TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: RANKIN/BASS

Written By:

Alan Boon

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. Dedicated miners of this fecund seam begin to notice the same names cropping up, again and again, as if their whole career was based on a principle of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. What’s more, it isn’t all one-season failures and unsold pilots, there’s genuine gold to be found amongst their hoards; these men are surely the Titans of Telephemera!

Rankin/Bass

Arthur Rankin Jr and Jules Bass formed Videocraft International in 1955 to produce commercials for the burgeoning television market and over the new few years they moved into animation, notably a stop-motion process that would come to be called “animagic.” The move into animation coincided with a dersire to produce their own TV shows, the first of which – The New Adventures of Pinocchio – was produced in association with Tadahito Mochinaga of Japanese studio Dentsu. The partnership with Mochinaga would eventually bear ripe fruit in the form of seasonal stop-motion favourites Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, but Rankin/Bass wasted little time in also delivering traditionally animated shows, with Tales of the Wizard of Oz a hit in syndication in 1961.

Over the next two decades, Rankin/Bass produced a slew of animated shows in both traditional and stop-motion form, the latter occupying much of their time in the 1970s after their collaborations with Mochinaga became beloved perennial favourites. Although Rankin/Bass remained a going concern until 2001, when it delivered its final seasonal special Santa, Baby!, the studio’s output had slowed to a crawl after Jules Bass’s retirement in 1987. Arthur J Rankin died in Bermuda, where he’d lived since his own retirement in 2001, in 2014 at the age of eighty-nine. He was outlived by Bass, who finally went to meet his maker eight years later at eighty-seven-years old, having spent much of his later years writing children’s books about Herb the Vegetarian Dragon.

We’ve written about Rankin/Bass productions The King Kong Show, The Smokey Bear Show, The Jackson 5ive, and SilverHawks in previous features, but here are four more Rankin/Bass shows you should know about…

Kid Power (ABC, 1972): Born in Oakland, California, in December 1923, Morrie Turner started drawing at a young age and decided he wanted to be a professional cartoonist, but – other than some illustrations that were used in Stars and Stripes magazine while he served as a mechanic for the Tuskegee airmen during World War Two, and some work for industry magazine Baker’s Helper – he found it hard to get work as a black cartoonist in pre-Civil Rights America. In 1963, he joined the Association of California Cartoonists and Gag Artists, where he met Charles Schulz and Family Circle’s Bil Keane, both of whom encouraged him in his work.

It was Schulz who, when Turner bemoaned a lack of black characters in comic strips, suggested Turner should create his own; in 1964, he produced a strip featuring African American children named Dinky Fellas, but only one newspaper bought the strip. Undaunted, Turner made the cast more ethnically diverse, developing a rollcall which would eventually include not only black and white characters, but also those representing the Asian, Jewish, Latino, and Native American communities, as well as those with disabilities. The re-worked strip, now named Wee Pals, debuted in February 1965 and eventually ran in over a hundred newspapers nationwide.

In 1972, Rankin/Bass – working with Japanese animation studio TopCraft – brought Wee Pals to television, under the name Kid Power. They retained the characters and setting of Turner’s strip, in the process delivering the first children’s TV show that actually reflected the America those children were living in. Dubbed the Rainbow Gang, their adventures were scripted by William J Keenan, a writer who had gotten his start at Filmation before starting with Rankin/Bass on The King Kong Show. Keenan would eventually go on to write for The Six Million Dollar Man, Laverne and Shirley, and Fantasy Island.

Kid Power debuted on September 16^th 1972, beginning a seventeen-episode run that lasted through January 1973, with re-runs following thereafter. Kids in the Bay Area could receive a double-dose of Wee Pals fun as a live-action show – Wee Pals on the Go – aired on San Francisco station KGO-TV. Although their televised adventures were restricted to that one season, Turner continued to draw the exploits of the Rainbow Gang until his death in 2014, the strip falling thirteen months short of a fifty-year run, just four months less than his mentor Schulz achieved with Peanuts.

The Flight of Dragons (ABC, 1982): In 1977, Rankin/Bass partnered with TopCraft to produce an animated adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s beloved The Hobbit, broadcast on NBC on Sunday November 27^th as part of a special evening of television that also included A Doonesbury Special and Miss World 1977. Although they stayed faithful to the original novel, Rankin/Bass were able to produce the special due to a publishing error that saw Tolkien’s work fall into the public domain until it was rectified two decades later.

The Hobbit did not please either critics or Tolkienophiles, one of whom called it “execrable,” and 1978’s adaptation of The Return of the King, the third book in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy fared little better. In 1982, Rankin/Bass tried their hand at fantasy again, this time choosing to adapt the Peter Dickinson book The Flight of Dragons, a “speculative evolution” book that purports to accurately and scientifically describe dragons as if they were a real species.

Although it was a fascinating read and contained beautiful illustrations of its subjects (many of which were used as the basis for the dragons in the eventual movie), Dickinson’s book lacked a story and so the studio borrowed the plot from another novel, The Dragon and George by Gordon R Dickson, changing the name of its protagonist to Peter Dickinson as a tribute to the original author. Both books were credited as sources, although the final screenplay was welded together by Romeo Muller, a Rankin/Bass loyalist who’d previously written Rudolph, Frosty, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and more.

