"THE FULL EXPERIENCE: Casper" Talkback

[Peter Paltridge]

Out of all the classic cartoon characters of the mid-

Just because the character's boring doesn't mean the show has to be.

 

[Vance M.]

Casper was never really a favorite of mine. I'm not saying I hate Casper, I just think that he is a "Meg" character. But that doesn't mean HarveyToons are bad.

 

[Dantheman]

I never really watched this show (I was 18-19 at the time, and it just didn't seem to be screaming out to be watched by me IMO), Being an avid comics reader, I remember that Casper ad gracing a lot of Marvel and DC comics in the summer of '95, though.

That different drawing style seems to be an attempt at aping Edward Gorey's style, if I was to hazard a guess. That, or Charles Addams.

 

[DaffyDonaldQW93]

I have a later Casper cartoon on 16mm. It's a Technicolor print but is kinda beaten up. The one I have involves Spooky playing April Fools pranks, and Casper rescuing the people from any danger Spooky has caused.


Anyways, that was a great Full Experience. I somehow wanted to see an original airing but wasn't too crazy about it to even ask, because I didn't see a clip of it until recently. I would rather see a Technicolor print of the 1945 cartoon "The Friendly Ghost". I also wanted to add some more IB Technicolor 50's Casper cartoons to my 16mm collection, but I recently lost an eBay auction. I do want to see a clip of the "Slappy Squirell Pogs" joke if you have it.


Judging by this cartoon, they changed a lot of what the original 50's cartoon had. Sure, the later ones experimented a bit, but like you said, the original formula wasn't there. I miss the idea of Casper making friends with animals and scaring the villians away.
(Man in those old cartoons the villians must be SO COWARDLY they're afraid of ghosts).in the original Famous Studios cartoons. But from what I read in the episode, Casper wants to be scary so he can win a school contest? I wish Paramount would have kept the rights to Casper, or at least distrubute the Casper movie.



I do like the Animaniacs style they were going for in this "new" cartoon.......

 

[Darklordavaitor]

Oh man, this brings me back. I didn't watch this show as consistently as Animaniacs or the Cartoon Network stuff, but from what I remember about it, this was a much funnier attempt at the Casper character than I recall the movie or the few public domain cartoons I saw at the time to be. And I'm not surprised that Stoner and Oliver got away with more fun in the cartoon than in the movie, since that was a decently big-budgeted Hollywood film, and this was an also-ran cartoon on Fox Kids, which was already starting to lose its relevancy as the Warner shows left and Power Rangers mania was waning. It's obvious which project was going to be under tighter control by the studios.

Part of me has always wanted to try watching it again now, but based on your review, I'm not sure if I should. It seems like it could still be cute, or constantly annoy me.

 

[John Pannozzi]

Technically, Universal didn't outright buy Casper, they just had the movie rights to him for a while. Harvey owned Casper up until 2000 or 2001 when Classic Media bought out the Harvey catalog.

And I think you're underplaying how successful the Casper movie was. It made a bunch of cash, and even got a good review from Roger Ebert (something I doubt most other films based on cartoons received). That said, 1995 wasn't the best year for movies. Kevin Smith noted that while his Mallrats tanked that year, the films that did made a bundle back then aren't as beloved in restrospect as Mallrats is, save for Toy Story.

You're probably right about the cartoon not making as much of a splash. I watched it a good deal, but I don't think it was all that popular, and yeah, FOX Kids was pretty moribund then. It did get a fair number of VHS releases, actually.

Funny that Universal never made a theatrical sequel, but Saban somehow made two DTV followups and Uni released a CGI Christmas Casper film DTV.