Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.
He voiced the storyteller (narrator) in Dragon’s Lair; Agent Caldwell in Turbo Teen; Dr. Galeo Seaworthy in Snorks; Lord Belveshire and Dumas in two episodes of Pound
Puppies (1986); Shakespeare and King Lear in an episode of Tiny Toon
Adventures; Sorcerer Blowfish in two episodes of The Little Mermaid: The
Animated Series; Alfred Pennyworth for three episodes and a police blimp
radioman in Batman: The Animated Series;Baffeardin, Lyle
Spanger, Inspector Hogan and Hermil Sioro in episodes of Freakazoid!; King Claudius in an episode of Pinky and the Brain; Eustace McPhail in an episode
of Godzilla: The Series; a wizard in an episode of Pepper Ann;
and the moderator in an episode of All Grown Up!. He also provided
additional voices for The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, Alvin and the Chipmunks (1983),
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, The Smurfs (1981), Bill & Ted’s
Excellent Adventures, and the Tom & Jerry Kids Show.
RUBY-SPEARS
PRODUCTIONS, INC. Aka
RUBY-SPEARS ENTERPRISES, RS HOLDINGS
(1977-96)
Key
People: Joe Ruby (founder, president), Ken Spears (founder,
vice president), Jerry Eisenberg (producer), Jack Kirby (production artist)
One of Ruby-Spears' former locations, just across from Hanna-Barbera.
Joe Ruby and Ken Spears
began as sound editors at Hanna-Barbera
Productions before turning into a valuable writing team; particularly with
the creation of Scooby-Doo. When their contracts were up and their desires to
advance to associate producers denied, they left Hanna-Barbera to be producers
and writers at DePatie-Freleng
Enterprises. Eventually, they were hired away by television executive Fred Silverman to supervise the
Saturday morning programming for him at CBS,
and then over at ABC. By 1977, Hanna-Barbera
was stretched pretty thin making several programs for all the major networks
and their work quality was suffering as a result. Feeling Hanna-Barbera needed
some competition, Silverman decided that Ruby and Spears should start their own
production company. ABC executive Peter Roth secured
financing from Filmways
and Silverman promised them a commitment for one series and one special. The
special, The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy, was released in 1978 as an episode
of the ABC
Weekend Specials. It was nominated for an Emmy, and got three sequel specials before
becoming an ongoing show called The Puppy’s Further Adventures. The
series was Fangface,
which was pitched as kind of a reverse Scooby-Doo, and did well enough to
run for two seasons. From there came a steady output of shows and specials,
including The
Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show, Heathcliff,
Thundarr
the Barbarian, Goldie Gold and Action Jack, Mork
& Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour, Rubik,
the Amazing Cube, Mister T, Alvin
and the Chipmunks(for the first five years until the Bagdasarians wanted
to go elsewhere), Saturday
Supercadeand more. By that point, their exclusivity agreement with ABC
was done, allowing them to expand to the other networks as well as syndication.
Each production allowed the company to grow from a shoestring operation to a
full-fledged one, poaching as many Hanna-Barbera talent as they could due to
the shortages at the time. One of their most notable hires was legendary comic
book artist Jack Kirby,
brought to them by writer Mark Evanier,
who reportedly enjoyed the best treatment of his entire career. In 1981,
Ruby-Spears was sold to Taft Broadcasting,
who also owned Hanna-Barbera making them sister companies (while still also
competing for the same timeslots). In 1991, Ruby and Spears spun the company
off into the independent RS Holdings, with most of their pre-1991 library being
sold along with Hanna-Barbera to Turner
Broadcasting System (excluding Rambo: The Force of Freedomwhich is owned by StudioCanal),
resulting in a mix of both company’s productions populating the fledgling Cartoon Network. Ruby-Spears would
produce three more series—Wild
West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa, Mega Manand
Skysurfer Strike Force—and
two more ABC Weekend Specials before finally closing up shop in 1996. Ruby
and Spears continued to work on developing new projects under the Ruby-Spears
banner for the next two decades up until the deaths of both men in 2020.
Promo image featuring some of Ruby-Spears' earliest characters.
