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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
TaleSpin Part 1
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Step into the cockpit with us as we navigate the strange skies of TaleSpin, one of Disney's most fascinating animated experiments from the early 1990s. What happens when you take characters from The Jungle Book, put them in cargo planes, and set them in a 1930s-inspired world with sky pirates?
Introduction to TaleSpin
Speaker 1Spin it, let's begin it. Bear and grin it when you're in it. Wait, shit, that's fat. Spin it, let's begin it. Bear and grin it when you're in it. Oh nice, you can win it in a minute when you spin it. Spin it, spin it. Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 2Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative, all weapons.
Speaker 1Now Charge the lightning field. We are going to talk today about Zabalu.
Speaker 2It's almost like he should be running from Nazis in the show. Well, I mean, he kind of is Kind of is Kind of Kind of.
Speaker 1I mean, we can get into a little bit of that. There's one. Wow, remind me of that later. Okay, because there's actually one specific Nazi story.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, there was a short story in disney adventures magazine. It had a group of dogs I believe they're called the homes that were distinctly identified as german. They dressed like nazi soldiers from the houndland. Oh boy, they never reprinted that.
Speaker 2I couldn't actually find the comic anywhere online, but I did look for it Disney's really good about well, they used to be really good about disappearing things. It was really hard to actually find Song of the South for like a really long time, right yeah. They can't really do that anymore with the internet the way it is, but still they're pretty proficient.
Speaker 1Marvel Disney Adventures, volume two, number one, with Michael Jordan on the cover.
Speaker 2Oh good, Then it has to be about Nazis.
Speaker 1Tailspin the dogs of war. Oh boy, welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. This is your friendly bush pilot, jake, and co-pilot for this flight that you're on today.
Speaker 2Oh, I'm Skip. I'm the little kid Skip. Oh, it's little Skipper. I'm the kid in it, little Skipper cloud hopper, I mean close enough.
Speaker 1I mean I didn't want it to go too on the bare nose, as it were.
Speaker 2Just the bare necessities, nothing.
Speaker 1I too love that porn that sounds really softcore.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, but here's the thing this isn't actually technically a mainstream Dispatch Ajax episode. It is in fact Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1Thank God you remembered because I wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 2We're going back in time Back in time.
Speaker 1Huey Lewis, get out of here. Hey, somebody get the broom. I locked the doors. How did he get in here? We are going back to our childhoods in the early 90s, where apparently things could just be on TV for like a year, but yet they will be seared into your brain forever. It's like they have 20 seasons. Almost every time we go back to do one of these cartoons, it was like, oh no, it had four episodes and it was like I saw that all the time. What? Yeah, I had all episodes and it's like I saw that all the time.
Speaker 2What? Yeah, I had all the toys, but it was only on for three weeks. It's really crazy.
Speaker 1It was just a commercial after Bob Vila's home.
Speaker 2That's the only way I know about it. I had so much Captain Power shit. By the way, we have to do Captain Power. You remember Captain Power?
Speaker 1I have a vague recollection of Captain Power. Perhaps it would be a learning experience for myself as well.
Speaker 2Oh, it was a interactive TV show where if you bought the toy, it would get the ship and the pilot in it and then at a certain scene, if they would shoot, the enemies would shoot, it would pop the guy out of the ejector seat of the ship while you're watching it. Huh, no, I don't think I know about that.
Speaker 1Well, that sounds like something we're going to have to cover that, yes. We definitely have to cover Captain Power, I mean plus, it has Sven Ole Thorsen in it, so done.
Speaker 2The Sven Ole Thorsen.
Speaker 1One and only.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 1That was a get Played God. Yeah, it doesn't even pull up. I don't care, we'll deal with it.
Speaker 2We'll talk about it later. We'll do it live, all right? Yeah, oh God, can we just do this live Nine hours each?
Speaker 1episode would be. Well, we'd have to really buckle down, reign it in, yeah, yeah. But we're not going to reign today in.
Speaker 2Today we're talking about the Disney animated adventure Tailspin. And before any of you say, wow, that seems a little mainstream for the kind of stuff you do, this is a weird one. It's been sticking in our craw for decades because of how odd it is, but not out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1For what dc, dc, what disney was doing at the time well, yes and no, but I suppose we'll get into that as it comes up. So, obviously, tailspin T-A-L-E-S-P-I-N not a tailspin that a maneuver plane would go into crashing down.
Speaker 2It's a reverse American tail with five yes.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you know I put on that song the other day at work.
Speaker 2It was a duet right. My mom used to make me try and learn it on the piano.
Speaker 1Let's see who originally did Somewhere Out there.
Speaker 2Well, I know, it's Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram.
Speaker 1Oh, it was James Ingram, Okay yeah, yeah, but they also had like the little kids doing it. Oh yeah, in the actual movie. I don't think the Linda Ronstadt version happens to like the end credits or whatever, but I could be wrong about that, because I haven't seen that film in oh I don't know 30 years.
Speaker 2Oh, at least 30 years. We're in our 40s, 35 years maybe.
Origins and Disney Afternoon Context
Speaker 1Well, it came out in 1986, so Okay, oh okay.
Speaker 2So that would have been almost 40 years. 40 years, yeah, yeah, fuck, that's about right. I've never seen in the theater.
Speaker 1So yeah, boy, but anyway, this is a weird one it's a pun on a plane maneuver, but also it's another pun about spinning tails or yarns about the adventures in this animal land, animal land over there, which always says the thing, all of these anthropomorphic animated shows. I was watching an episode. It might have been one of the ones that we're going to cover here, but they talk about the Easter bunny.
Speaker 2They talk about other fictional, anthropomorphic One.
Speaker 1there's always in these anthropomorphic one there's always in these anthropomorphic cartoon worlds. There are animals that walk upright and talk and have a personality and conscience, but there are also the lower animals, where it's like they'll be going through a jungle, and there are birds flying over them, you know, or hogs running wild, it's like well wait, you're a bear and you're a raccoon it's like it's racially stratified or something.
