Saturday, May 26, 2012

Daytime Heroes: Dinosaucers (1987)

Between 1986-87, DIC entered into an agreement with Columbia Pictures Television (now Sony Pictures Television) to produce some animated series. We've previously reviewed The Real Ghostbusters and The Karate Kid, and now it's time for the last of the DIC-Sony entries, Dinosaucers.

Dinosaucers sprang from the mind of filmmaker Michael Uslan ("Swamp Thing"), who served as an executive producer with business partner Ben Melniker. Uslan & Melniker would, of course, go on to have a major hand in developing "Batman" & "Batman Returns" with director Tim Burton, and then return to DIC to bring an animated Swamp Thing to the air.

Dinosaucers borrows its basic plot from Transformers in that the warring factions of Dinosaucers and Tyrannos came from another planet, Reptilon. In the course of its only season, we would see the Tyrannos repeatedly foiled one way or another. In other words, standard superhero fare. A toy line was planned, but scrapped when the series was cancelled.

My own belief is that Dinosaucers was packaged together with Real Ghostbusters when the latter series added a daily, syndicated run while beginning its 2nd season on ABC. It's a shame that some audiences just couldn't get into the show, despite the kick-ass theme song composed by Haim Saban & Shuki Levy.

Here's the open:



The series was last seen on cable a number of years back. Sony has the rights, but hasn't been able to place it anywhere. Maybe the series was a wee bit ahead of its time. 5 years after the show was cancelled, Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" was adapted into a feature film, and became a blockbuster. Makes ya wonder.......

Rating: A.

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