One Season Wonders: Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars

[TMC]

http://oneseasonwonders.blogspot.com...wars-1991.html

Welcome to the inaugural edition of One Season Wonders, a blog that will look at cartoon shows that only ran one season and to ask the question on if the show deserved to have a longer run. These will consist at looking at 13 episodes series, usually the shows that aired briefly on Saturday mornings in the 80s and 90s, though branching out to longer one-season runs might be considered if there's a lot of stuff to go through. And we start this adventure in another dimension. Another time and space. Where a parallel universe has fallen on its face. But from out of the shadows, who else can it be but the animal adventurers of S.P.A.C.E. Yes, we're gonna croak us some toads and look back at Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars.

Bucky's origins start out as being created by Larry Hama and Michael Golden as a comic book that was first published 1984 for the anthology comic "Echo of Futurepast". Despite Bucky only having a brief run in the 80s in the comic world, it wouldn't be the last of the series. 1987 gave us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, an animated adaptation of the Kevin Eastman/Peter Laird comic book. To say the turtles became a massive hit would be an understatement as the franchise became a merchandising juggernaut. And with it came plenty of other "anthropomorphic hero" teams that were ready and willing to try and take the turtle throne. One of those was Bucky O'Hare.



Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars premiered in the fall of 1991 in the UK and in North America. Although the name was changed to "Toad Menace" for the Canada and UK airings. While it's a well known fact that the word "ninja" was often banned from use in a lot of UK stuff, the word "war" was also considered problematic. It's why in Canada we got Beasties instead of Beast Wars and Shadow Raiders instead of War Planets. The merch machine was pretty good for Bucky out the gate, with Hasbro handling the toy department (I remember having several figures including Bucky, Willy and the Toad Air Marshall), along with Konami in their heyday creating video games. An arcade beat-em up and a really good NES platformer. Seriously, it's worth shilling the extra money for. It's that good a game.

And with the preamble about where the show came from out of the way, it's time to cover the show. Instead of just doing 13 separate reviews, I'm going to combine all 13 into one review with a brief overview of the plot. As I watch each episode and give my more detailed thoughts on the show, giving my "best and worst episodes" at the end, along with my thoughts on if this show holds up, or at the very least should have continued for more than one season.

[Tubehead]

i remember that show! do you remember battletoads? they were kind of like teeange mutant ninja turtles!! i even brought the game of battle toads on my nintendo when it came out!!

[Videoranger007]

Wish it lasted longer but I remember most kids considered it a TMNT ripoff, even though Bucky O'hare has been around since 1978.

Battletoads only had a single direct to vhs special produced.