Speaker 2Yeah, what is the breakdown of that? It's the goofy pluto conundrum.
Speaker 1It is yeah, well, literally is actually it drives me crazy and that's not even getting into. Like, if you do easter bunny, well one, it's another anthropomorphic fictionalized creature inside your universe, but it's also referencing Christianity. Yeah, jesus.
Speaker 2Well, I mean to be fair. Easter was a pagan holiday long before it was that, so it is kind of make a case.
Speaker 1I mean, I think we're going to have to take some, some leaps to get out of the Christian influence in this culture they've created.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, but you're going to have to take some leaps talking about anthropomorphic animals to walk up and talk too. So I mean, you know, so like in that scenario, especially the Easter Bunny would be more like actual Jesus to them.
Speaker 1ironically, Right, Because it's another animal Easter Bunny crucified for our sins.
Speaker 2Yeah, that poor bunny nailed to a cross.
Speaker 1Would you nail each of his ears as well, to a tiny little cross?
Speaker 2All four of them. It's just got a tiny protrudence at the top with another little bar. A little bar, or maybe a really wide one, because they have big ears.
Speaker 1Are you doing like the feet?
Speaker 2You're just like oh, we ran out of of nails, so we're just using one for both ears. Yeah, yes, that's exactly, that's it.
Speaker 1That's it exactly.
Speaker 2Yep, uh, our long, a long treatise on how we would crucify the easter bunny, the easter bunny specifically, but you don't nail these feet because I mean they're very large, but you know, I just imagine dangling like it's a stuffed animal. Yeah, it was already dark, so this is an unpleasant image in my mind. It didn't really go dark, it was already there, we just kind of stumbled across it.
Speaker 1Let's punch a spear into the side of that particular image and move along punch's pilot is like a ferret or something like. Let's not get in anymore. One of the weasels from Roger Rabbit, that's what it is, maybe the hyenas from Lion King.
Speaker 2Hamlet, I mean Lion King, yeah.
Speaker 1Don't you mean Kimba the white lion?
Speaker 1That's exactly what I mean. But this was not based on a Japanese cartoon from decades before Now. This was a really interesting kind of adult take on a cartoon tale that is a reference to the Rudyard Kipling Jungle Book and Second Jungle Book stories from many, many years before. It's odd because when they made the Jungle Book they kind of took the source material and then did their own thing, disney-fied it yes, completely Disney-fied it to where it's not even recognizable. The characters, especially the characters that are transported into the Tailspin story, they bear no resemblance to the original. The Disney version of Baloo is essentially created from scratch. There is a bear of that name, but he's grave and sober, kind of a schoolmaster figure In that story.
Speaker 1Bagheera is actually the reckless and fun-loving one.
Speaker 2Baloo had to get sober so he could give the gusty of his kids back.
Speaker 1Baloo has to watch the orphan kids on Christmas time and they run madcap adventures where they kind of learn about each other and realize that— but they're Kipling.
Speaker 2Kipling got into a lot of the legal procedural stuff in the divorce. It's kind of a dry read. But when they made Junko book.
Speaker 1They made their own version of the story and it's that version that is kind of transported by these creators into their own version. So Jim Magon which I'm assuming that's how you say his name, because his name is a fucking fantasy character name it is J-Y-M-N.
Speaker 2Oh, I was going to mention that. Yeah, the weirdest way to spell Jim possible. Yeah, what are you doing? That's such a millennial name. That's like a. It's supposed to be Jimen, is that what? Um, jimen Hanzo, that's his name.
Speaker 1Wow, awesome. I love Jaiman Hanzo.
Speaker 2Yeah, but Jim.
Speaker 1Magon.
Speaker 2Magon, destroyer of worlds.
Speaker 1Is he kind of the main man responsible for this show Like Lobo? Is Lobo the main man responsible for the show?
Speaker 2Well, that's his nickname the main man.
Speaker 1Oh is it? Yeah, that's a shitty thing. A Bastiche might say.
Speaker 2So you know that one, but you don't. But then how can you say I keep pronouncing Bastiche as if he's classy and sophisticated?
Speaker 1I imagine Lobo more as like a what's the rapey Looney Tunes skunk.
Speaker 2Pepe Le Pew, Pepe Le Pew. I don't see that strangely, I don't. I see more of a Wolverine analog but I like my version better. He seems pretentious and smokes hand-rolled cigarettes.
Speaker 1I like that. It's all a facade. Actually, when he closes the door he takes off his big wig and he has slick back French hair and he puts on a nice smoking jacket.
Speaker 2Do the French have slick back hair? Is that a stereotype?
Speaker 1No, but if he is a 1930s Frenchman of high esteem and wealth, then yeah, that's how I'm going to cast him.
Speaker 2Then he was in the Vichy government.
Speaker 1He was. He was settling in Malaysia. He had a plantation.
Speaker 2Well, I mean Took off his wig and there was a beret underneath. He's wearing that black and white striped long sleeve shirt with suspenders.
Speaker 1I'm a high ranking French Foreign Legion official.
Speaker 2He's smoking a baguette Smoking a baguette.
Speaker 1That'll fuck you up, man Dude. So Jim, again, he's kind of the main creator of Tailspin. He had been involved in both creation of DuckTales and the Gumi Bars Gumi Bars. And so Disney wanted to start the Disney Afternoon block of programming. There was a name for this, I think it was called Disney Afternoon block of programming. There was a name for this, I think it was called Disney Afternoon.
Speaker 2I read this somewhere there was a name for this that they were trying to push, but I don't think it stuck. I can't remember. I'll think of it later.
Speaker 1All I can see is Disney Afternoon when I look for it.
Speaker 2Yeah, it doesn't matter Continue.
