Saturday, October 13, 2012

The REAL Ghostbusters



Notice that they aren't wearing their color-coded costumes yet.

I can still name all the voice actors. Frank Welker was Ray, Lorenzo Music was Peter, Maurice LeMarche was Egon, and Arsenio Hall was Winston. At that time, I had a little fantasy in my head that some day I would be on The Arsenio Hall Show and I would ask him if they took turns making monster sounds, or if Frank Welker just did them all. This was when I started to really pay attention to voice actors and what they were doing.

I remember playing "truth or dare" with a friend in 7th grade and I had to admit I watched the show. As it turned out, so did she. We spent the rest of the night geeking out over our shared love of this cartoon (and talking about how much soap operas sucked, which is what the rest of our classmates watched).

Did you know there are whole episodes on YouTube? I was delighted to discover that.
More...



This is the first episode I ever saw. I immediately programmed our VCR to record future episodes. I was not going to miss another one.



A clever device, the television. This is actually one of my favorite episodes.



New voice talents! Buster Jones is Winston now. Dave Coulier (of Out of Control fame) is Peter, and Laura Summer has been replaced by Kath Soucie as Janine. This is one of the most meta things I've ever seen.

Wait. Who wrote that? They guy who created Babylon 5? Oh yeah...he was the story editor. My sister and I used to watch for his name in the credits. If he'd written an episode, we knew it would be good.



Now, a bit of fun trivia: Peter was played by Bill Murry in the movies, but by Lorenzo Music in the cartoon. Lorenzo Music was the voice of Garfield in the cartoons, but by Bill Murry in the movie.

Good googly-moogly!

Oh yeah. THIS happened. Oh well! Can't win them all!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

You forgot to mention Extreme Ghostbusters. Now THAT was a cartoon. EXTREME!

Dr. Mila said...

No. That never happened. I refuse.

Unknown said...

http://youtu.be/_dE9ZEV9l70

Late 90s, I remember it.

Dr. Mila said...

Christ. It's the opening of "Quatermass and the Pit" all over again.

Kris Overstreet said...

I rented the Season One DVDs a while back... couldn't finish either of the first two episodes, sent the disks back. I probably should have listened to the audio only: the animation was horrible, to eyes-are-bleeding levels. Anime has spoiled me. Which is a shame, because I watched the show almost religiously when I was a kid...

Dr. Mila said...

Ya know, when I was 8-yrs-old, the best thing in the world was marshmallow fluff. Oh, man. On some toast with chocolate syrup! That was the greatest thing in the world.

Now, I can't look at a jar of it without wanting to puke.

Chris Sobieniak said...

"This was when I started to really pay attention to voice actors and what they were doing."

I suppose it would've been a few years later for me than on this show, but you do go through phases when you start to notice things like the voice actors on your favorite shows. Too bad though by the time I was noticing, it was more about incompetent animation that nerved me more than the voices involved. I use to watch the Syndie Real Ghostbusters episodes myself, though I don't recall seeing much of it on ABC where it also showed up too (eventually getting re-titled "Slimer & The Real Ghostbusters").

"A clever device, the television. This is actually one of my favorite episodes."

Just seeing it again, I do recall this being quite an unusual episode for that premise alone. I suppose I'll have to give whoever wrote that episode credit for 1-uping Robot Chicken by a near 20 years!

"New voice talents! Buster Brown is Winston now. Dave Coulier (of Out of Control fame) is Peter, and Laura Summer has been replaced by Kath Soucie as Janine. This is one of the most meta things I've ever seen."

Of course just watching this right now, I can see this was from one of the later ABC seasons (and it looks like DiC was already sending the work to cheaper studios too, I started hating cartoons by this point because the shoddy overseas work got on my nerves).

"Lorenzo Music was the voice of Garfield in the cartoons, but by Bill Murry in the movie."

Of course by then Lorenzo Music was already dead, but the coincidence is pretty eerie!

"Oh yeah. THIS happened. Oh well! Can't win them all!"

I do recall these episodes and wondered what happened? It's like someone from the network told them to make the show funnier so they did. Going by IMDB, I see an Art Vitello produced/directed these episodes, he would later go on to work on Tiny Toon Advetures, Taz-Mania and even The Tick.

Kris Overstreet explained...
"Anime has spoiled me. Which is a shame, because I watched the show almost religiously when I was a kid..."


Look what you've done Dr. Mila! You had to remind us of what we tried to forget!

Anonymous said...

That's my favorite cartoon too. The syndicated eps were the best, with the original (and best!) voice cast.