Bucky O’Hare: Remembering Saturday Morning Cartoons

From another dimension, another time and space, a Saturday morning cartoon released in 1991 with some insane characters guaranteed to blow your photon accelerators.

Created from the original comic book written in 1978 by Larry Hama and Michael Golden, the amazing Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars cartoon sadly only ran for one season of thirteen episodes.

The original series was created along with product line of action figures for each character that went along with the show. I can still remember being jealous of the neighbor kids’ Bucky O’Hare action figure.

• Bucky O’Hare – A bright green hare and Captain of the Righteous Indignation.
• Jenny – The telepathic pilot cat who also had a thing for Willy DuWitt.
• Bruce – A Betelgeusian Berserker Baboon who was the previous mechanic of the Righteous Indignation.
• Willy DuWitt – The super intelligent teenager from San Francisco who gets pulled through realities to become the mechanic of the Righteous Indignation.
• Deadeye Duck – The one-eyed four-armed duck gunner with a Scottish accent.
• AFC Blinky – The comic relief android that identifies all the foreboding issues for the crew with the line “Calamity and woe!”

The main story is built around the character Willy DuWitt who, after creating a photon accelerator, is sucked into a parallel universe: “The Aniverse.” Landing on the spaceship Righteous Indignation in the middle of a battle, Willy takes over as the ship’s mechanic, while the crew fight off Komplex – an A.I. set on universal domination and the toad empire.

The first thing about this cartoon that grabs your attention is the theme song. It’s energetic, intense and sticks you right into the action delivering everything you need to know to pick up an episode (it’s all so ridiculously catchy).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAviHTWpMVM

What really drew me to this cartoon when I was younger was the originality behind the whole concept. Even by today’s standards, it stands out pretty well. It’s got a crew of very different and original concepts, parallel dimensional travelers, and an artificial intelligence that was originally designed as a marketing tool taking control of a whole species for universal domination.

All these ideas would have been marvelous on their own, but to have them all combined into one television series really makes Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars a memorable experience.

Sadly the story of Bucky O’Hare was not one that would last. Apart from two supporting video games that were released, there is only a re-release of the comic books as a Omnibus Edition in 2007 and the Bucky O’Hare DVD collection that was released in 2013.  

Although that seems to be the end of the tale, Bucky O’Hare still lives on in the memories of those who can still remember the line, “Let’s croak us some toads!”