Speaker 1So you had like the Gummy Bears and Duck Tales and Chippendale Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck as part of that, but getting away from the duck and, I guess, chipmunk based adventures.
Speaker 2Well, there weren't a lot of those, there was just the one really.
Speaker 1Well, you know it fits. It's a genre of its own. They were looking for other pitches for that and Magon had an original idea for a sitcom called the B Players. So this is about one-time Disney animation stars and would-be stars trying to win a comeback or first-time roles in a tune version of Hollywood. Baloo was conceived of as one of the leading characters of the show. Horace and Clarabelle would also have been regulars. But when he pitched it there wasn't much interest from Disney. They didn't like that idea. They didn't see it had much of a future. It would have been kind of like a Roger Rabbit-y kind of thing.
Speaker 2I think that's got some action that might have played. I don't know.
Speaker 1I mean, if anything, it's kind of what the Rescue Ranger no, not the Rescue Ranger, the Chip and Dale movie from a couple of years ago did. Oh okay, when they're kind of like oh, these are old stars of animation. One went through like surgery to become CGI now.
Speaker 2It was actually pretty good. I regret not having seen it. I've heard it's sort of like on par with like Detective Pikachu and stuff, where it's surprisingly good. Yeah, it is. It's like, oh wow.
Speaker 1I didn't really give this much of a chance, but it's funny, it's fairly well written, it's interesting.
Speaker 2I should go back and watch that yeah.
Speaker 1You don't need to carve out a slice of your life to see it, but it's a decent time.
Speaker 2Well, good thing I don't have one.
Speaker 1No life to carve out. So when they ixnayed that Magan idea, he dusted off a previous idea that he had been working on when he was working on DuckTales, because there'd been some idea to make a Launchpad McQuack show where he'd be the operator of an air freight service and the main character series.
Speaker 2They were obsessed with Launchpad. He was the only real crossover between DuckTales and Darkwing. Duck, yeah, I never really got it what is their thing. Did they think he was like Han Solo or something? I mean, what was the? I mean, he's kind of supposed to be a little bit, but. But I mean, han is obviously based off an old archetype too, but like that's, why were they so obsessed with Launchpad? I don't get it.
Speaker 1I don't know. I guess they thought he had wings. The character could fly.
Speaker 2That's why he showed up later in a sitcom around the same era. Wings Wasn't Tony Shalhoub in that he was. He played a sort of a racially insensitive stereotype of a taxi driver. Fantastic, oh yeah. And that show actually had some decent actors in it and then a couple that never did anything ever again. But you know.
Speaker 1Maybe later in this podcast we're going to wing it ourselves.
Speaker 2So with Paul.
Speaker 1McCartney. No, but we will do the Paul McCartney cyborg that's been around since the early 80s, so he died in the 70s, remember? Yeah, wasn't replaced with a like a cyborg version.
Speaker 2It was a clone of Joe Biden, Weirdly one of the Biden clones, mm.
Speaker 1Hmm, oh, joe Biden. Weirdly, one of the Biden clones, joseph.
Speaker 2Robonet, robonet. Yeah, see, there you go. They're onto something now.
Speaker 1I was trying Robonet Biden. It still sucked. But at least it was an idea of a joke.
Speaker 2No, no, there's something there. There's a twinkle in your eye. I can see it.
Speaker 1But when they'd come up with that idea it didn't quite go anywhere. So magnum kind of took the concept and combined it with his b players pitch and that was the genesis for tailspin now I have a question.
Speaker 2So in the b players thing, was the idea that it was like the second leads in these different disney properties? I think so Because that's an interesting idea actually, If it was like Baloo and then like I don't know, the Candelabra from.
Speaker 1Yeah, the show was to be set in a Roger Rabbit-esque world where cartoons and humans coexist, focusing on Baloo and his comedic partner, ricky Ratt, who the F is that yeah, fucking no, as the two attempted to make their way to cartoon stardom and encourage their cast of side character partners.
Speaker 2It's kind of like extras in a certain way. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Actually, there's a lot of directions you could go with that. I kind of think that would be really cool.
Speaker 1The villain was to be an assistant director who was also a toon jealous of his incompetent director, jay Audubon Woodlor. Who the F is that?
Speaker 2I feel like this is coming from somebody's real place, you know.
Speaker 1What the hell J Audubon Woodlor, father of the mischievous Humphrey the Bear? Who the hell's Humphrey the Bear?
Speaker 2I don't know what the hell any of this is.
Speaker 1Humphrey. The Bear is from the 1950s.
Speaker 2There's a bear in the goofy cartoon what the wow.
Speaker 1Also, it's a deep cut it's all seems to be deep cut stuff, but it would be the main character ricky bratt, peter pointer, poacher spaniel, okay see, I'm already way more into this than what we got and what we we used to watch all the time. Fawn Deer, an airheaded toon deer who starred in toilet paper ads.
Speaker 2The more you dig into that, that sounds even cooler.
Speaker 1Timothy Tortoise, Roderick's slow-witted and lethargic flunky Waldo Z Platypus, a toon platypus who specialized in physical comedy, kind of like Gonzo, what these all have to be real deep cut characters, right. Buck Steed, a pompous and dumb horse toon who believes he didn't need a writer to be famous.
Speaker 2What a tragic character.
Speaker 1Yeah, again an interesting idea, very.
Speaker 2I could see why they would have no idea what the hell he was talking about.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, no, I think it was maybe a little too high concept and probably worked to an older audience.
Speaker 2Yeah, but you know what? That's the kind of show they would make today, 100% A show like that would totally play today and would have no shot in hell back then.
Speaker 1No, I don't think it would. Although it was coming off Roger Rabbit and like a cool world and an evil tunes, you were kind of like doing that blending of live action, sure Tune stuff for an adult audience.
