My Favorite 'Toons: Filmation's Ghostbusters

Once upon a time in the Seventies, Filmation, the Number Two SatAm producer, created a live-action comedy called THE GHOST BUSTERS. Starring Larry Storch, Bob Burns and Forest Tucker as "Spenser, Tracy & Kong" (Tracy was the gorilla), the wacky trio hunted down a new ghost every week for one season, then disappeared. Ten years later, the movie GHOSTBUSTERS was filming, and, learning of the TV series, bought the rights to the name from Filmation. Long story short, two animated series came out in 1986: THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, based on the movie; and GHOSTBUSTERS by Filmation, based on the live-action series I believed only I remembered. Guess which one was my favorite?

FILMATION'S GHOSTBUSTERS had Kong Senior and Spenser Senior pass the Ghostbusters business on to their twentysomething sons, Jake Junior and Eddie Junior, respectively. Together with a made-over Tracy the Gorilla, they hunted down a new crop of ghosts, mostly the gang of ghouls led by the powerful Prime Evil, your typical Filmation bad guy, only goofier. Jake Kong was the handsome blond leader; Eddie Spenser was the dimwitted, chubby, klutzy coward (and my favorite!); Tracy was superstrong and the team's gadget maker. They worked out of Ghost Command with a "skeleton crew" of supernatural apparatus: AnsaBone, the phone with hangups; Skelevision, the pro-social values-spouting TV; Shock Clock, a really cuckoo timepiece; Skelevator, not afraid to tell you where to get off; and Ghost Buggy, aka G.B., the cranky, shapeshifting, time-traveling jalopy. The show ran for one season of 65 episodes, eclipsed by THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, which ran a lot longer.

Of course, being an Eighties show with a toy line, our heroes had a crew of friends to fight alongside them: Jessica Wray, a clever, red-haired TV reporter and Jake's love interest; Futura, a sexy, purple-skinned alien sorceress from the 30th Century and Jake's other love interest; Belfry, a kooky, pig-headed bat; Madam Why, a mystical Romani woman; Fuddy, a mixed-up medieval wizard who granted Jake a wish every full moon; and Corky, Jessica's young nephew and Number One Fan of the Ghostbusters. Even Kong Senior and Spenser Senior show up in a couple of episodes to lend their experience to help their sons.

I can't talk about the FGB without mentioning my favorite stock scene: the Changing of the 'Busters. Jake, Eddie and Tracy chant, "Let's Go, GhostBUSTERS!!" with an epic mid-air high five; then Skelevator takes Jake and Eddie to another dimension which makes their civilian suits disappear (leaving them in their underpants), dresses them in old-fashioned adventurers' outfits, gives them their accessories, and dumps them and Tracy into G.B., automatically buckling Jake's and Tracy's seat belts. Even He-Man's and She-Ra's transformation scenes put together take less time. But I'm not complaining.

My favorite "FGB" episode, "Mummy Dearest," has Prime Evil turning his moronic mummy minion Airhead into a giant to scare Middle Eastern oil field workers off the job so the fields shut down and the world shuts down for lack of fuel. When our heroes face Airhead, their main weapon, the Ghost Dematerializer, is broken, only able to work on a two-inch ghost. So the team has Airhead chase them in G.B. through a car wash, after which he shrinks and is able to be dematerialized. The trap also causes Jake's and Eddie's uniforms to shrink and fall apart, leaving them in boots, underpants and modestly placed hands (looking buff, may I add!). Tracy snaps their nearly-naked selves with his camera for the papers and the boys chase him across the sand dunes! I just LOVE happy endings!!