Saturday
Credits: Fangface ABC Weekend Specials (episodes) The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure
Show Heathcliff and
Dingbat/Marmaduke Goldie Gold and Action
Jack Thundarr the Barbarian The Scooby &
Scrappy-Doo/Puppy Hour The Puppy’s Further
Adventures Mork & Mindy/Laverne
& Shirley/Fonz Hour Rubik, the Amazing Cube Mister T Alvin and the Chipmunks (1983) Saturday Supercade Dragon’s Lair Turbo Teen It’s Punky Brewster Lazer Tag Academy Superman (1988) Dink, the Little Dinosaur Piggsburg Pigs! Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of
Moo Mesa
Givens was most well-known as the designer
that created the original look for Bugs Bunny. He had also provided a variety
of work on Mr. Magoo, Popeye the Sailor, Linus!
The Lionhearted, The Super 6, Doctor Dolittle, Help!...It’s the Hair Bear
Bunch!, The Houndcats, Bailey’s Comets, Yogi’s Gang, Wheelie and the Chopper
Bunch, The Great Grape Ape Show, The Pink Panther Laugh and a Half Hour and a Half Show, The Puppy’s
Further Adventures, Saturday Supercade, ABC Weekend Specials, Dragon’s Lair,
Turbo Teen, It’s Punky Brewster, Mister T, Alvin & the Chipmunks, Mother
Goose and Grimm, Garfield and Friends, Bobby’s World, Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of
Moo Mesa, The Angry Beavers and The
Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries. Many of the Looney Tunes shorts he worked
on were seen as part of the long-running Bugs
Bunny Show in all of its incarnations from 1960-2000.
Dragon’s Lairwas one of the most unique arcade games ever released. Whereas
most games dealt with pixels and limited framerates reducing the amount of
detail that could be seen on screen, Dragon’s
Lair was like playing a fully-animated feature film. The player joined Dirk
the Daring as he sought to rescue the lovely princess Daphne from the clutches
of the evil dragon.
Don Bluth character model for Dirk the Daring.
Inspired by the text game Adventure, Rick
Dyer, president of Advanced Microcomputer Systems (later RDI Video Systems)
conceived of a device called “The Fantasy Machine.” It manipulated a videodisc
containing still images and narration, and a team of designers created the
characters, locations and choreography. The resulting game was The Secrets of the Lost Woods, and he
took it to market—where it failed spectacularly. Realizing he’d need quality
animation and a better script for added excitement, Dyer took the game back to
the drawing board.
Flyer for the arcade game.
On a shoestring budget of $1 million and using
LaserDisc for its vast storage potential, the game was given the full animated
treatment by former Disney animator Don Bluth and his studio. Unable
to afford models, the animators looked at Playboy
Magazinefor inspiration for
Daphne. To save money, many sequences were reused and flipped, and several
ultimately cut from the final product. As a trade-off for the outstanding
animation, the player wouldn’t so much control Dirk as be required to input the
correct action Dirk should take at a given time. Failure to select the correct
action in a timely fashion would result in one of a number of death scenes. As it was
essentially a cartoon, much of the action (including Dirk’s moments of
cowardice) and deaths were played more for comedy.
Don Bluth character model for Princess Daphne.
The only professional actor on the project was Michael Rye, who served as the
narrator in the game’s attract sequence (the footage that plays before a player
inserted their coin). The animators provided the rest of the voices for the
characters. Daphne was voiced by Vera
Lanpher, head of the clean-up department, and Dirk was voiced by film
editor Dan Molina (although
Dirk only actually speaks twice in the game, his dialogue mostly filled with
noises such as shrieks).
The dragon Singe from the arcade game.
Now known as Dragon’s
Lair, it was released by Cinematronics in June of
1983. Despite the fact the game was the first to cost 50 cents a play, and that
the LaserDisc player would often fail due to the high amount of use and seeking
it had to do to select appropriate scenes to display, the game became an
instant hit. With 1,000 machines sold, a backlog of over 7,500 existed as early
as July. Dragon’s Lair was rated the
number one arcade game in America, and was recognized as being instrumental in
turning around the financial slump the video game industry was experiencing at
the time. Dragon’s Lair went on to have two
special episodes of the video game gameshow Starcade (one seen here under
episode #99), as well as being a featured game on it, and numerous ports to
home systems.
Dirk, Timothy and Bertram.
In 1984, Ruby-Spears
Productions was contracted to bring the video game to television screens. Airing
on ABC beginning on September 8, 1984, the
series followed Dirk (Bob Sarlatte) as he engaged on a series of quests with
the hopes of winning the affections of Princess Daphne (Ellen Gerstell) and
showing up his rival, fellow knight Sir Hubert Blunt (Peter Cullen), as well as
protecting the kingdom from the evil dragon, Singe (named for the first time
and voiced by Arthur Burghardt). New characters besides Blunt included the king
(Fred Travalena), Dirk’s horse, Bertram (Cullen), and his squire, Timothy
(Michael Mish).
