Daytime Heroes: James Bond, Jr. (1991)

No, he's not the son of 007, but James Bond, Jr. was, in fact, the nephew of Ian Fleming's iconic hero.

In 1991, United Artists recruited the staff at Murakami-Wolf-Swenson (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) to produce James Bond, Jr. as a daily series, hoping that the next generation of Bond would resonate with his peers in the audience. Sad to say, he didn't. The series lasted one season, even though it had the usual merchandising tie-ins, such as toys and comic books.

Here's the series premiere, "In The Beginning":





I wanted to like this show, since I'm a Bond fan myself, but I couldn't get into it. Locally, the show aired in the morning before I went off to work, which didn't give me much of a chance.

 Rating: C.

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Mumbly vs. Breakout Barney (1976)

Here's a Mumbly short that wasn't entirely original.

Breakout Barney (John Stephenson) has escaped prison, bent on heading for Mexico. Enter Mumbly (Don Messick, also the voice of the prison warden), and the rest of this story will remind you of a couple of Droopy shorts from the 40's. Mumbly's boss, the Kojak clone Shnooker (Stephenson doing his Joe Flynn impersonation) is kept to a quick cameo.



How to explain Mumbly turning villain and joining the Really Rottens on Laff-a-Lympics the next year? As we've documented, Hanna-Barbera lost the rights to Dastardly & Muttley on a temporary basis due to a dispute with Heatter-Quigley, so Mumbly, who would be Muttley's exact double but for the blue fur, was conscripted, if ya will. However, the writers have never considered resolving the whole plotline, perhaps in the faint hope that viewers would forget his heroic past. Nuh-uh.

I'd say, do a DTV movie that would close the story of the Dread Baron and have it be revealed that Mumbly'd been working in deep cover all that time (this extended into the 80's), and would eventually turn on the Baron and bring him in. How hard is that?

Rating: A.

Spooktober: Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy (1955)

"Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy" was the last film the team did for Universal, back in 1955. The supporting cast includes Marie Windsor, Michael Ansara, & Richard Deacon (Leave It To Beaver).

The boys learn of an expedition to bring an ancient Egyptian mummy to America, and finangle a way to join the expedition. Of course, chaos ensues. Filmentertainment uploaded the trailer, which came from TCM:



Ten years later, Universal would release a compilation film, "The World of Abbott & Costello", but by then, Lou Costello had passed on.

Rating: B.

Game Time: Fun House (1988)

Fun House was one game show for kids that didn't air on Nickelodeon. Just as well, because it didn't last very long.

Two teams of youths competed for cash & prizes, as opposed to most Nick games, which didn't give money away all that often. J. D. Roth, a relative newcomer at the time, was the host. Cable viewers in my area got to see the show on two different channels, but I couldn't remember if it was at the same time, or back-to-back. The local Fox affiiate had the rights here, and it also aired on WPIX in New York.

Since Fun House ended in 1991 after 3 seasons, Roth's kept himself pretty busy, most recently with a lengthy run on the Discovery Kids/NBC Survivor clone, Endurance. He even dabbled in cartoons for a brief bit, as he was the first one cast in the title role in 1996's The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, but was swept out when they overhauled the cast midway through the season.

Here's a sample episode:



I think you can see that Fun House has a little Beat The Clock & Shenanigans in its pedigree.

Rating: B+.

Sunday Funnies: Jumanji (1996)

The fledgling UPN network hit the ground running with a Sunday children's lineup in 1996, but didn't stick with it in the long term.

One of the network's first animated series was Jumanji, which, for intents & purposes, was a reboot of the movie of the same name, which was a hit the previous year, starring Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, & David Alan Grier. In the series, Alan Parrish (Williams' character in the movie, now voiced by Coach's Bill Fagerbakke) is still trapped in the game, and that leaves Judy & Peter Shepherd to venture into the game on a weekly basis to try to bring him home. Duckman creator Everett Peck did the character designs for the series, which was the first for Sony's new animation division, Adelaide Productions.

Jumanji spent two seasons on UPN before moving into a syndicated block distributed by Bohbot Kids Network (BKN). Here's the open & close to refresh your memory:



Unlike most cartoons, the series does have a finite ending, as Judy & Peter finally get Alan back into the real world at the end of season 3. Currently, the series is in Sony's vaults.

Rating: B.

Toons After Dark: 3 South (2002)

Once upon a time, MTV took a chance and bought an animated series from WB, which is a little ironic when you think about it, considering that 20 years earlier, MTV was part of the Warner chain, owned at the time by Warner-AMEX cable, which later sold MTV to Viacom, and, well, you know the rest of that story.

3 South was a total bust. Part of the reason might be because it was originally supposed to be coupled on Friday nights with Spider-Man, but the webhead didn't make his MTV debut until 8 months later. Anyway, the show, like Undergrads a year earlier, was about a couple of schlubs in college, but unlike Undergrads, there wasn't much redeeming value.

The stars were a couple of guys named Brian. Brian Dunkleman gave up American Idol for this? Yep, and he hasn't been heard from much since. Y'think maybe someone gave him bad career advice? Fellow comic Brian Posehn worked on another series from Warners, Mission Hill, and a few other cartoons, so he at least had some experience.

I gave this about 5 minutes one night. Which would be about 3 minutes too many. It was that bad. Here's a portion of the series opener. The Flaming Lips performed the theme song.



Seems like the character designs could've easily come from any number of independent comic strips, such as Gary Larsen's seminal The Far Side. Which, when you think about it, would've been a better choice for a cartoon......

Rating: D.

Spooktober: Archie tries to solve "The Curse of the Mummy" (Archie's Weird Mysteries, 1999)

During the month of October----or, as we call it around here, Spooktober, we'll be posting a number of episodes of Archie's Weird Mysteries, the last series to feature Archie Andrews and company that was produced by DIC in 1999.

Today, it's "Curse of the Mummy".



No rating, as I don't recall seeing this one. I only saw a few select episodes and missed most of the run.