Monday, September 26, 2016

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Space Ace (1984)

In season 2 of Saturday Supercade, Ruby-Spears dismissed three of the regular features, and brought in adaptations of Kangaroo and our next entry, Space Ace.

Not to be confused with the human leader of Astro & The Space Mutts three years earlier, this Ace (Jim Piper) suffers from the same kind of malady as was seen in the live-action Big John, Little John in the 70's. At the most inconvienent times, due to being exposed to an Infanto-ray, Ace morphs into a young boy named Dexter (Sparky Marcus), which frustrates Officer Kimberly (Nancy Cartwright, in one of her earliest toon roles).

The concept of the Space Ace video game came from veteran animator Don Bluth, whose other video game, Dragon's Lair, was also adapted for television by Ruby-Spears, albeit for ABC, but also lasted one season.

Right now, let's take a look at "Dangerous Decoy":



In recent years, Space Ace had been used as filler between shows on Cartoon Network & Boomerang, but currently sits in CN's vaults. Maybe it's just as well. There was a reason Big John, Little John failed, too.

Rating: C.

4 comments:

Silverstar said...

I never got why Space Ace and Kimberly chose to keep Ace's condition a secret from their superiors; you'd think that if others knew, they'd be helping them try to find a cure.

Fun trivia fact: 'Dexter' was voiced by former child actor Sparky Marcus, a kid-vid fixture of the 70's and early 80's, who played Ogilvie on CBS' TV version of "The Bad News Bears".

hobbyfan said...

I noted Marcus voicing Dexter in the post. He was also the original voice of Richie Rich. I'd think the real trivia would be if this was, in fact, Nancy Cartwright's first toon gig, a few years before "The Simpsons" made her an icon.

Goldstar said...

Nancy Cartwright also voiced Gloria on H-B's Richie Rich, in addition to voicing Kip Kangaroo on The second season of Shirt Tales in 1984.

hobbyfan said...

So she started with at least the Richie Rich gig. She & Marcus must've had good chemistry together to be re-teamed for Space Ace. The things you learn.