Speaker 2But that's just more like the format and setting. The concept, though, is something you would totally see today, yeah, and I think it could totally work Sounds awesome actually.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't know, maybe Well, we'll get to it later, but they are remaking Tailspin. Yes, I've heard tails.
Speaker 2Yes, oh God, I've heard duck tails of this occurrence.
Speaker 1That joke was a feather in your cap, I think. Yeah, they did remake DuckTales. I didn't see any of that?
Speaker 2I didn't either. I heard good things, though, david Tennant. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'll watch it someday, but I'm not going to rush out to see it.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, despite us covering Tailspin, I wouldn't say either of us. We're definitely not Disney adults, we're not magical kingdom. Heads out here, no.
Speaker 2Though not to denigrate the demographic. I know a lot of people that I respect their opinions of pop culture, that are obsessed with disney. To go to disney world every year, you know like, okay, great, not for me necessarily, but I, I get it okay, yeah, I'm glad you enjoy.
Speaker 1It seems like an expensive hobby. Yeah, no, but uh, you know to each their own. But I've just never been that into disney. I kind of stopped watching most of disney cartoons after I don't know my teens yeah, well, I, I was more of a warner brothers guy, anyway I you know the great looney tunes versus uh, disney debate, kind of like your marvel versus dc yeah, it kind of is the same.
TaleSpin's Concept and Characters
Speaker 2yeah, coke versus pepsi, the whole like weird dichotomies. We used to have the duo world we used to live in. You know, bugs Bunny was more like Groucho Marx and it was witty and it was funny and Mickey was kind of an idiot and Goofy was slapstick. Like I would much rather watch something funny and witty than you know then Steamboat Willie or whatever the fuck you know, just don't give a shit.
Speaker 1Oh you sorry my lady, I have to get back home.
Speaker 2Steamboat Willie is coming on for the 574th time and I've got to be there, which is now literally in the public domain.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, I saw there's the guy who's in Terrorfire he's in the. Steamboat Willie horror movie they're making.
Speaker 2Oh, so it's like the Winnie the Pooh.
Speaker 1Yeah, which is what they're doing with all of these Screenboat is what they're calling it.
Speaker 2Whatever I mean, I get the novelty. I don't dislike the idea of making that kind of movie, but if they're just going to crank these out without a lot of actual conceptual effort, then whatever.
Speaker 1No, I mean, it's the same way Get Cocaine Bear and then Craccoon and Methigator.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, there's a, there's a shark, one too.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think that was just like Cocaine Shark. I think it is just Cocaine Shark actually. So boring yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, cocaine Bear wasn't even all that good. No, at least Cocaine Bear wasn't.
Speaker 1It was a true story.
Speaker 2Wasn't that Elizabeth Banks, didn't she do that one? I want to say yes, I think she's done a bunch of okay-ish movies. That's like her entire. I'm glad she's directing and I don't think the direction is necessarily the problem with any of the films, because she did that reboot of Charlie's Angels and she did. She was at least in that Power Rangers reboot. You know, it's just. Those aren't great movies.
Speaker 1Fact, when Jim Magan was asked about attracting a more adult audience, he mentioned that we've always had it in the back of our minds that we want to do something a little grittier than, say, ducktales or Rescue Rangers. And when Tailspin came along we said oh boy, this is great Tony the Tiger jumped into frame. It definitely has a sophistication that a lot of other TV animation lacks. He also went on to say well, at the time and locale of the show, both suggest those old movie serials of the 30s it was a very exciting time to be a kid when things were still exotic and mysterious.
Speaker 1So we want to do a Terry and the Pirates kind of show. Also, what appealed to us about the era was the scale of things. Today technology has miniaturized everything, which isn't visually exciting, but in that era anything powerful was really big, which is great for a cartoon show. We've also got atmosphere of that time with the nightclubs, Art Deco and the old cars. It just gives the show an exciting feel.
Speaker 2Yeah, there is still that lens of Western racism about all of the whole, like everything was exotic and discovering new things which were just things that were already there, that white people don't know about.
Speaker 1When they say discovering, it means white people found out about them. That's exactly what they mean. Yes, Pioneers, Settlers. I should probably get into a little bit of what the show was before we get too into some of its source material. Source material Tailspin is. It's kind of set in this 1930s-ish era where there seems to have been some type of great war but yet it's pre-television. It's really undefined, but it's kind of this 1930s, 1940s adventure serial vibe.
Speaker 2It's definitely a pre-World War II, post-World War I era.
Speaker 1Where Baloo he's kind of the ace cargo pilot making runs to different islands in kind of a tropical setting. He's a very careless businessman. He gets his business and his plane foreclosed upon. He loses it to the bank. And then Rebecca Cunningham.
Speaker 2We have to address this fact. You've got Baloo, you've got Shere Khan, you've got Kit Cloudkicker, you've got Don Carnage, you've got Mad Dog and then Rebecca Cunningham or Becky for short yeah, I one of these things is not like the other it's very odd.
Speaker 1Rebecca, and Molly Cunningham too, don't forget, yes, oh, her small child, because she's a single mother who has invested her life's fortune because she wanted to have her own business and she thinks that she can turn Baloo's failing cargo pilot biz into a cash cow. There's also a wildcat, which is their mechanic, who's a tiger, I think.
Speaker 2No, no, he's a lion.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think he's a lion. There's also Kit Cloudkicker, which is kind of, I'll be honest, he kind of felt like the Wesley Crusher of the show.
Speaker 2Oh, he's the Richie. Yes, this pseudo, pseudo.
Speaker 1I wouldn't say main character, but there's long-term main character vibes from this kid I think he's supposed to be the one that kids relate to.
Speaker 1This is obviously sort of geared toward adults a lot of the drama comes from real world adult situations. But lou couldn't manage his finances and he lost his plane and he just wants to do his job and do it to the best of his ability and and this this woman has has bought it and now has turned him into an employee. Yeah, it's uh, rebecca from cheers, which we'll talk about. Yeah, we'll definitely get into that here in a minute.
