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.
SERIES OVERVIEW
When Bucky learns that his people have been enslaved by the Toad Empire to work in their factories, he goes to Genus, the main planet of sorts in this series and home to the United Animal Security Counsel. Bucky tries to get more ships to help him, but they refuse without proof of what happened on Warren. In the middle of a dogfight with toad ships, Bruce tries to fix their photon accelerator only to be sent "to another dimension" (a nicer way of saying he's dead). Meanwhile in the dimension Earth resides in, a young boy named Willy DuWitt is dealing with bullies among other issues. He conveniently is also inventing a photon accelerator. And when both his and the Indignation's are activated, it turns Willy's bedroom door into a portal to the Aniverse. After proving his worth and saving the crew, Willy becomes the crew's new engineer. They also find a new heavy in Bruce's brother Bruiser Baboon.
We also learn about the Toad Empire very quickly. Once a harmless race of consumerist creatures, the Toads invented a computer system named KOMPLEX to do everything for them. But KOMPLEX went rogue, turned the toads into his personal army and had them enslave most of the aniverse, turning the innocent creatures into workers for their factories. The secondary villain and KOMPLEX's whipping boy at times is the Toad Air Marshall. There's Al Negator, a mercenary for hire. And Toadborg, a former toad soldier now decked in near-indestructible robot armor. Toads enslave planets and turn their ecosystem into that of a swamp using a device known as a climate converter. A good explanation of how the toads could take over and turn unsuspecting planets into future factories to build more ships.
Back to the pilot. After Willy manages to save the Righteous Indignation by repairing their photon accelerator, they originally offer the engineer role to Willy, but due to his real life priorities, he at first seems unfit to do so. After Bucky and the crew see what happened to Warren and giving the evidence to UASC, another crew is also put in charge of stopping the toads, the Indefatigable, led by Commander Dogstar (who sounds like Gary Chalk trying to do his best Thurston Howell impresson). Bucky hires Al Negator for the job of engineer, despite everyone telling him it's a terrible idea and even though he's of a race of known villains called sleazeasaurs, Bucky gives him the job, only for Al Negator to steal the access codes for Genus and give them to Toadborg. Willy (wearing a baboon disguise) at first thinks he's taken them from Al after offering him play money (that he refers to as Willys), but since Al Negator is a tricky foe, he still hands over the codess to Toadborg. After a fight on the weather converter, the heroes manage to defeat Toadborg and send the toads in retreat. The pilot ends with Willy becoming the Indignation's engineer and managing to get the kids who were bullying him to work with him on a science project, showing that Willy is starting to earn some initiative.
The pilot works great for an opener to the series. There's lots of action throughout, especially if your a fan of space dogfights. In terms of comedy, the show can feel a bit dry from the heroes side, but the show makes up for it with the Toads, who often watch television, which does a good job at showing the more manipulative side to media. That's not to say the other characters aren't fun as well. I particularly like Jenny and Deadeye, although Scott McNeil can't seem to get what kind of southern cowboy accent he wants for Deadeye. The show's animation is at times stiff, but still looks good for basic 80s/90s AKOM animation. The pilot also has some name recognition in writer Christy Marx. Marx worked on a good chunk of popular cartoons at the time including Jem, G.I Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The show also featured writing credits from people in the comic book industry including Roger Slifer, Neal Adams and Doug Moench. So, there's definitely some credibility to be found within Bucky O'Hare.
Episode 4: Home, Swampy, Home starts with Bucky visiting his mentor (who we never see in the episode as its so brief) only to end up captured by the toads. Meanwhile in a slave factory, many of the enslaved Rabbits are being forced to work on a climate converter, along with a fox woman named Mimi LaFloo, who is sick of hearing the rabbits talk up the legend of Bucky O'Hare. After defeating the toads before being sent to KOMPLEX and Toadborg, Bucky soon learns of the captives and gets himself sent to the prison factory. He manages to save the day along with the help of Mimi, and in the end she gets her own command Frigate, the Screaming Mimi. This was a much slower episode and I will say the pacing felt a bit off, but regardless, it was a good watch. I like Mimi as this sorta side love-interest for Bucky...
Although others obviously think otherwise.
They also set in the idea of being able to use the climate converters to fix Warren and make it back to what it once was, so at least we're furthering this show's ultimate goal. Also, I'm already feeling a lot of Sonic SatAM parallels to this show (Group of furry freedom fighters stopping evil empire with the aid of their attitudinal leader), which is probably a key factor in why I'm enjoying it so far.