Back in the age of magic, the green wizard Carolinus proposes the creation of a magical realm in order that creatures of legend can survive the upcoming scientific revolution. They all agree, save for one of their number, the red wizard Ommadon, who pledges to wage war on mankind instead. In search of a man of science descended from a hero, Carolinus travels forward 1,000 years in time to find Peter Dickinson, a former scientist who is obsessed with dragons and now works as a board game designer. Can Peter overcome his meekness and save the world of magic?

Released on VHS in the US in August 1982 (and a year later in the UK), The Flight of Dragons found a much better response from critics, who were especially wowed by the animation supplied by TopCraft. An airing on ABC as a Saturday Night Movie in 1986 cemented its place in the heart of a generation, to many of whom it remains “that dragon film nobody remembers that was quite good,”

ThunderCats (syndication, 1985): Ted “Tobin” Wolf was working as a freelance toy developer when he first sketched what would become ThunderCats in 1981. Wolf, who lost part of a leg during the Battle of the Bulge, studied mechanical engineering after leaving the army, finding work with Westinghouse, where he patented several inventions. After going freelance, he came up with a portable record player that was manufactured by Singer, leading him down the road to the youth and children’s markets.

Wolf’s sketch for an animal-themed superhero team was further developed with the help of his family and, in 1983, his friend Stanley Weston – another former veteran turned licensing agent, who had invented GI Joe (and probably the whole concept of the action figure) in 1963 – pitched it to several production companies through his Leisure Concepts Inc merchandising agency, with Rankin/Bass immediately taken by the idea.

The Telepictures Corporation, who had worked with Rankin/Bass since 1974 (and would buy the studio outright in 1983), agreed to distribute the show, and Weston’s LCI partner Mike Germakian set to work fleshing out the ThunderCats universe, designing many of the characters and vehicles that would appear in the show, as well as the iconic logo. While work was underway on the TV show, LCI negotiated a deal with toy company LJN to make a range of action figures and vehicles based on Wolf and Germakian’s designs.

Both the TV show and the toyline were scheduled for a Fall 1984 release, but production delays at TopCraft (which eventually went bankrupt) meant the two-part pilot didn’t air until January 1985, with the balance of the sixty-five-episode first season arriving in September that year. Despite the delays, the toys and the cartoon were a big hit, and a second series of twenty-five episodes went into production for a Fall 1986 release, this time using the animation skills of the Pacific Animation Corporation, a new studio formed by ex-TopCraft staffers.

ThunderCats eventually ran for four seasons and a total of 130 episodes, the last original episode airing in September 1989, with the toyline ending two years earlier, although LJN had planned another wave of figures and vehicles before dropping the line as the action figure market contracted. Tobin Wolf died in 1999, but – thanks to his sight beyond sight – ThunderCats retained a faithful audience even after its cancellation and has been periodically revived, earning royalties for Wolf’s family, who co-own the property along with Telepictures (which is now owned by Warner Bros).

The Comic Strip (syndication, 1987): After repeating the ThunderCats formula (with diminishing returns) in 1986 with SilverHawks, Rankin/Bass went to the well for a third time a year later, but this time went underwater with TigerSharks, a far-future group of humans and aliens who use a device called the Fish Tank to transform into superpowered hybrid sea creatures. TigerSharks pitted the titular protagonists against two separate groups of villains, the Mantennas and Captain Bizzarly’s pirate crew. Both groups had the aim of conquering Water-O, an aquatic planet that was home to the Waterians, whom the TigerSharks have vowed to protect.

As with ThunderCats and SilverHawks, TigerSharks was accompanied by a toyline from LJN and it seems that the original plan was for TigerSharks to have a show of its own, only to be collapsed into The Comic Strip, an anthology series which premiered on September 7^th 1987. There it became one of four revolving features in a half-hour show, each episode featuring two of the four at a time (and with episodes of TigerSharks cut in half).

Alongside TigerSharks were Karate Kat, The Mini-Monsters, and Street Frogs. Karate Kat was set in a world of anthropomorphic cats, where Karate Kat worked to take down crime boss Big Papa while working for McClaw’s Detective Agency, run by Big Papa’s ex-wife, Big Mama. The Mini-Monsters saw normal human twins Sherman (voiced by a young Seth Green) and Melissa sent to a summer camp that is otherwise populated by the offspring of famous monsters, including Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, and more. The adventures of a gang of young, street-smart anthropomorphic frogs, Street Frogs is almost certainly “inspired” by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which would debut in a cartoon of a few months later.

A syndication-friendly sixty-five episodes were made, but there was no second season for The Comic Strip, nor a standalone extension for TigerSharks. Jules Bass’s retirement saw Rankin/Bass slip into dormancy, with no new TV shows and just a handful of feature presentations appearing before Rankin, too, retired in 2001. Beyond their season stop-motion specials, Rankin/Bass are probably best remembered for partnering with Eiji Tsuburaya and Tsuburaya Productions to produce a number of historical, monster, and disaster movies, from 1967’s King Kong Escapes through to 1981’s The Bushido Blade, although for many it will always be their unwavering commitment to wringing out the basic concept behind ThunderCats that be their lasting legacy.

Next time on Titans of Telephemera: We finish our look at the animation studios that created our childhoods with Sunbow Productions!

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)