Speaker 2Just from picking, characters from the jungle book alone. Like back then, you really would only have known that when you saw it as a kid. I mean, they had it on vhs but it wasn't like it was like on tv all the time or anything. It was very obviously, I think, supposed to tap into the nostalgia of people of a certain age that watched it when they were young, and so I think they put kit in there to like give you the little kid tie in.
Speaker 1So the kids would relate to it Because, unlike a DuckTales where the trio are kind of like your front and center, this is kind of a story about grownups. Yeah.
Speaker 2Doing adult things with adult concerns. Yeah, real X-rated, stuff.
Speaker 1Man Baloo had a hell of a hog, and that thing was not anthropomorphized at all. She got Balooed, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2Oh, I know exactly what you mean. More than once they reference a Baloo job.
Speaker 1I mean, I don't know how you paint that up for kids but In a lot of ways it harkened back to the Karl Barks stories, you know the Scrooge McDuck kind of thing, A little more adult-tinged, less kiddy. It was still very relatable to kids adventure tales, just with adult versions and concepts at the underpinning.
Speaker 2And adult dynamics. Ducktales that's a little more simple. Huey, louie, dewey have a rich uncle. They go on wacky adventures. This one it's about failure and loss and economic turns and yeah, blue wants financial freedom. And then interpersonal dynamics that are way more complicated than Duck Tales.
Speaker 1Yeah, both main characters want to be good father and or mother figures to the small ones in their life.
Speaker 2Yeah, another non-traditional family which is fascinating, especially for Disney at that time.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's definitely interesting and not of the time.
Speaker 2As we go along. I think we can make some argument about some of the other things in this weird era for Disney, like Goof Troop for instance, but I'm sure we'll stumble across that as we go, we might.
Speaker 1I mean, if you want to talk about the dynamics of the blue becky relationship, you know how it is distinctly based on cheers as inspiration and a little bit of moonlighting yeah, a little moonlighting.
Speaker 2There's a lot of will, they won't they, which is really bizarre for a kid's disney show, especially like a like an after-school show in 1990. It definitely has a post diane cheers archetype because that show is definitely about two different. Cheers is two different shows. But the Rebecca era Cheers thing I mean it's right there, they don't even cover it up. Her name is Rebecca Cunningham for Christ's sake.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, I mean they were distinctly going for that vibe. Apparently, in the original version she's more of more corporate, you know like she came with like a suit and she came from money. They decided to tone that down, make her a little more working class, which is actually, I think, more complex and more nuanced.
Speaker 2as much as it sounds like they're dumbing it down, it actually, I think, adds another level of class, commentary and things, because otherwise it's like she could have basically been the villain from Major League.
Speaker 1But making her a more relatable character with their own goals. You had Shere Khan for that kind of corporate elite class dynamic. For her she's just a struggling businessman who's trying to deal with this lazy a-hole that she's kind of stuck with.
Speaker 2On top of being a single mom. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean there's, yeah, I think, toning the corporate thing down on paper. You would think, oh, they made it more capitalist friendly. But no, it actually adds another big layer of the struggle of making it in the world with all of these challenges.
Unique Adult Themes and Dynamics
Speaker 1Yeah, you're making kind of a rookie entrepreneur who's put all of the money she has into this business. You know kind of a bad idea really, but she's just trying to like get through and make it day to day and try to make this thing work Same way. Baloo is the same way, like we all are, as opposed to making her from money who inherited the business and has put Baloo on the payroll to do his duty. There was this burgeoning relationship that they got into a little bit as much as a Disney show was going to. Right, they're not taking any long breaks in the back or anything.
Speaker 2There's no disclosure moment. That happens, yeah.
Speaker 1So they have this business. It was originally Baloo's Air Service Great name, baloo Nailed it but then she turned it to Hire for Hire it's actually pretty good, it's a good name. I had completely forgotten about that before. I went and rewatched some of these and I was like, oh no, that's Pretty damn clever, actually Pretty smart. One of the only other people from the Jungle Book is the Louis character.
Speaker 1The orangutan Is that right, he is an orangutan. He is the proprietor of an island restaurant, bar, airplane refueling station, kind of like Rick's in Casablanca. Anybody can gather there. It's neutral territory. Maybe he did some stuff back in the day, but he's just out slinging drinks and being the place to be.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was going to make the Casablanca analogy earlier with the setting. I know Casablanca happens during World War II, but this is very much in that kind of world, yeah Louis, the Rix or Guinan kind of vibe. That's really, really interesting. I think this actually has a lot of parallels with Casablanca too. Actually.
Speaker 1It does, but perhaps it has the most parallels with an underseen 1980s TV show that the writers and creators spoke about being an influence, called Tales of the Golden Monkey. I had never heard of this before we looked into this. I had never heard of this either. It was a primetime Wednesday night ABC show that ran from September 22nd 1982 until January 1st 1983.
Speaker 2Okay, so three months Okay.
Speaker 1It had 22 episodes, that's a full season.
Speaker 2Yeah, they got into it. I'm just shocked. I'd that's a full season. Yeah, they got into it. I'm just shocked, I'd never even heard about this.
Speaker 1Yeah, I've seen a lot of TV, completely fallen into obscurity. But it is a adventure show releasing the year after Raiders of the Lost Ark, so getting a little bit of those vibes Early aviation, indigenous locals, a lot of action and came from the mind of Don Bellisario. When this failed he would go on to use some of the actors and the Adventures of an Ace Pilot concept into his 1984 to 86 tech chopper adventure Airwolf Fuck, yeah, airwolf. And then did some stuff with Magnum, pi and Jag later on. But it tells the story of 1938 in the South Pacific.
