Mr. T cartoon

B

bonnie.mcmurray

New member
Anyone remember the Mr. T cartoon in the 80's? Was there really a Mr T cartoon? I watched a couple of Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse shorts with Mr. T, in which Mr. T some kids and some dog, try to get Mr. T work. Tracey Morgan does a great imitation.

Was these some randomly cartoon created by the TV Funhouse team, or was there really a Mr. T cartoon. I was a big saturday morning cartoon watcher in the 80's, so I don't how I could have missed it, maybe it was before my time.

On the prody shorts, my favorite part is when Mr. T says some 80's PC message "Don't do drugs", "Stay in school", etc. to someone and they say "What?"
 
It ran on NBC for three seasons in the early 80's.

Mr. T was a gymnastics coach who mentored a group of ethnically diverse mystery solving teens. T also had a Mini-Me in the form of a little white kid named Spike who was basically the Scrappy Doo of the show.
 
It sounds like Scooby Doo with Reagon messages thrown in. If they had the New Scooby Doo Movies in the early 80's, Mr. T could defentely and probably would have appeared in one of those episodes.

I love 80's cartoons, but one thing I don't like about many of them, were they were very preachy. This cartoon was from the early 80's, being born in 82, I got into watching cartoons in the mid to late 80's, so I guess I just missed it.

I love the TV Funhouse parodies, "Don't do sleep and get 8 hours of drugs you can work too." LOL
 
As a kid in the 80s, I watched this cartoon, more out of enjoying Mr. T on "The A-Team" than it being a high-quality production (which it wasn't), as well as Mr. T being every kid's favorite tough guy back then.
 
They aired this show last year on Adult Swim. I didn't bother watching it since it was on at 5 in the morning. Those spoofs on SNL were the greatest though.
 
Those parodies are on You Tube, just type "new adventures of mr t".

Back to the show itself, what was the point of the dog? I don't get it, what purpose does he serve?
 
In the two SNL / TV Funhouse parodies, they parody the preachiness when Mr. T says lines like "Don't do drugs" and "Drink milk" for no apperant reason. Ironically shortly after those parodies in the 2000's, I saw Mr. T quite a few times in commercials and making appearance on tv shows just as Late Night With Conan O'Brian, maybe the parody of Mr. T looking for work, got the real Mr. T some work.

I still don't get the dog, the need a mascot? I understand why they needed Scooby Doo, he is the star attraction, but with the Mr T cartoon they had Mr T has the star attraction, aka the Scooby Doo of the show. Besides the dog doesn't even talk.
 
The dog served no purpose whatsoever. Saturday morning networks execs just had this idee fixee that the presence of a dog or some other kind of pet/mascot would make a series more appealing to kids. Dozer the dog serves just as much purpose to Mr. T as Wonderdog did to the 1st season of Super Friends, which is to say none.
 
A dog doesn't have to be a talk to surve a purpose into an animated show, Dino from the Flintstones, Odie from Garfield, they didn't talk, but still surved a purpose.
 
And as I recall, GI Joe and He-Man (and to a marginally subtler extent - such that its toy legacy doesn't seem to have fared so well - Thundercats) did both.
 
One possible reason 70s-80s cartoons had dog mascot characters (wonder dog, ms lion, the aforementioned dozer etc) was that Fred Silverman was head of ABC when Scooby Doo became a success, so he started pushing for other animated shows to have dog characters as well. This continued when silverman went to NBC, which explains ms. lion from spider man and his amazing friends, and probably explains dozer as well.
 
It should be noted that this show was Phil LaMarr's first appearance on anything ever.

Also, I know Mr. T appeared in live-action at the beginning and end of every episode, but did Mr. T voice himself in the cartoon or someone else did? I've never seen the cartoon in English so I wouldn't know by listening.
 
Back
Top