What a dumb (and somewhat brave) move by CBS TV and TSR to go forward with this Saturday-Morning cartoon. Brave? Dumb? It was in the middle of the moronic Satanic Panic so anything associated with D&D, especially a show aired when 90% of the audience are children fueled the idiocy.
However, I was now 15 when it debuted and it was late enough in the schedule I could get up in time to see all the cool things I loved about the game come to life. The idiocy wasn’t limited to the KKKristians afraid of Satan worship through a game fueled by imagination. Dungeons & Dragons had to conform to the core demographic (kids under 12 I think) so all the annoying tropes plaguing cartoons in the Eighties were on full display.
- No actual violence: e.g. I think Cobra was defeated through bankruptcy given all the expensive vehicles they lost.
- An annoying animal sidekick yet not as funny nor amusing as Scooby Doo.
- It was supposed to help sell toys. On the latter, Gygax’s asshole ego torpedoed this with Mattel (He-Man) and the LJN versions were far from…well, good.
- Lazy personality types: the loudmouth coward, the smart naive one, etc.
- Characters who don’t exist in the source material: Venger? Dungeonmaster or as I remember him, Discount Yoda.
I still watched it and we all talked about it the next Monday at school, for me, just Clear Creek; I had lost interest by the time we moved to Indiacrapolis. It didn’t all suck. Seeing Lloth and Tiamat animated as threats were cool. Besides, there wasn’t much else to go on. The Fantasy movie fad in Hollywood was petering out since Conan, Krull, Dragonslayer, Excalibur and The Beastmaster didn’t make obscene profits. All the cheap T&A dreck…Deathstalker, The Sword & the Sorcerer and Sorceress didn’t help. Special effects were expensive and had a long, long way to go before the kick-ass The Lord of the Rings trilogy delivered. I’m glad Peter Jackson kept up with the practical instead of being completely dependent on digital.
Today I don’t mind the cartoon. The show’s bible was put together by the great comic book writer Mark Evanier and the primary characters live on via inside jokes. My personal fave is from Gumball with Roger (the dad) running a game with the family and he’s made up to resemble Dungeonmaster.
Given the game’s newfound popularity and the property of one of the three largest toy makers on Earth (Hasbro), I figure the last movie’s modest success at the box office may result in a new cartoon. Disney+ manages new Star Wars stuff with computer graphics, why not D&D?