MR T: The Mystery of the Disappearing Oasis (1984)
Friday, 10. November 2006, 14:46:28
In 1983 Ruby-Spears cashed in on Mr T's popularity and created the MR T animated series. In the series Mr T travels around with a gymnastics team and finds mysteries. In many ways Mr T is similar to BA Baracus, not just in appearance but in personality, both enjoy helping children, both have a fear of flying (although Mr T doesn't need to be knocked out) and both use the same catchphrases.In this episode Mr T and his Gymnastics team fly to Egypt bringing the team bus along with them (why? I don't know and I don't know why Mr T needs a coach size bus for himself, Miss Brisby and five meddling kids and the Dog Dozer)
Anyway the whole team is in Egypt to meet Kim's penpal. The penpal is the daughter of an archeologist who has given her a ruby necklace - which turns out to be the key to a treasure and naturally bad guys are tring to steal it.
Oh I pity the poor fools who mess with T or the kids. Several of the kids are running around Egypt without telling anyone where they going and one by one the baddies capture them and it's up to Mr T to stop them. I wasn't aware but it appears that Mr T is quite the gymnast able to flip and vault as well as any member of his team (who frequently cartwheel out of danger)
Lest I forget each episode has a moral - This one "tell people where you'll be"
(another one had the moral of Don't Brag - "If you're great people will know it and you won't need to tell them. Just like I don't need to tell you" a live action Mr T informs us.
Think of this as A-Team very lite and it's not a bad show.
Brad
WIDGETIZE
Anonymous # 11. November 2006, 17:29
I think the "every show has to have a moral" code is one of the reasons eighties animation doesn't last as well as the '40s-'60s cartoons.
Anonymous # 11. November 2006, 22:39
They show the show on Adult Swim early Sunday mornings. It has ...um camp value.
80's cartoons were infamous because of the stringent guidelines parental groups put on them. I'm not necessarily against guidelines but these were even more tyrannical than the early comics code. It wasn't until they loosen up in the nineties that good shows like Batman: TAS and Gargoyles were produced.
AggressorBrad # 12. November 2006, 04:11
I wouldn't mind the moral except Mr T takes the Moral and pounds it over your head just so you don't miss it.
But as you say there were very rigid guidelines, I recall that Ninja Turtles could only beat up Foot soldiers because the Foot were robots.
Brad
clean # 12. November 2006, 11:38
AggressorBrad # 12. November 2006, 21:08
Brad
Anonymous # 12. November 2006, 22:04
The Captain America cartoon sounds cool. In Justice League when they travelled back in time to prevent Vandal Savage from changing the course of WWII, they altered the nazi symbol from a swatsika to something else. Hitler appears but isn't called by name. There was also an episode of gargoyles that involved time-travel to the Battle of Britain. Cartoon Network has slightly looser standards than most of television.
clean # 13. November 2006, 16:00
Some symbols (particularly the swastika) just freak people out - even though they're legitimate (i.e., a symbol that had a long history before the Nazis perverted it and is still a part of history, however appalling what it now represents has now become).
Microsoft found that they had a swastika in their dictionary in a version of Office and issued a tool to remove it.
Odd thing was, they also removed the 'Star of David' symbol.
Pretty soon we won't have any symbols left ... especially in comics! I mean, after all, they're not showing the symbol for the Comics Code on the front of comics any more!
AggressorBrad # 13. November 2006, 21:29
Brad
orinoco # 7. April 2007, 09:57
I am such a geek.