Thundercats 1985
Ep. 214 is live!
Music Mayhem certainly helped us rock through March, but alas...the time has come to start over once again with a new month, and a new theme. Welcome to April, a month I've truly been looking forward to since last November. Why? Because we are marching into spring like a lion with something I've been working on and planning since just after Halloween. Folks, April sees us celebrating one of the greatest voice actors of the last several decades, as well as our favorite hometown boy made good...I'm speaking of course of one Larry Kenney and his relationship with Rankin/Bass. That means we will tackle our first major 80's property, Thundercats! As the month progresses we work our way through the timeline of shows to Silverhawks, naturally, followed by TigerSharks, and ultimately end coverage of properties for the month with Thundercats 2011. Now, it may seem odd that we are dedicating an entire episode to such a recent property, but remember this is a piece of legacy media, and serves as an important chapter in the story of Thundercats, Silverhawks, and TigerSharks. That leaves the last week of April, which you'll note is not slated with a property; taking inspiration from fondly remembered "5th Week Events" from my comic book collecting days, the last Monday of April delivers a real treat that was, for me, a very true honor and complete surprise. In the "Monster Cereal" episode I declared I'd find a way to interview Larry Kenney. We've been teasing it...gang, it happened. Simply put, I'm still a bit in shock that it happened. I have so many things to say about the experience, but that will happen when we get to that week. For now, let's light this candle, THUNDERCATS, HO! Thundercats is OF COURSE a fondly remembered show & toy line that made its debut in 1985. Created by Ted "Tobin" Wolf, a truly interesting man, and gifted to the world by way of Leisure Concepts, Lorimar Television, and Rankin/Bass. Let's be real for a second; what on earth could I say about Thundercats that hasn't already been said, or written about? Highly talented voice cast, stellar animation, solid storytelling, and of course...outstanding toys. I'm not the first fan or content creator to say such things. So what I am going to speak to is just what this show meant to me at this point in my life. In Elvira's write up, I spoke to my childhood. Laughter and comedy helped me get by many times. But it was around this time I truly looked for a hero, and inspiration to not be so scared. Now, there were plenty of heroes and such to draw inspiration from for little 4-5 year old Derek (NOTE: My earliest memories of Thundercats are actually from 1985, when the show debuted, and the last year of my parents' marriage...). Bravestarr was fun to act out, and there was always a lesson concerning right and wrong. MOTU gave us those tremendous PSA's at the end of each episode, urging us to not forget what we had seen or learned "in today's story." Thundercats was different though. You weren't really bashed over the head with the lesson, which sometimes made things more palatable. While every protagonist was the subject of learning a lesson at some point in time, the ones with Willy Kat and Kit really stuck, likely because they were kids. Lessons concerning Lion-O hit different, though. For me, I do think part of it had to do with the voice work by Larry Kenney, that warm commanding tenor that could just BOOM and inspire you to action. The fact Lion-O was, essentially, a kid in a grown-up's body played into it for me, as well. That's what nearly all of us wanted when we were kids, to be big. Hell, Tom Hanks skyrocketed his career based on that concept. But there was something to that, the idea of wish and power fulfilment, to suddenly wake up and be tall, big, strong, and to have command as well. Waking up and being in charge, the general concept was a total fantasy for kids! For some kids, though, it wasn't just a fantasy...it was a dream, a solution to many of life's problems. Many of us coming up in the 80's didn't have it the easiest, and the idea of waking up and being big enough to seemingly handle anything was the ultimate dream. That wasn't quite how things were or would be, for us or Lion-O. Sure, the Lord of the Thundercats came out of his deep sleep as a grown man, but he still had the mind of a kid with the maturity to match. Overtime, he'd have to learn some important lessons that would help shape him into a good leader that was capable and brave. While Lion-O learned, we learned with him, as though we were all growing up together. These lessons would help us see the importance of knowing right from wrong, standing up for those who can't defend themselves, and to never just give up even though things seem tough...we'd learn there's almost always a solution, and if you just apply yourself you can figure it out. For kids like me, this was very important. My folks both loved me very much, I know that...but they were highly flawed. They were two humans that made mistakes, and likely didn't know they were making mistakes at the time. As stated previously, the world of East Peoria, IL and the bottoms were scary and quite dangerous for someone my size at that age ( I was scrawny as hell!), and I had a lot of narrow misses; not to mention the times I'd feel afraid because of my mom's irresponsibility, or