Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue is very much a typical after school special PSA sort of thing. A kid is doing pot, and might be doing crack. His little sister finds out. She and her cartoon toy product placement friends tell the brother to Just Say No. Innocuous stuff. Yeah, it ain’t good for kids in the middle of puberty and developing to do drugs. No one worth listening to is gonna tell you otherwise.

What’s weird about it is who’s delivering that message. Some of it comes from the obvious joke of half of these characters come off as drug users themselves. Smurfs live in magic mushrooms. Pooh, Garfield, Slimer, and Michelangelo are manifestations of stoner munchies. Alf is the natural end point of 80s cocaine addiction, since his creator was apparently high on the stuff while making that show.

Part of it comes from the hilariously hypocritical Just Say No campaign of the time. The message isn’t bad in and of itself, but you gotta start questioning things when it was the creation of the Reagan/Bush era, and it’s all too clear now that their administrations are just as guilty of creating the drug epidemic as any cartel. So beginning this with a little message from Daddy Bush and the Missus starts it all off on the wrong foot, especially looking back on it.

But what makes this whole thing especially strange, from a Saturday Morning Cartoon perspective, is how so many of these characters were either past their prime or close to it. This is an “All-Star Affair” in the same context as a 70s variety special. Very few stations were sending their A-teams for this little 1990 anti-drug PSA.

NBC has three shows here: ALF, The Smurfs, and Alvin and the Chipmunks. Both of ALF’s animated series ended in 1989, and his TV series was canceled in 1990. NBC was DONE with ALF at this point, something they’d later admit was a mistake. This being an animated thing, it was already in production well before those decision, but it’s amusing how this would be animated ALF’s last appearance (to my knowledge).

The Smurfs had also ended in 1989, finally petering out after almost a decade on Saturday mornings. They were effectively a relic of a bygone animated age by this point. The Chipmunks would be around until the end of 1990, but they were in a similar boat as The Smurfs. All of NBCs series were examples of “the good old days.” Hey, kids! Remember the good old days of TWO YEARS AGO when you’d get CARTOONS on Saturdays? If they’d made this a year or two later, would NBC insist on an animated version of Screech? Ugh.

ABC also has three shows in the line-up: Winnie the Pooh, Looney Tunes, and The Real Ghostbusters. The Tunes are even older than NBCs stuff, but they’d also last longer than everyone else. They’re the Looney Tunes after all. Even when they left Saturday mornings they didn’t really go away. Maybe a little harder to find, but never gone, no matter what the Zaslavs of the world might want. That Bugs and Daffy show up is more of a “how’d the pull THAT of” sort of thing than anything. At least it’s a better showing that Space Jam.

Winnie the Pooh was the first salvo in Disney’s takeover of ABC’s Saturday morning line-up, but his show wouldn’t be around for much longer after this, ending in 1991. The same goes for Slimer and his Real Ghostbusters pals. Just another show in its tail end– the mid-80s already a distant memory in terms of cartoon remembrance. Also kinda funny how Slimer’s the only “made for ABC” thing here, since Pooh’s show originated on the Disney Channel and, well, the Looney Tunes existed before Saturday morning cartoons.

CBS only has Garfield and Muppet Babies. The Muppet Babies were in the same boat as the Chipmunks and Real Ghostbusters– a long-running show a year away from its end and more representative of a bygone era that felt further away than it actually was. Also, given the line-up of this series, Baby Kermit is the only one who’s opinion on drugs I find genuine. You’re cool, Kermit. I’ll just say no because of you.

Garfield is the only Big Three Network star here who’s still in his prime. His cartoon’d be around until 1994, and his prime time specials wouldn’t end until 1991. Since he’s the biggest thing here save for MAYBE Michelangelo, it’s funny how he doesn’t really get a whole lot of screen time. At least he and ALF get to interact, and ALF gets a cat-eating threat in to boot. ALF better watch out, though. They’re BOTH big eaters, and I’m sure Garfield’d eat him if enough marinara was sitting around.

Also, the only other real major cross-network interaction was during the brother’s dream sequence where he imagined Tigger and Piggy on the same boat in the Tunnel of Love. Yeah, kid, you’ve been doing too much drugs if that’s the sort of fanfiction your subconscious conjures.

We get two syndicated shows here with DuckTales and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. DuckTales was a part of that newfangled Disney Afternoon thing, but it was also in its last season by this time– another fading all-star. It’s also kinda funny that they send the Stepford Duck versions of Huey, Dewey, and Louie to this thing when The Rescue Rangers were right there. This sort of thing is in their wheelhouse. As the kids would say nowadays, Chip and Dale would “solo” this anti-drug thing in five minutes or less. Way to go, Wally World, in showing how much you REALLY care.

The Ninja Turtles were still a syndicated thing at this point (they’d jump to CBS the next year), and probably the biggest THING in the bunch at the moment. So does that mean Michelangelo’s kinda slumming it here? Some kind of contractual thing? Maybe he’s doing a court-ordered PSA after getting busted for pot? Cowabummer, dude! Bogus to the max and groddy, too. At least they didn’t send Raphael. He’d probably just beat up both siblings and call it a day.

As a kid at the time who was old enough to be aware of how old most of these cartoons were, and aware of what kids actually thought were cool and fun and whatever else, this felt like one of those elementary school assemblies where they brought in a storyteller or singer who was clearly for the kindergartners and first graders, but even the fifth graders were forced to come to the cafeteria and watch. And looking back on all of this with decades of perspective, yeah, it feels a lot like one of those 70s variety specials. You have a “Cavalcade of Stars” consisting of fondly-remembered Old Hollywood stars looking for a paycheck mixed in with the “breakout” stars of sitcoms that’d be canceled in a season or so, and they’re all performing a high wire Circus of the Stars act while telling you not to do the smack, because that’s whack, you dig? Strange, kitschy, fascinatingly wrong stuff.

And, yeah, I still only trust Baby Kermit. Let’s be straight edge together, buddy.