Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Tooniversary: Pandamonium (1982)

Pandamonium should've been adapted into a Marvel comic book, but it wasn't.

Marvel Productions' 1st sale to CBS (along with Meatballs & Spaghetti, reviewed yesterday), Pandamonium lasted just 1 season, though its premise seemed familiar.

An evil wizard, Mondraggor (Bill Woodson), loses control of a magic pyramid, which shatters into several pieces when it hits Earth. Part of it falls into the hands of a trio of pandas, Chesty (Jesse White), Timothy, & Algernon, who are joined by a pair of human siblings to try to locate the rest of the pieces and thwart Mandraggor's evil schemes. Unfortunately, 13 episodes was all there were.

Here's the intro:



Additional voice talent included Janet Waldo, Walker Edmiston, and Alan Dinehart. Michael Rye was heard narrating the intro above.

No rating.

8 comments:

Silverstar said...

I never saw this show, though I was aware of it. I always said I was going to try and catch an episode of Pandamonium, but it went off the air before I ever did. The show itself looked like weird hybrid: you had this epic action-fantasy story going on, and in the midst of it all you had these 3 funny cartoon pandas mugging it up. Very high-concept.

hobbyfan said...

As it happened, Marvel's next two entries for CBS, Dungeons & Dragons and Jim Henson's Muppet Babies, turned out to be far, far more successful than Pandamonium and Meatballs & Spaghetti. Pandamonium was just a victim of bad timing.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Just like M&S, Pandamonium also got a cruddy laugh track too. Unlike M&S, Pandamonium managed to snag a VHS release by MGM/UA Home Video a couple years later.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/bf/76/84/bf7684d39cbfe47532178565be01c085--panda-bears-the-beginning.jpg

hobbyfan said...

Largely because this was a comedy-adventure show, not a straight comedy. And it still bombed.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Yeah I guess someone thought this had potential (I see Jerry Eisenberg gets co-creator credit on this with Silverman).

hobbyfan said...

Eisenberg either left Ruby-Spears or took the extra job that year, but that's the first I've noticed he was also at Marvel.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Reminded he did a few interviews with The Animation Guild years back that are worth checking out on how he got into animation and the different people he worked with.
https://animationguild.org/oral_history/jerry-eisenberg/

hobbyfan said...

Have to remember to pull that up sometime. Thanx.