorry, that wasn't Mike Road as Dash O'Pepper. That was Granville Van Dusen, who'd succeeded Road as Race in the 1985 Quest series.

Jennifer L. Schillig said...

I got a gigantic kick out of hearing the line "Just let me throw a barrel at it!" show up in the Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. Somebody at Hanna-Barbera must have loved this homage!

hobbyfan said...

Considering that by 1996, H-B was part of the Time Warner family, well, that wouldn't be a shock.