Episode 5: On The Blink sees Bucky and the crew called on to help the koala people of the planet Rigal-5. The toads have recently taken over, enslaved the koalas and forced them to work in the toads new resort Club Toad. With a defense mechanism keeping warm blooded creatures from entering the planet, the crew send Blinky to shut it down. However, Blinky gets captured by Toadborg and reprogrammed to sabotage the Righteous Indignation and send them crashing to the sun. Willy manages to fix Blinky in time, and the crew manage to make their way to the planet, stop the toads and free the koalas.
This was a good episode, though I do have a couple issues. I do wish the episode gave us more of a chance to develop Blinky as a character, but they never give us much of a chance. Also the episode opens and closes with Willy and a female friend at the Zoo who thinks Willy's too focused on how things work and not protecting creatures. So you think going in that this is some sort of lesson episode for Willy, but he barely plays much of a part in this one other than fixing Blinky and setting the defense mechanism to keep toads off Rigal-5. But there were some great parts that made me enjoy this one nonetheless. I loved the interaction between Toad Air Marshall and Al Negator as Al constantly manages to extort the Air Marshall for more simoleons. Also they have a bit involving Blinky using a hologram of Bruiser to scare the toads off that gets paid off greatly at the end of the episode.
Or maybe it's just seeing the Air Marshall and Al Negator in casual golfing attire that makes me laugh more than it honestly should. The two of them escaping yelling "Sue me!" "Pay me!" just cracked me up as well. While there were some flaws, I definitely felt this was the most lighthearted episode so far, which is always a plus for me.
By turning the abandoned Toxus-II (I thought it was Toxus III. That's what they said earlier) into a giant berserker baboon. And it's never made clear if they turned the planet back to normal since the machine blows up immediately after. Also, they make mention that the matter transmutor doesn't work on living organisms. Despite being abandoned, it still appears that Toxus-II was still living in some sort of form. And nobody even brings up how a planet just got turned into a monkey. We just move on like it's a non-factor. WHAT??? Call it nitpicky, but that does feel like a major ass pull to get a rushed resolution. Hell, even the meeting with the creators is like "destroy KOMPLEX? Hell if we know how." I'll say that this was the weakest episode so far. Not horrible by any stretch, and I like the added lore of the creators, but those last few minutes were definitely not a strong point in what has honestly been a good show.
Episode 7: The Komplex Caper. We open as Deadeye captures a toad soldier that appears to be working on some sort of satellite. It's soon discovered by Willy (conveniently getting feed to KOMPLEX via his computer) that KOMPLEX plans to use Toad TV to drain the brains of the mammals of the aniverse, then brainwash the mammals to work for the Toad Empire. Bucky heads into KOMPLEX itself to put a stop to the plan. Overall, a pretty good episode that brings us back after the bizarre ending of our last episode. we finally get a look into KOMPLEX's inner working with him coming off as very Death Star in design. Among other things we finally get to see more of the Indefatigable and Commander Dogstar's crew in action.
There are a couple ass-pulls however. Willy unaffected from the brain drain, and Jenny having a magic jewel that helps Bucky survive a room filled with Toad TV. Plus a really random Dan Quayle joke. I mean, they were everywhere in 1991, but I wasn't expecting to see it on Bucky O'Hare. Also, this does feel like it suffers from a bit of the hypocritical "TV is bad for you" message a lot of television shows tried to put out, but it worked for the plot at least.
Episode 8: The Search For Bruce. Bucky and the gang are once again in a dogfight with the toads when suddenly the toads manage to teleport inside the Righteous Indignation. However, that's not all that's teleported as a visage of their former engineer (and Bruiser's brother) Bruce the Berserker Baboon shows up to scare the toads off. It turns out that Bruce didn't die in the pilot, but was sent to the other end of the Aniverse. He was working on a teleporter, but with the Toads latest creation of toad transfer machine, he only seems to have teleported halfway. In the end, the gang enter the transfer machine to destroy it, unfortunately causing Bruce to once again disappear.
I liked this episode. Good to see that Bruce wasn't as expendable as we thought from the pilot. I particularly enjoyed the camaraderie between Bruce and Bruiser and liked the build to Bruiser ultimately making the sacrifice of losing contact with Bruce once again for the greater good. I also found a scene where the Air Marshall kept teleporting in more toad fleets only for them to be scared off by the baboons. They set up the idea that Bruce could come back some day, but with five episodes left, I seriously doubt this gets a fair resolution.
