Score: 10
"What the fuck is a Samoflange?"
date: December 8, 2006
When I first saw this, I was 16 and thought that the Thundercats were worthless. Still do, but after the fact I found out just how little the voice actors were paid for the cartoon, and in all honesty, kind of got pissed at that. Disney actors were making Scale Wage for the SAG (Screen Actors Guild). That's about 500$ an hour. The Thundercats actors were paid about 500$ for about ten, that's right, TEN hours of work on the first season. Also, let's not forget that many of the same voice actors in Thundercats later did re-dubbing and voiceover work on a lot of Anime. Most notably, for a piece of useless trivia, Lion-O's voice (whose name escapes me right now) was also the name of Zechs Marquis in Gundam Wing, where he made about a THOUSAND dollars an hour.
There are almost too many times that I hear the voice of someone I know, and so does the person reading this, but can never remember their name. Kevin Clash, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went on to become so high paid as a voice actor, only Disney and the Japanese companies could afford him to work.
But, on top of all of that is the fact that Thundercats, especially the bloopers, shows how dumb this series really was. Most mid-80's series were blatantly made to sell toys, and the only two that weren't (G.I. Joe and Transformers... Both owned by Marvel Comics) were intended to be nothing more than elaborate story-driven series meant to do one thing: sell comics. Back then, Marvel U.K. had acquired the rights to republish Transformers Japanese stories, originally written by Takara Inc., and modify them so that they would make sense to the audience. Must have worked, Marvel U.K. and Mattel bought the entire rights to TF for about 10,000,000 British Pounds. G.I. Joe was only licensed by Marvel, so after the series ended the only thing that they could do was say, "Happy trails, gravy train." Until the early part of 2000.
Thundercats, on the other hand, never really had a chance to hold on, even if one watches the current episdoes available on DVD (By that I mean all of the episodes.) the story still makes little to no sense. But, it has one distinct feature that, I'm certain, had the creators of G.I. Joe or the Transformers realize how dumb they were. The creators of Thundercats, back in the olden-day underground comics, normally only sold in adult book (Pr0n) stores, sold off the RIGHTS but not the entire thing, so when the series was over, all control of the characters reverted to them.
Which means from 1988 until about 2001 or 2002 they had a lot of characters that were really worth nothing. Then the money came in, and the entire '80's cartoon resxurrecction began.
And the rest is history.
P.S. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is probably the only major franchise out of the 1980's to actually GROW with their audience. Since the original comics were so blatantly violent (worse than Sin City) and sexual no one would carry them, so when the fans grew up they read the comics, and the current incarnations on Saturday Morning, now that they can get away with a lot of that stuff, are almost direct adaptations, with about half the violence.
My statement is this: The swearing is damn funny, but the reason for it is simple; no one liked WORKING on the Thundercats. They did, however, like recording Thundercats. Thanks to the vocal talent that proves even actors can comfortably say, "WHAT THE FUCK IS A SAMOFLAM, SAMOFLANGE, SANOFLA... WHATEVER THE FUCK IT IS!