Popples, based on some toys from Those Characters From Cleveland, debuted in syndication in 1986, and later surfaced on Nickelodeon. 44 episodes, including a live-action pilot starring Jim Staahl (ex-Mork & Mindy), aired over the course of a calendar year. Wikipedia claims there were two seasons, with the second season beginning in March 1987, shortly after the conclusion of the first "season" in February of that year.
Nearly 30 years later, the series was revived on Netflix, but didn't last long.
What DIC and Lexington Broadcast Services, its regular distributor at the time (i.e. Inspector Gadget, Heathcliff) sought to do was put the Popples on the same level as the Care Bears and Disney's Wuzzles. Each animated episode ran for about 11 minutes, which is the standard today at Cartoon Network.
There were some cast changes in season 2, with Valeri Bromfield (ex-Fridays) joining the show and taking over three roles, and Maurice LaMarche (The Real Ghostbusters) also being added.
From September 1986, here's "Panic at The Library":
2 comments:
Ironically, in some areas Popples did air on a Saturday. It was part of a DiC produced syndicated block called Kideo TV, which aired on Saturday mornings in some areas, such as Maryland where I grew up. Popples was sandwiched between a series version of Rainbow Brite and an anime series titled Ulysses 31, which about halfway through Kideo TV's first season, was swapped out in favor of reruns of DiC's Get Along Gang TV series, the same one which previously aired for a single season on CBS.
For Kideo TV's second (and last) season, a new toy-based series called Lady Lovely Locks replaced Rainbow Brite while The Get Along Gang reruns continued to air at the tail end of the block, making Popples the only show to be part of Kideo TV throughout its' entire run, as well as the only show on Kideo TV to have 2 first-run seasons.
The funny part of that, as I noted, is that the 2nd "season" started a month after the 1st ended. Go figure.
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