Episode 9: Corsair Canards opens up with a crew of space pirates (our titular Corsair Canards) trying to raid a ship, only to be easily beaten by Bucky and his crew, who were expecting them. Bucky suggests that the space pirates give up their lives of thievery to join in the crusade against the toads. Despite that, a UASC member is wary of the trustworthiness of the prate crew. While Deadeye does battle with another pirate named Redjack to settle if the pirates will go good or not, Deadeye and the pirates are being set up to look like they haven't changed at all. The UASC sends Dogstar to capture Deadeye, but Bucky and the crew soon learn that this was all a setup by the toads and Al-Negator. In the end, they defeat the toads and find the spy within the UASC, who is not the wolf that they set it up to be, but instead...
A newt spy inside a walrus costume. Wat.
I did enjoy this episode. The stuff with the pirates was entertaining and a chance to focus more on Deadeye was a treat. And I do like the bait and switch, setting up the UASC traitor to be the wolf (a wolf in sheep's clothing perhaps) only to be someone else so that the wolf can learn a lesson about not judging others. But I do have nitpicks. Barely any toads in this episode save for a couple scenes. They spend a lot of time building up a frisbee (sorry, "flying disc") as some sort of unstoppable weapon, to the point that it almost feels like they were trying to sell Bucky Frisbees. And, while the animation is often bare bones (especially in later episodes), this one feels like the episode that's the most rife with animation errors, particularly in mismatched coloring from scene to scene.
Dogstar gets it the worst, as seen in this gif above. Throughout most of the episode they can't decide if his midsection should be silver and red or silver, blue and red. Only to end up with a random error of him being all blue with his hat going all yellow! I've seen my share of animation errors, but this just feels sad. As if they lost his model somewhere in production of this episode and played it by ear. But animation issues aside, I did enjoy the episode's story and found this one to be an easy sit.
Episode 10: The Artificers of Aldebaran. An episode that focuses on Jenny, which already puts it in the running for best episode. We go to Aldebaran where we see Jenny training her apprentice of sorts Felicia for her soul quest. Essentially it involves her going into a giant energy cloud called the dark heart nebula. Felicia thinks she's ready for this, but Jenny tells her no. Conveniently that's where Toadborg is headed as he wants to discover the power contained within it. Jenny and the crew leave, but Felicia, being a whiny rebel, goes off on her own, only to get caught by Toadborg, who needs an Aldebaran to enter the nebula. Jenny steals the Righteous Indignation (along with Willy who is sort of an accomplice to all this), while Bucky and his crew get a ride from Mimi LaFloo (yes, she makes her second appearance in this episode).
Eventually, Toadborg forces them into the nebula where he finds the source of power known as a giant quark demon. Essentially he awakens a Chernabog-like creature of pure power that easily defeats him. Jenny uses all her power to put the beast back to rest thanks to all the inhabitants of Aldebaran lending her their power, including Felicia. In the end, Felicia manages to succeed in her quest, Toadborg's memory of what went down is erased, and Bucky forgives Jenny for her insubordination.
I like this episode, but I do feel its pacing is too all over the place for me to really say it's the best episode, which is a shame because I really like Jenny as a character and am glad to see her get the focus. I particularly like her camaraderie with Willy (even if it gets to feeling weirdly shippy in some ways). I also liked seeing Mimi again and the continuation of her being the second love interest for Bucky while they make it clear that he has more of a strong relationship with Jenny due to their history. It was also good to see some of the Aldebaran world and their secretive lore, although I do wish we got more of it. Going back to my one real issue with this episode is that everything moved at such a breakneck pace that I really wish that this was a two-parter, so that we could have let this breathe some more. But again, that aside, I did enjoy this one enough.
Episode 10: The Warriors. Samurai lizards and ninja ducks. That should be a recipe for a great episode. After failing to defeat Bucky O'Hare yet again, the Air Marshall is fired and stripped of his medals. It's so bad that KOMPLEX gives Air Marshall's former position to Frix and Frax, Air Marshall's bumbling lackeys. The Air Marshall teams up with a samurai lizard named Slyly Zod, who seeks to destroy Kanopis III, the planet of the four armed ducks (Deadeye's home planet). They kidnap Willy and force him to work on their satellites that will overheat Kanopis III. Meanwhile, Deadeye aligns himself with the ninja Kamikae Kamo to do battle with the lizards and rescue Willy, who set up all the satellites with self-destruct sequences. The day is saved, Slyly Zod is defeated, and Air Marshall gets his job back after Frix and Frax end up failing worse than he did.
A very basic episode honestly. It was good to get more focus on Deadeye and more lore on his species. The pacing on this one did feel a bit messy, but not as bad as a few other episodes. The saga of Toad Air Marshall is definitely the highlight of the episode with seeing him at his lowest just to ultimately get his job back because he's less incompetent. I do wish the whole crew had more to do in this one as they really felt pushed into the background for this one, especially Bucky who feels less and less important to the show with his name on the title.
