Tale Spin Volume 1
Collected adventures of bears in airplanes – does it get any better?
Tags: Disney Afternoon Categories: DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Nov 2nd, 2006
Back in the early 90’s before the number of channels available exploded, there wasn’t a lot of places for kids to watch cartoons after school. Nickelodeon was around as well as Disney, but even then the number of households that had cable wasn’t as great as today. At the time after-school cartoons were usually placed on one of the non-network stations in any given market. Disney, having a wealth of cartoon experience, decided to build up a block of programming, sell it in syndication, and call it The Disney Afternoon. This allowed the company to expand its viewerbase reaching those households that didn’t yet have cable, or subscribe to the Disney Channel (at the time it was a pay channel, much like HBO). Disney took an older cartoon (Gummi Bears) and 2 other cartoon that was already in production (DuckTales and Chip & Dale’s Rescue Rangers – appearing together in a one hour syndication deal) and created a wholly new series for The Disney Afternoon – Tale Spin.
Taking characters from a movie with a specific setting, story and time and transplanting them into something new isn’t easy. With DuckTales and Rescue Rangers, those characters had been on numerous adventures already. With Tale Spin a brand new direction was being paved for the characters that would appear, and appropriateness would be key. The fun-loving easy-going nature of Baloo lent itself to the plane-for-hire setting used as a (pardon the pun) launching pad for the show. Taking this and keeping as much of the base character traits as could be transported (King Louie owns a nightclub and Sheer Khan is a ruthless business mogul) would serve very well for a new show.
Naturally an extended cast was needed to keep Tale Spin from being “just more Jungle Book with planes” so Baloo was set up to lose his business and be indebted to new owner Rebecca Cunningham. Kit Cloudkicker, Baloo’s navigator and Rebecca’s daughter Molly helped to round out the primary cast, with heavy support from the aforementioned Sheer Khan, but the main nemesis would prove to be a new foe – air pirate Don Karnage.
Clearly taking place in a type of post-WWII setting timeline, many of the stories, particularly the unspoken tension between Baloo and Ms. Cunningham would be drawn from films of the period. The screwball comedies (think Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Frank Capra) of the 30’s and 40’s served not only the premise of the show, but lent very well to some plot devices that would be appropriate to adapt for kid-friendly viewing.
My own personal experience with the show was that I would rush home from work and watch it every day. The Jungle Book was one of my favorite films growing up, and I was excited to see new adventures of Baloo. When watching the show and finding out just how this character was transplanted but kept intact, I was only more than eager to keep watching – and I did for the program’s four year run.
Now Disney has begun gathering up these programs and putting them into sets that serve as somewhat of “seasons” though that wouldn’t be quite accurate. Many syndicated cartoons, especially during the time Tale Spin was on, (and still do for the most part) would generate a large number of episodes up front, say, 50 or so, then the next year produce 20. This is a rough estimate and not an exact figure, but more of an example of the methods used in syndicated cartoon production. It is this reason why season sets won’t work for a show like Tale Spin. Instead, we are treated to volume sets, which work just as well.
Volume 1 takes the first 27 episodes (4 of which are the pilot episodes – one long episode split up) and puts them on 3 discs. I was glad to see the show be released, and it holds up to this day as entertaining. Sure, some of the production values are a bit dated (this was, after all, syndicated kids programming) but the content is still quite good. The image quality is as good as it can be given the source material and the audio is also quite good.
While the collection is most welcome (a second collection has yet to be formally announced) it seems a bit rushed together. There are absolutely no extras to speak of. It would have been nice to have a production documentary from the folks behind the show as to how they came up with the idea, or something from the cast as how they approached their roles – especially given Baloo and Louie being in a completely different setting than what viewers were initially familiar with. Something on The Disney Afternoon would have been welcome to give some context to the show. Episode commentary about the inspiration for the storylines would have been nice. Anything.
Tale Spin is a great cartoon for kids of all ages, and fans of The Jungle Book’s Baloo will be especially thrilled. If you missed the show when it first aired, do yourself a favor and at least rent this.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ A great transition for the main character + Good episodes that pay homage to the screwball comedies of yesteryear |
8.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
| - No extras | |
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Despite the lack of any extras the set is still worth picking up for fans of the show. | |
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Tags: Disney Afternoon
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Nov 2nd, 2006 and is filed under DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
