For years, Saturday mornings in September were a respite for many kids from the sting that came with back-to-school season, seemingly erasing summer vacation.
In the midst of the stresses that came along with heading back to school, Saturday mornings brought much-needed “me” time with the introduction of a new season and a new line-up of animated shows.
In 2021, I wrote a three-part article that looked back at different years in Saturday morning TV history. This article continues that theme with another three-part series examining specific years of TV line-ups that are celebrating anniversaries.
Part one takes a nostalgic trip back forty years to the Saturday Morning Cartoons that debuted in September of 1985. At that time, even though Saturday Morning Cartoons had been a part of the television landscape for several decades, VHS was starting to encroach on the intended audience.
But in 1985, Saturday morning was still going strong with all the major networks introducing new shows, which will be the focus of these articles. As we came out of a summer where Back to the Future ruled the box office, and The Golden Girls were about to debut in prime time, here are the new animated series that premiered on Saturday morning that fall.
ABC
On ABC in the fall of 1985, George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars Galaxy came to Saturday mornings with the animated The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour. The former focused on the cuddly, teddy bear-like characters from the planet Endor, who made their debut in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, and the latter centered on C3PO and R2D2.
Both series were produced by Lucasfilm, in conjunction with the Canadian Studio Nelvana Limited, which brought audiences shows like Care Bears and Beetlejuice, and, unfortunately, recently closed. Interestingly, Ewoks was developed by Paul Dini, who would go on to co-create such shows as Batman: The Animated Series and such iconic characters as Harley Quinn.
That fall also saw the debut of The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, the final iteration of the popular Super Friends. Developed by legendary comic book writers and artists E. Nelson Bridwell and Carmine Infantino, this new version of Hanna-Barbera’s long-running show has become a favorite among fans for its more serious, sometimes darker story lines.
In 1985, Hanna-Barbera introduced another version of one of their Saturday morning favorites with The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. Iconic horror actor Vincent Price joined the series as the voice of Vincent Van Ghoul, who, in narration in the opening credits, announces the plot of this new variation on an old favorite: Scooby and Shaggy have accidentally opened the Chest of Demons. Thirteen ghosts are then released into the world, and only those who opened the chest can return them.
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo was a fun, entertaining take on a familiar favorite (and was paired with Scooby’s Mystery Funhouse, a re-packaging of classic Scooby-Doo episodes).
CBS
Over on CBS, Disney was making one of their first two forays into television animation with the debut of The Wuzzles, a series about a group of fantasy characters who are each a hybrid of two different animals (Bumblelion, a combination of a bumblebee and a lion, as an example). The series, created by Fred Wolf, featured a cast of voice acting luminaries, such as Stan Freberg, Bill Scott, Henry Gibson, and Jo Anne Worley, just to name a few.
The popular children’s book series, The Berenstain Bears, created by authors and illustrators Stan and Jan Berenstain, came to CBS in 1985 as a weekly animated series. Produced by Southern Star/Hanna-Barbera Australia, The Berenstain Bears Show was nominated for both an Emmy and a Humanitas Prize.
Also, this fall on CBS, the success of Muppet Babies gave way to Little Muppet Monsters, a live-action/animated series from Henson Associates and Marvel Productions, focusing on the title characters who lived in a basement, where they put on their own show, introducing cartoons that featured animated versions of such Muppet luminaries as Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Fozzie Bear.
Hulk Hogan was at the height of his popularity in 1985, which inspired the animated series, Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling on CBS. Produced by DIC Animation, the show featured animated versions of Hogan and his fellow wrestlers, such as Captain Lou Albano and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Sound-alike actors provided the voices for the characters, including Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brad Garrett as Hulk Hogan.
Hogan’s passing this summer was felt significantly by many, particularly the generation who grew up with the star wrestler during his heyday, and recount fond memories of the “Hulkster,” which includes Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling.
NBC
Over at NBC, a trend of translating popular prime-time shows into Saturday morning series continued with Punky Brewster (also referred to as It’s Punky Brewster), an animated version of the network’s popular sitcom from the Ruby-Spears Animation Studio, which added a fantastical character named Glomer (voiced by Frank Welker), who brought animatable elements to the show with his magical powers.
One of Disney’s other first forays into TV animation debuted in 1985 on NBC, Adventures of the Gummi Bears. This popular, long-running series, centered on the title characters, mystical beings who live in the medieval land of Gummi Glen.
In the book, It’s Saturday Morning: Celebrating the Golden Era of Cartoons, 1960s-1990s, by Joe Garner and Michael Ashley, Jymn Magon, co-creator and story editor of Adventures of the Gummi Bears, shared how the series came about:
“I’ve told this story numerous times, and I still can’t believe it happened this way. When Michael Eisner took over the company, he asked to meet with a bunch of ‘creative types’ in his new TV animation department…a bunch of us (six or eight, I think) met at Eisner’s Beverly Hills home on a Sunday morning… Michael mentioned that his kids had eaten this great new candy at summer camp – Gummy Bears. Then, he turned to me – a total unknown, and said, ‘Make me a show about that.’”
And so as the song “Shout” by Tears for Fears plays on the radio, we finish off our bowl of Mr. T. cereal and look ahead to next week, for part two, when we travel back fifty years to Saturday morning in 1975.
