King Arthur & The Knights of Justice
Glorious.
Ep. 209 is live!
And so, The Odd & The Obscure month comes to its inevitable close. We do so with a fine suggestion by way of friend of the show “Quip.” Months ago, I started putting feelers out for something strange, odd, or obscure to go with our picks for February. Quip reminded me of King Arthur & The Knights of Justice, a gem from 1992. I found myself very intrigued as my planning and research began. Let’s get into it, shall we? One could consider the premise for King Arthur a tad ridiculous, but certainly not any more ridiculous than the fare that had preceded it. An aspect of this show that came on my radar while watching it and looking into its production would be its many connections to Masters of the Universe. The main name connected to this series was legendary animation mainstay Jean Chalopin, who had also overseen He-Man’s second outing in The New Adventures of He-Man. A second connection to this series also lies in the fact that Gary Chalk was a voice actor for King Arthur, AND he was He-Man in Chalopin’s New Adventures series as well! But the greatest similarities arise in the toy line, all thanks to The New Adventures of He-Man. Mattel ended up producing the toys, few as there were, for this show. Having seen their New Adventures figure line underperform, winding up in many clearance bins, Mattel opted to produce figures that had a similar buck to the original 1980’s MOTU line. Additionally, the humble line boasted one vehicle that was very similar to the MOTU Bashasaurus, and cardbacks/cross sales promoted that a Slime Pit would be released as well…only it wasn’t…but then again, yes it was…
That advertised Slime Pit? Thats the original MOTU Slime Pit. This piece would not be release with the King Arthur line, but we would see 5 figures, one vehicle, and King Arthur’s stead. As shown above, the figures do have the bulkier body type, just like MOTU. The conceit of the show saw a 90s football team being pulled to medieval times in order to rescue the original King Arthur. Once this task was completed, the team would be sent back to the future. We never saw this come to fruition, as the show was cancelled after 2 seasons. We did, however, get some sort of closure from a video game released to the SNES in 1995. In it, Arthur and his teammates are returned home once you’ve completed the game.
The final similarity I found between MOTU and King Arthur was seen in the show’s ending. Just as MOTU, and many other shows, King Arthur had PSA/lessons at the end. I wasn’t used to seeing this practiced as much in the 90s, so it was a little refreshing. It would have been nice if this show lasted a little longer, because the toys looked great, and the cartoon was not bad in all honesty. But, television is a competitive game with clear winners and losers. That is going to wrap things up this week for Yesterdaze, but we would really appreciate you coming back next Monday as we kick off a new month, with a guest! March sees us kicking off Music Mayhem Month with a 40th-anniversary review of This is Spinal Tap, and we kick it up to eleven as we are joined by local legend Marty Wombacher! I definitely think this is going to be one hell of a month. Thank you all for listening and reading, and we hope to see you next week!-Derek