Speaker 1An ex-fighter pilot, jake Cutter. Now he operates an air cargo service delivering in the South Seas the island of Bora Gora. Okay, he flies the Grumman Goose which is called Cutter's Goose. They distinctly took those names for the sea duck and tailspin. He has a best friend named Corky who's the pilot, kind of a drunk and a goof, a lot like Wildcat. He has a one-eyed Jack Russell Terrier. In the opening scene of the show he bets his dog's glass eye that has like gems in it and whatnot in this poker game against Nazis that he loses and so at least in the pilot he's trying to get enough money to buy the eye back for his dog, and the dog also will bark. He can communicate, so he barks. Think one bark for no, two barks for yes. But then maybe it's the opposite and it's two barks for no, one bark for yes. Which is how they have this. Should I bet your eye or shouldn't I bet your eye? At the beginning of the show they did a bit.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1It's actually one of the more enjoyable parts. It's good dog acting, I will say that. So then you have this woman that comes into the business Nice. So then you have this woman that comes into the business. She turns out to be a US spy, but she's a singer, dancer, possible movie star, vibe. You also have Bonchance Louis, played by Roddy McDowell Wow, good time, louis, that's awesome. The owner of the Monkey Bar and the French magistrate of Beauregord. Again, louis runs this bar where everybody congregates after the war Gotcha. Then there's the main villain, japanese princess, who's not played by a Japanese actress.
Speaker 2Oof.
Speaker 1Even in the mid-80s Wow, yeah, well, early 80s. You also have this German reverend who is preaching the gospel to the island, but his gospel is that he will do special blessings with the young women alone.
Speaker 2Oh, they were early on in this one, huh yeah, his private prayers.
Speaker 1In the first episode there's this I don't know, maybe she's 18, 17, 18, asian actress who's just like blessing, blessing, can I have blessing? And he's like not now, not now, we'll deal with it later. Oh, God Good thing it's to come to those who wait.
Speaker 2The video for like a prayer is playing in the background.
Speaker 1But the main bad guy is the money man from Airwolf, Do you remember? Oh?
Speaker 2yeah, with the eyepatch, yes, with the eyepatch. Okay, he always wore a white suit, fucking ruled.
Speaker 1No, no, I'm thinking of the wrong guy.
Speaker 2Oh are you thinking about the old British guy? Yes, no, that was Knight Rider. Was that Knight Rider?
Speaker 1Oh shit, William Forsythe's in a couple episodes. Oh interesting, you totally recognize him. He plays this German officer who's like one of the main bad guys. All right, Branson Richcombe is in some episodes. Wow, that's something. But yeah. So Tales of the Golden Wink was definitely a resource for the ideas of the show. Both Magnet and Mark Zasloff, who's the other main creator of Talespin, both referenced it for some of the characters, Balloon's plane and the vibe of the show, because it's very much similar. The pilot has to go on adventures and discover new lands. It's a lot of smuggling.
Speaker 2I mean it's the same kind of yeah, same trope that they use for Han Solo yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, very similar. And from what I've seen of Tales of the Golden Monkey it was like an hour and a half pilot. I got mostly through it. It's weird Opening scene is a couple of German explorers shoot weird monkey creatures and then get killed by them. That's how the show opens. It got my attention. Yeah, it felt very like Congo. Oh, okay, but with much less money. Well, much less wasted money.
Speaker 2I don't hate Congo, oh okay, but with much less money. Well, much less wasted money. I don't hate Congo.
Speaker 1You don't hate Congo. I don't hate Congo. No, it's terrible, it's really bad. We watch much worse things and there's some positives there.
Speaker 2Of course, yeah, but I mean you see Jurassic Park and then you see Congo and you're like, well, you know I can have my steak and I can have a burger.
Speaker 1They're not incompatible.
Speaker 2Which is worse?
Speaker 1I mean I eat at the same time.
Speaker 2but I double fist them.
Speaker 1I can't get enough, Put more meat in my mouth. I got a steak shake. Get a steak burger. Baby, You've combined the two things that could not be combined. You didn't stop to ask yourself should we do a thing? You just slapped it on the lunchbox.
Speaker 2Steak finds a way.
Speaker 1And you sold it. Put it in a plastic lunchbox.
Speaker 2Oh, we didn't talk about the villains. No, not at all. We're really a lot of the same main setup and premise. Yet We've got that part but we don't have the other.
Speaker 1Yeah, so obviously there are things that are going to get in Baloo and Kit and Becky's way, as it were. You have Shere Khan, one of the three characters from the actual Jungle Book story, but in this he's a corporate tycoon. He's Lex Luthor, yeah, always in a suit, looking very suave. He's the big dick swinging money, trying tocut them, put them out of business. He has his own crew of panther pilots.
Speaker 2He's got minions he's got. It's a good, uh good. Look, he's dark and mysterious and always has plans within plans, but I mean the representation of ruthless corporate evil, a very 80s trope, a very relevant one.
Speaker 1Yeah, if anything, he'd be kind of like I don't know, I mean like whatever the wealthy people that were going against Scrooge McDuck all the time, I don't even remember. Well, I didn't read that much.
Speaker 2Scrooge. Did he ever read Scrooge? I mean, did he have a wealthy foidel? He did, I don't know. It seems like he did. I just can't remember Flintheart Glomgold.
Speaker 1Okay, another wealthy person who was always.
Speaker 2I mean, we can get into DuckTales at a different time, because that's also something really interesting.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, he's another ambitious, ruthless, manipulative businessman. He's a South African-American Peking duck.
Speaker 2Oh boy does that. Wow that's a rabbit hole. Holy shit, there was a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1Yeah, holy shit. There was also John D Rockerduck, of course, of course they were going to go to Rockefeller stuff.
Speaker 2Yeah, those are all stand-ins for, like, carnegie and Rockefeller.
Speaker 1The other main bad guy in the show I would say that consistently popped up was Don Carnage. Don Carnage, I'd say he's probably one of the funnier elements of the show, sure, but he's kind of the rakish leader of a pirate society.