Episode 12: Bye Bye Berserker Baboon. In the latest plan from KOMPLEX and Toadborg, the toads are to invade Betelgeusia, the home of the berserker baboons. Equipped with special goggles that make the baboons look like weaklings, it negates the fears of the toad army. As Bucky and the crew go to the planet as Bruiser is being awarded a medal and asked to teach the baboon troops, the toads attack. When Bucky and the crew manage to fight them off, Toadborg uses their last ditch weapon, a beast known as the Terror Toad, which appears nigh-unstoppable. Willy manages to deactivate the goggles to scare off the toads and Bucky manages to use bugs from a bug planet to lure the Terror Toad back into Toadborg's ship. We also get this quick story where Willy realizes he's being manipulated by a girl named T.J to cheat for her. He ultimately turns her down in the end and gets invited to the school dance with the girl from On the Blink (who I guess is named Susie, even though I don't recall it being said in the episodes).
I liked this episode a lot. I liked Betelgeusia being this jungle planet with houses in the trees. It's also good to see another episode that focuses on Bruiser as he has quickly grown on me as one of my favorites in the show. I liked the episode's concept of using the shape altering goggles, but still having the toads not know where they're invading and wondering why the weak looking apes they see are so heavy. Nice touches that might go unnoticed on other cartoons. While you could throw criticism at the show having Willy be the solution for fixing everything, I don't mind it as much since we're quick to learn he's a boy genius from the get go, and him being the "Mr. Fix-It" for situations such as this are a fine way to get our protagonists out of serious jams. And while again the rest of the Righteous Indignation crew feel shoved to the background, at least they feel more useful in this episode, especially with Bucky having a major hand in saving the day this time around.
Episode 13: The Taking of Pilot Jenny. And so we've reached the final episode of Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars. Jenny and Blinky end up captured by Toadborg. He offers to give her back in exchange for the climate converter that the rabbits reclaimed back in episode 4. While Bucky seems secretive to everyone (especially Willy), it becomes agreed upon to give the converter back to the toads. However, this was all a plan by Bucky to destroy the climate converter the toads placed on Warren and use their reprogrammed one to restore Warren to how it was before the toads invaded. When Toadborg proves useless, KOMPLEX takes matters into his own hands and uses a robotic form to do battle with Bucky and Dogstar's crew the Indefatigable. Bucky manages to defeat KOMPLEX, seemingly destroying it (though that feels vague) and bring the reprogrammed climate converter to Warren. We learn that Jenny being captured was the plan all along to finally free Warren. We end on a mega happy ending with the toads being chased off and the rabbit inhabitants of Warren reclaiming their home.
For the finale, this does feel the right mix of satisfying while also being just open ended enough. We get our resolution for Warren that we set the show up with in the pilot. Got to see KOMPLEX actually do something other than being the looming villain, got to see Dogstar's crew in action (though the lack of Mimi did disappoint). We get our big mega happy ending, and unlike other shows (ReBoot, Sonic SatAM) at least we do end with enough resolution. And like I said about open endings, we don't know if KOMPLEX is fully destroyed, or if the Toad Invasion is truly stopped. The only resolution we know is that of Warren's fate. So, that all worked great. As for nitpicks, I do feel this again could have benefited from being a two parter to let it breathe and not suffer from pacing issues. Also, the severe lack of Toad Air Marshall in this episode feels kind of weird, especially since he's been in almost every other episode and has served as one of the main antagonists. But in the end, despite some issues, this was a satisfying enough way to say goodbye to the crew of the Righteous Indignation.
BEST EPISODE: BYE BYE BERSERKER BABOON
While it would seem more logical to give this to either the pilot episodes or the finale, I do feel the episode I found the most entertainment from was the Berserker Baboon plot. I liked the concept with the goggles and the Terror Toad, thought the resolution was great and even enjoyed seeing some more focus on Willy as he develops his character.
WORST EPISODE: THE KREATION KONSPIRACY
While I don't feel there was any outright terrible episodes of Bucky, this one was the weakest. We do get some good history building with the creators of KOMPLEX, but the rushed ending and the giant ape planet just doesn't click with me. In the end, I do feel this was the weakest Bucky episode of the bunch.
DOES THIS SHOW HOLD UP?: YES
DID IT DESERVE A LONGER RUN?: YES
FINAL THOUGHTS
FINAL RATING: A-
NEXT TIME ON "ONE SEASON WONDERS"...
We wax on, wax off and wax nostalgic with The Karate Kid
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