a bully's cruelty. I saw my dad on weekends, and even then it was set to a script every damn weekend, almost. It was always one of two scenarios...rush back to our home on Springfield Road, race through the yard, wrestle when we'd get inside, we'd watch USA's Cartoon Express, bath, bed, BOOM. The following morning I'd either go stay with my Aunt Mary until about 4pm because he'd work overtime, or we'd work on home renovations. The only variation to this was occasional dinners Saturday evenings with a lady he briefly dated named Cathy. Sunday would arrive,we'd run out of time. I'd hide under my bed because I wasn't ready to leave him. That part never went well. The drive back to Meadows Avenue was ALWAYS a treat because I would demand that my mom move back in with my dad. Real blasty-blast, that. I describe how these weekends and shared time went to showcase something integral missing from a developing boy's life: lessons. Visiting my dad was fun, it was cartoons, playing, CABLE (doesn't matter how he had it) and being back in MY house that I most CERTAINLY remembered. Being at home with mom was hard. She had a drinking problem (caused by my dad, it turns out), her boyfriend was a DICK, and I grew up around some ROUGH trade as far as the neighbor kids were concerned. When I would get scared over my mom not being in the apartment in the dead of the night, Lion-O's voice helped me be brave. When a bully picked on another kid, or even tried to push me around it was Lion-O that helped me find my courage to stick up for other people and to defend myself. I nearly drowned at least twice in those creeks and spillways along Meadows and throughout what is now the fashionable Levee district, but it was Lion-O that kept me calm so I could figure a way out of my predicament. When my mom and Lonnie, her boyfriend, would fight and argue (usually about me or my dad)...Thundercats provided 30 minutes where everything wasn't scary as HELL. For 30 minutes, I just got to be a kid. You don't realize it then, just how great that truly is...but I see it now, I see it when I look back, and I see it when I bask in the present. One of my very favorite things has been introducing Henry to Thundercats. It's funny, he takes to it and MOTU the same way I did; MOTU for the toys, Thundercats for the imagery and excitement. Henry became very curious about it when he crawled up in my lap one frigid afternoon, and asked me what I liked on TV. I showed him, and boy was he thrilled. This would all culminate in him eventually jumping up on our couch, swinging a sword and chanting "Thunder...Thunder...THUNDERCATS, HO!" Now that's the good stuff. I know I often just talk about the toys or products of these properties. I never owned the toys growing up, mostly because my homelife was weird...mom was typically broke, dad didn't really think about buying toys much as he had his own issues with the bottle, it would turn out. What I did have was this terrific Thundercats shirt. I loved it. I had truly hoped that I'd be able to provide a picture of it, going so far as to even extend an olive branch to Susan to try to get it...needless to say, I'm hopeful my aunt can come through on this, as that shirt was STELLAR. That said, though, I did recently treat myself to a recent offering related to Thundercats, I better watch it, because these figures from Super7 are ridiculous. Just take a look a some of these, and yes...that's a new Cat's Lair that is scaled to the figures, and NO...I'm not buying it...yet.
You will come to see just what this show, and the work of Larry Kenney, came to mean to me throughout my life even to today. I do hope you'll forgive this cat for not leaning into the usual, plastering shots of toys and the like. This is one where, like Elvira, I really had something personal to say or reiterate. I know, as well as all of you know, that these shows and such were created to sell toys, and they sure managed to pull that off. They also became something very powerful and meaningful to a good number of us, and that's what I wanted to shine a light on this week. I would be remiss, though, if I didn't include some shots of the legendary intro and outro, feast your eyes!
I will add that the outro for this show still just gave me chills, in a way. Those backgrounds coupled with the music...The frenetic piano, guitar shredding, and those horns...a well executed guitar lick right when the eyes on Castle Plun-Darr, and that crescendo that builds to a close, The Cat's Lair in the distance. Damn. I couldn't have been the only kid who felt a slight tinge of sadness in that last 23 seconds of the outro. What a great time to be a kid, even if things were fairly complicated for some of us. I suppose I've waxed philosophical enough for one week. I truly hope you enjoy today's episode, as well as this month. I am so very happy to not only share all of this with you, but to be able to make this happen. That said, come back next week won't you? Dustin, Jason, and I will be diving into Rankin/Bass's next attempt at heroic fare when we discuss Silverhawks. Debuting a year after Thundercats, this series would see a great deal of shared creators, talent, and staff, such as Mr. Kenney as the ace pilot, Bluegrass. You're not going to want to miss a single episode this month. That is going to wrap it up, but I'll see you next week, Enjoy!