Speaker 2They're sky pirates, yes, which is a really weird thing we need to talk about, because being a sky pirate doesn't seem lucrative or effective. Okay, so you have pirates on ships and you have boats, and the boats are steady, they're in the water, you can go from A to B or whatever. A plane being attacked by other planes is a really weird forgive the pun, nebulous idea. Where you're like, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1If you shoot a flying contraption that is thousands of pounds and it loses control and crashes into something, thus giving you the opportunity to board it and take its stuff, you're going to find it a big heap of wreckage instead of a viable source to be mined from and sold to someone.
Speaker 2Well, it's not like in Mad Max, where you're on the road and you're chasing somebody and it's you know you catch up with them and they're still there on the ground. Or you're in the water and you're on a boat and you get to boat and the boat can sink, but most of the time boats are just going to float.
Speaker 1This one you're hanging in the air, flying around Like the pirate thing doesn't really make a lot of sense, I think in the pilot, the first time you see them attack another plane it's one of Shere Khan's planes they put grappling hooks on each wing yes, they do and then they kind of force it down, land on the water then, I guess, steal the plane and or all of its goods.
Speaker 2That was the only time I think they kind of addressed that weird disconnect there. Yeah, and they do. You're right. They have a whole scene where they show how they pirate planes. It's just as a general concept. It doesn't really seem to work very well.
Speaker 1You know what I mean? No, I think it's one of those rule of cool because it sounds oh Sky Pirate.
Speaker 2Yeah, sky Pirate, that's awesome. Yeah, all right, let's do it.
Speaker 1It's like an ice pirate, yeah, like an ice pirate Wow.
Speaker 2We have to talk about ice pirates, by the way.
Speaker 1We do need to talk about ice. There's, the voices of Tailspin were a mix of what you'd call like face actors and veteran voice actors. They wanted Phil Harris who did the original voice of Blue in the Jungle Book cartoon, but at the time that they were making Tailspin he was 85. He had trouble recreating the voice Plus. It was like a four, four hour round trip from Palm Springs. Every time it didn't end up working out. So I believe that he was the voice for, like I think, the pilot and maybe a couple episodes, but then that Harris had done. He was your main actor. For that you had Sally Struthers. She was doing Rebecca Cunningham. It was hot, let me tell you.
Sky Pirates and Villains
Speaker 2Said no one ever about Sally Struthers. Sally Struthers says Rebecca Cunningham comes in and says do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do. Nobody gets that reference. Do you not remember those commercials? Uh, no. So Sally Struthers used to do these commercials for, like, I think it was like a DeVry type trade school where she would just come on and be like do you want to make more money?
Speaker 2Sure, we all do and then the whole, this whole thing, her delivery and everything was so awful and answering her own question that it always stuck out to me that's kind of all she did until this.
Speaker 1Yeah well, coming off doing the voice of Teenage Pebbles in the Hanna-Barbera.
Speaker 2Pebbles and Bam Bam show. Oh, that's right. Yeah, they had that. I forgot that show existed.
Speaker 1You had her in All in the Family. I think she was pretty big in that.
Speaker 2Yeah, that was her big, thing, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, before her roles in the Gilmore Girls.
Speaker 2Huh, huh. Oh yeah, she is in the Gilmore Girls. I was thinking in that like, wow, what had she been doing between those things After those commercials in the 90s? I don't remember Sally Struthers at all until Gilmore Girls. She kind of disappeared.
Speaker 1Well, she was that one episode of Fish Police.
Speaker 2Oh, yes, fish Police. Yes, the funny thing is, I know exactly what you're talking about. The Simpsons even make a joke about that show in one of the Treehouse of Horror episodes. She was the mom in Dinosaurs.
Speaker 1Really she was, yeah.
Speaker 2The mom she was, yeah, she was Charlene Sinclair.
Speaker 1I did not know that.
Speaker 2It doesn't sound like her Acting. She's so well known for her varied accents and vocal work. Wait, which one was? No, I don't think she was the mom?
Speaker 1No, that was actually Jessica Walter, I think From Arrested Development.
Speaker 2No that was actually Jessica Walter, I think, from.
Speaker 1Arrested Development oh, that would make sense. Fran Sinclair, but I don't know who. Charlene Sinclair she says she was in 64 episodes, which is she might be the daughter, oh okay, which I guess would make sense if she was playing Pebbles before. Yeah, you know, Teenage Pebbles might as well have her.
Speaker 2Teenage Dinosaur is one to one. It's a logical next step.
Speaker 1You jump right in. It's kind of two sides of the same coin really, yeah.
Speaker 2It's the next step in evolution.
Speaker 1And then Kit was voiced by a couple child actors who had names, but we will move past those.
Speaker 2Guaranteed they had names. I guarantee it. You had Shere Khan played head names.
Speaker 2I guarantee it, you had sheer con played by tony jay, a veteran character actor, and this is one of the few things in this that I know way too much about. But this is crossover with a phenomenon that sadly is still going. Conservative christian organization focus on the family, run by james dobson a complete asshole produced kids programming starting in the I think, the late 80s and still going to this day, a radio drama that all the kids are into. You would be shocked at how many kids know about this and have heard it growing up, especially evangelical kids. It's called Adventures in Odyssey. It's called Adventures in Odyssey and Tony Jay was a reoccurring voice actor on that where he played, obviously one of the villains because of his voice, because he's got a great villain voice.
Speaker 2But there were a lot of these actors who were relatively mainstream that did do a lot of crossover with this just because it was steady voice actor work. The guy that was the constable in Young Frankenstein he's in a ton of that show. The actor who plays the voice of Milhouse she's in a ton of that show. It's really awful and 100% indoctrinating and brainwashing kids into evangelicalism and has really weird messages about the deep state, about pro deep state. It's really, really a bizarre show, but there's a lot of crossover with these rotating character actors in that too, and it's all around the same era. But I mean, hey, it was a paycheck, so you can't really fault them. Of course, here in this we've got mean. You'll see guys like Frank Welker come up in Tailspin and Lorenzo Music, one of the great voice actors of all time. Lorenzo Music played Sergeant Dunder in seven episodes. Frank Welker played basically whenever they needed somebody to fill in for 17 episodes he was in there.
