Ruby-Spears' adaptation of the video game, Kangaroo, was one of the new segments added to Saturday Supercade for its 2nd & final season in 1984.
David Mendenhall, who'd later appear in the movie, "Over The Top", with Sylvester Stallone, voices Joey, a young kangaroo who, with his mother, Katy, helps zookeeper Friendly maintain order in the zoo. Nothing like the game, of course, but hey.
In this episode, Joey befriends a young elephant who's just arrived at the zoo, and is very shy. "Trunkful of Trouble" was co-written by future icon Paul Dini and Gordon Kent, better known as a voice director at R-S & Hanna-Barbera. Dini was also writing for He-Man & The Masters of The Universe around this time.
Few people probably remember the video game now, 35 years later, or this series. Pity.
Rating: B.
7 comments:
I remember the Kangaroo cartoon from CBS' Saturday Supercade (which was created to rival Pac Man on ABC), although I've never played the video game that it was based on, but I was aware of the game.
In the cartoon, the son kangaroo, imaginatively named Joey, had a best friend in the form of a squirrel who was voiced by character actor Marvin Kaplan, who's probably best known as Henry the telephone technician on CBS' Alice. I think that Mr. Kaplan may have also voice Shell-Shock the turtle on the Frogger segments during "Supercade"'s previous season.
The monkeys, unnamed in the video game, were here known as The Monkeybiz Gang whose individual names were Bingo, Bango, Bongo and Fred (more shades of Pac Man).
As Goldstar mentioned, Saturday Supercade was CBS's attempt to counter ABC's successful Pac-Man cartoon which debuted the previous season. Initially Supercade had 5 rotating segments: Donkey Kong, Frogger, Pitfall!, Q*Bert and Donkey Kong Junior, but the show only had a 60-minute time slot, so Pitfall and Q*Bert aired on alternating weeks. By season 2, Pitfall!, Frogger and Donkey Kong Junior were gone; only DK and Q*Bert's segments remained along with new segments Kangaroo and Space Ace. Since there were now only 4 segments, no 2 needed to rotate.
Despite being an 80's show, Supercade had some classic TV cred: Donkey Kong was voiced by comedian Soupy Sales, himself a fixture of kid-vid for a time, and one member of the Monkeybiz gang from the Kangaroo series, Bango (the one with the 50's buzz-cut) had a habit of exclaiming "Ooh-ooh!" a la Joe E. Ross. Also in the Space Ace segments, Officer Kimberly was voiced by Nancy Cartwright, aka the woman who'd become Bart Simpson. Space Ace's weak-kneed alter ego Dexter was voiced by then child actor Sparky Marcus.
Guys:
It's been a while since I did anything related to Supercade, so I get trying to bring me back up to spped.
Soupy Sales DID NOT voice any of the Monkeybiz gang in Kangaroo. Frank Welker did all but one, with Pat Fraley being the other. Robert Ridgely (Tarzan, Thundarr, Flash Gordon) was Pitfall Harry, and yes, Marvin Kaplan was Shellshock. We'll have more Supercade soon.
As I noted previously, Soupy voiced Donkey Kong.
That much is true.
loved this show!!! 1983 was a great cartoon year! the 80's were amazing.
Indeed they were.
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