TV Cream

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Pole Position

TYRE-SOME IMPORT (do you see?) drawn in that crappy style of the time whereby everyone had massive eyeballs, triangular mouths and “moved” by virtue of standing still while the background maniacally juddered out of focus. Laughably based on the popular Atari game effort. Two crimefighting siblings utilised their racing cars to, er, “fight crime”. Tess and Dan adopted the titular responsibilities, while typical big-pupilled cute girl, Daisy, daughter of their “chief” (whoever he was) got kidnapped at least once an episode. Plus, in yet another mid-80s giveaway, there was a crappy animal comedy sidekick, in this case a monkey thing calle Kuma.

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. televisualcabbage

    April 9, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    Mouths weren’t even in the same time zone with the poor dubbing, say something now and the character will mouth it in about seven hours time…

    Dare I say, it makes you yearn for Pokemon!

  2. Applemask

    April 10, 2010 at 11:47 am

    Never understood this, but found it faintly disturbing.

  3. Danforth

    April 12, 2010 at 7:55 am

    Surely a contender for Weakest Tie-in Ever. What the green hell did *any* of this have to do with the videogame?

  4. Kitten in a Brandy Glass

    April 20, 2010 at 4:44 pm

    Pedantic clarification of family relationships: Daisy was Tess and Dan’s little sister, and their chief was their uncle, hence the “Only their uncle knows!” lyric in the theme song. Oh, and the crappy unidentified pet was supposed to be a genetically engineered combo of various animals, that’s why it looks like neither one thing nor t’other.

  5. anorthernmonkey

    April 22, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    BBC? It formed part of Channel 4s amazing Saturday morning line up didn’t it? somewhere between Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Bobobobs and David the Gnome

    • TV Cream

      April 22, 2010 at 12:32 pm

      The original UK showings were definitely CBBC-bound. Pip Schofield developed an unhealthy obsession with the strange synthesised meowing sound which appeared just after the end credits.

      The C4 repeats (some time in the early ’90s) were possibly one of the earliest bits of ’80s “retro” children’s programme scheduling (unless those 8.15 From Manchester Rentaghost repeats beat it).

  6. Cindylover1969

    April 23, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    One of this cartoon’s writer was future sitcom bigwig Chuck Lorre (“Grace Under Fire,” “Cybill,” “Dharma & Greg,” “Two And A Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and all those different Chuck Lorre Productions cards at the end of the last three). I doubt this is high on his CV.

  7. annoyingmouse

    April 25, 2010 at 11:31 am

    He might not list it high on his CV but even with all its faults (the poor writing, animation, dubbing, characters, etc.) it’s still significantly better than any of his truly dire “comedies”.

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