Speaker 1Yeah, he would do a lot of side stuff there. A lot of side stuff there.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I mean, he's a guy that's always available. He's like Mark Hamill now, or Tom Kenny. You know he's there, he'll do it and he'll crush it every time.
Speaker 1The rest of the music played Tummy Gummy on the gummy hairs Completely coincidental name oh. Tummy Gummy.
Speaker 2He's got a gummy tummy.
Speaker 1You know. And then you had Jim Cummings who was kind of like the MVP of the show he did Louis Don Carnage and a host of other guest characters.
Speaker 2Which is weird because he's only in 42 episodes. The show ran 66? Yes, 66.
Speaker 1Well, it says he's in 48, but that's probably different characters. So maybe Louis is in 48, but that's probably different characters. So maybe Louie's in an episode when Don Carnage isn't kind of thing.
Voice Actors and Production
Speaker 2So here's one of the problems with IMDb is that it is often, oh, I'm sorry, I'm thinking of RJ Williams, I'm sorry, oh, no, the guy who played Kit.
Speaker 1One of the guys who played Kit?
Speaker 2Yeah, one of the guys. That's why he's only in 42.
Speaker 1Yes, Jim Cummings is in 48. Yes, he's Don Carnage.
Speaker 2yes, Jim was Cumming in Tailspin. He's Cumming in Cumming If you've ever watched Pumping Iron.
Speaker 1Playing a Sky Pirate. It's like Jim Cummings.
Speaker 2It's just like Jim Cummings, over and over again it's the best feeling in the world.
Speaker 1Tailspin had a higher standing generally of writing in its episodes compared to other things like DuckTales. As Jim Magan was kind of like the supervising producer effectively what we'd call a showrunner today had an effect of keeping the series' sense of humor which is like a little sharper, much more rapid fire than DuckTales or Rescue Rangers. But it also avoided the Looney Tunes-inspired like anything for a laugh style of humor that you'd sometimes get in like a Darkwing Duck or some later DuckTales episodes. Magan Zasloff both wrote a bunch of episodes but you also had Don Rosa wrote a couple episodes, one of the guys behind the, the old carl barks uncle scrooge comics.
Speaker 2he actually wrote some of the tailspin episodes I used to have some of those old comics. Uh, they were. I think they were an actual disney imprint. It wasn't gold key, I don't think. I think it was an actual disney comics imprint. Yeah, I mean they had multiple. This would have been in like the 50s and 60s.
Speaker 1Probably one of the more recognizable things, especially from the memory box that we keep Tailspin in, would be its theme song. Oh yeah, so Michael and Patty Silvershire did the theme song kind of this Calypso influence adventure song which I remember liking as a kid. But when I heard it rewatching these after the first time I was like no, I do not need to hear this ever again no sir, I do not like it.
Speaker 2I like the breakdown part, you know, and in in the opening credits it's. It's this really weird shot of baloo from an episode clip from baloo from an episode dressed as carmen miranda, an episode dressed as Carmen Miranda with maracas, or whatever. I think that part slaps. It's obviously just a tiny part of it, but I was thinking about that from in this era of these cartoons, between DuckTales, darkwing Duck and this, this is the weakest of those songs. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1DuckTales is by far the song of Disney cartoons.
Speaker 2I think so. So I think closely followed by Darkwing Duck, though.
Speaker 1I don't remember Darkwing Duck at all yeah, pull it up pull it up, let's hear it oh this was the.
Speaker 2It was their urban, more urban.
Speaker 1Inspired when they get to the Darkwing Duck chorus. I I think that's pretty good. I don't necessarily care for the hip-hop influence stuff in between. We got that sweet saxophone. Tailspin is the weakest of all of those.
Speaker 2I didn't watch Rescue Rangers. I am aware of it and I've seen episodes. I just didn't. I wasn't a fan of that one, but it had a pretty memorable theme theme too. I wonder, looking back now, if it's better or worse than Tailspin, because Tailspin's I still kind of enjoy.
Speaker 1I just listened to that as well. Rescue Rangers is better. I think Rescue Rangers would probably be second in my opinion. Really Okay, but still nothing's beating DuckTales.
Speaker 2Oh no, DuckTales is a jam.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I'd say that's kind of like my little breakdown for the idea of the series, people involved in creating it, where the show came from. Again, it lasted 66 episodes. Originally the pilot was a feature-length movie that later on, when it came to syndication, got broken up into four separate episodes, but it did get nominated and won an Emmy for best original animated feature. It was, I think, that year, the only thing nominated, so it won by default.
Speaker 2Default.
Speaker 1But it still counts as a win. Quickly after its first run it did go into syndication and then one of the Disney network has had different iterations. Strange enough, it's had lots of different editing throughout its run. There's, like I found, a whole website dedicated to just the different edits of tailspin episodes. Wow, that's fascinating. It was a lot. And again, hey, thanks for checking out the pod. I'm seeing what we're chatting about. Until we get on our own sea duck and fly away collectively, Skip. What should they do?
Speaker 2Well, I think they should probably listen to us more. Christ's sake, we need it For the sake of the Easter bunny, please Listen to our show.
Speaker 1You're crucified for your sins.
Episode Wrap-Up
Speaker 2Make sure that you guys out there have cleaned up after yourselves to some sort of reasonable degree, that you have paid your tabs, your bartenders, your KJs you've left sizable tips for the hard work that they do. Don't forget to support your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch Ajax we would like to say Godspeed, fair Wizard.
Speaker 1Please go away.