Giddy Goons.
Like the game, the series featured a narrator called
the storyteller (Clive Revill) who provided exposition during scenes. Whenever
an episode would reach a perilous cliffhanger going into a commercial, the
storyteller would task the audience with what choice they would make, invoking
the arcade’s gameplay. Following the commercial, the audience would be shown
the consequence of the wrong decisions, which were milder versions of the
game’s death scenes, before showing Dirk making the correct decision (most of
the time). The series also featured several villains from the game, including
the Lizard King, the Phantom Knight, Singe’s Giddy Goons and Mudmen.
Blunt attempts to wow Daphne with a gift.
While the character designs by Thom Enriquez,
Ric Gonzalez
and George
Goode looked close to the game’s designs, without Bluth’s direct influence
there were some notable differences in both appearance and movement. An
intentional difference was in Princess Daphne, who was given a much more modest
dress to wear for the series. Daphne’s character was also changed to be more
adventurous, joining Dirk on some of his quests, rather than simply being a
damsel in distress all the time. The show was written by Bill Wray, Richard Merwin, Michael Charles Hill, Sheryl Scarborough, Kayte Kuch, Dennis Marks and Evelyn Gabai. John Debney composed the music.
Dragon's Lair II promotional poster.
Unfortunately, the series didn’t fare well in the
ratings and was cancelled after only one season, continuing to air in reruns
until April of 1985. Likewise, the fanfare surrounding the game had quickly
faded by 1984, and similar games received little success. A sequel, Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp,
was released to arcades in 1991, having begun production immediately
following the successful release of the original. Because of graphical
limitations of home consoles at the time, many ports had to be compressed and
omit parts of the game. Those omitted parts were later released as their own
games such as Escape from Singe’s CastleandDragon’s Lair III: The Curse of Mordread. In 2002, Dragon’s Lair 3D: Return to the Lairwas released as a 3D interpretation of
the original that allowed players to actually control Dirk. In 2005, a new Dragon’s Lair III was released
incorporating footage from 3D but
with the control scheme of the original. None of the sequels garnered the same
reception as the original.
“The Tale of the Enchanted Gift” (9/8/84) – Singe lures Dirk into a
quest for a golden falcon to give Daphne on her birthday, which comes to life
and kidnaps her for Singe.
“Sir Timothy’s Quest” (9/15/84) – Timothy sets out to free his jailed
friend after The Lizard King stole a map he was guarding, but Timothy ends up
captured by the lizards.
“The Tournament of the Phantom Knight” (9/22/84) – The Phantom Knight
kidnaps the king during a tournament.
“The Smithee’s Haunted Armor” (9/29/84) – An evil smithee with a
magical hammer created a suit of armor that Dirk tries to retrieve for the
king.
“The Pool of Youth” (10/6/84) – Evil witch Borella looks to increase
her powers with the Pool of Youth and turns anyone who stands in her way into
stone.
“The Story of Old Alf” (10/13/84) – Daphne is taken on as magician
Alf’s apprentice, but her misuse of magic brings down the wrath of Singe on the
kingdom.
“The Song of the Chimes” (10/20/84) – Urisk seeks to use magical wind
chimes to turn the world into a desert he can rule with his lava men and fire
creatures.
“The Girl from Crow’s Wood” (10/27/84) – Savilla wants the Griffin
stone in order to increase her magical powers and cause mayhem on the village
of Crow’s Wood.
“Mirror, Mirror” (11/3/84) – Singe uses a magic mirror to turn himself
into Dirk and discredit the hero.
“The Snow Witch” (11/10/84) – A snow witch tricks Dirk into giving her
the vial of potion he found that can turn fire into ice.
“The Tale of Dirk’s New Sword” (11/17/84) – Dirk must retrieve the
enchanted timer of Havenwood before Trolls can make an invincible weapon with
it.
“The Legend of the Giant’s Name” (11/24/84) – Dirk makes a bargain
with a giant Singe awakens: his survival of the Black Hill of Arddu for the
giant’s eternal banishment.
“The Mist of Wishes” (12/1/84) – Dirk and Blunt attempt to steal the
weapon that can destroy Singe, but exposure to the Mist of Wishes turns Blunt
into a bigger threat.
