Kids Shows Based on R-Rated Movies

J

jadee lovee

New member
Here's a little known fact. Animated series have been mad on movies such as:

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Title: Rambo and The Forces of Freedom

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Robocop
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Toxic Crusaders (after Toxic Avenger)

What are your thoughts? Any other examples?
 
Remember that we have a rule against list threads. If you want to discuss the changes that had to be made to make an R rated movie into a television show appropriate for children, or discuss whether it's worth the effort in the first place, that's fine, but don't just list off titles with no discussion.
 
It was the `80s, man. Different times. Kids watched movies like Rambo. Heck, look into your childhood. I'm sure you watched R rated movies as well. And studios aren't dumb. They know which movies are popular with kids.
 
Well, if you think about it, most of the action-adventure movies at the time pretty much were basically 2-hr cartoons (how can rambo run bare-chested into battle with bullets flying everywhere and never get hit by one?), so cartoons based on them was pretty much a given, though obviously they did make significant edits (rambo was no longer a vietnam war vet and he sounded nothing like stallone, all the parody and satire was removed from robocop, and the toxic crusaders never killed anyone like in the toxic avenger film)
 
It's a PG-13 example, but there was, at one point, an Austin Powers cartoon in production.

I read this a long time ago and doubted it too, but it was confirmed somewhere in a Simpsons Season 11 commentary. The guy who wrote the episode they were talking about left the show to make the Powers show and it was canned in development.

"Tell me, baby, do I make you....feel attracted to me?"
"Hey, it's Fat....Badger!"
 
I remember watching a Robocop animated series in the 90s, and I recall it having other cyborgs, a plant/human monster, and some other stuff that Robocop fought. Overall, the tone was way different from the movie. The show felt more like a semi-serious take on Inspector Gadget.
 
Ace Ventura, Dumb & Dumber, and The Mask which were PG-13 movies had cartoons. And The Mask was surprisingly good. Also, Mortal Kombat (a violent video game and PG-13 movie adaptation) also had a cartoon.
 
How late in the 90's was it? Because there was a second Robocop show, "Alpha Commando," that debuted in the dying years of children's syndication (in Portland it aired next to the syndicated Pokemon).

That one was really crushed by its budget. I swear they must have had about 17 or 18 episodes total and they were on five times a week. This number included a clip show. If that wasn't repetitious enough, the same music was used in every episode.

Robocop was fighting the "Directorate for Anarchy, Revenge and Chaos" (DARC), a criminal organization that got its money from producing weapons for major wars. He had a new female partner that might have had robotic parts of her own, though my memory is fuzzy on that.

Several of the scripts could have been better if the budget was higher than fifteen cents an episode. An intended-as-touching scene where Robocop was reunited with his lost family, but couldn't tell them who he was, was destroyed by bad animation and voice acting.
 
Actually, it was going to come out around 99-2000, during the second wave of "Adult animation"(1998-2001) so it may have been intended as a show for an older audience.
 
Although it was rated PG, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes TAS was more or less based on the sequel Return of the Killer Tomatoes as opposed to the first one, although Return was far from a children's film, with strong sexual references. I'm kind of shocked it even warranted a PG rating, but then again, it was the 80's where films could get away with more.
 
Street Fighter got also an animated series as well for a PG-13 movie adaptation.

Wasn't Police Academy once rated PG-13 and it got an animated series as well? Same for the movie Teen Wolf who did a flop but the spin-off animated series had good ratings.
 
Actually, the first film was rated R (although it may have been a "pre PG-13" R), while the second was was rated PG-13. All the rest were rated PG.
 
The perfect example of watering down a franchise as it goes along. By the time they got to 'City Under Siege', the franchise was so squeaky clean it was painful.
 
Not a movie, but Mortal Kombat in general was pretty much an R-rated, albeit campy, video game that got a cartoon series on USA. Which still boggles my mind to this day.
 
I remember there was a 22 minute pilot that was sold on VHS called The Saga Begins or something similar that featured Johnny, Sonya and Liu Kang as the main cast before the USA series began, which seemed to be based more on MK3 than 1.

USA also had an early morning animated series based on Savage Dragon as well, which I don't remember ever being a kid friendly comic book. There were a few other series based on comics that weren't kid friendly but I guess comics were still looked at as kid stuff.

It's so weird looking back at how all of this r-rated stuff was marketed at kids. I used to see action figure commercials for Terminator, Aliens, Robocop, Predator,etc. and flip out about how much I wanted them, then go and sit through the movies with my hands partly over my eyes. I must have been the only kid that had both Stallone's and Wesley Snipes' action figures from Demolition Man.
 
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