Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Daytime Heroes: The Disney Afternoon (1990)

It was one of the last vestiges of 1st-run syndicated animation, before Fox took over weekdays in the early 90's. Disney had already broken ground with DuckTales and Chip 'N' Dale's Rescue Rangers, and in 1990, the studio seized the opportunity to expand that block even further.

The Disney Afternoon, in all, lasted 7 seasons (1990-7), with a diverse lineup of programs, most of which have been reviewed here before. Adventures of the Gummi Bears was given new life, although no new episodes were ordered, after it ended its network run, and was one anchor of the block the first season. You know most of the shows by heart. TaleSpin. Bonkers. Darkwing Duck. Gargoyles. Goof Troop. Quack Pack. Aladdin. The funny thing about all this is, while Mickey Mouse appeared in the block open, he wasn't given his own show. That wouldn't happen until after the block ended, when Mickey landed at ABC (after Disney bought the network).

The following video collects the intros of all the shows that were in the block during those 7 years.




Everyone has their favorites, of course. Too bad Disney can't be bothered to have these classic shows air on Disney Channel or DisneyXD in a prime spot instead of flooding the schedules with lame live-action cookie cutter sitcoms.

Rating: A.

4 comments:

Goldstar said...

Your last comment rings very true! You'd think with 2 channels (The Disney Channel) and Disney XD, and 24 hours of air time for each channel, that the Mouse House could devote a few hours a day to at least some of the Disney Afternoon shows, or even the old Disney theatrical shorts, like TDC did in the good ol' days, but that's another complaint. I'm not suggesting that the tween sitcoms (as innocuous as they are) be removed from the channel's entirely, but Disney shouldn't be trying to fill the entirety of it's air space on said tween shows. Disney XD at least has cartoons on it's schedule, even if they're all current ones.

hobbyfan said...

The problem Disney has is they're playing their tweencoms into the ground in much the same way other cablers (i.e. Nick) are playing certain cartoons into the ground, even if they don't have enough episodes to warrant multiple daily airings. The morons in charge don't see value in keeping older shows on the air, and they're ready made excuse is that if the shows are on DVD, there's no further point in airing them on their channel, which is BS.

Silverstar said...

"The funny thing about all this is, while Mickey Mouse appeared in the block open, he wasn't given his own show. That wouldn't happen until after the block ended, when Mickey landed at ABC (after Disney bought the network)."

Throughout much of the time of DA, Mickey was regarded as a walking symbol of the Disney company and a corporate mascot, but not much else. A Disney exec once said of the Mouse: "Mickey's our problem child; he's become such an institution that we're limited with what we can do with him." Mickey only made a quasi-appearance on one of the block's shows, in an episode of "Bonkers" in which the bobcat is assigned to protect 'The Most Famous Toon in the World', who of course is Mickey. Mickey spends the entirety of the episode trapped in a cage, so we never see his image on camera, nor is he ever referred to by name (on the show they only call him 'The Mouse' or 'The Famous Mouse'), but as soon as you hear his voice, it's obvious who it is.

hobbyfan said...

I'll have to keep an eye for that one. I don't know who the suit was that dissed Mickey like that, but when you consider Donald was in the Navy for much of DuckTales' run, it makes you wonder if these idiots thought the icons (Mickey & Donald) would overshadow the other characters they were trying to push.