Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue (1990)

One of the most prevalent initiatives of the 1980's Reagan Administration was the War of Drugs. First Lady Nancy Reagan made it one of her personal causes to champion with the most popular slogan to come out of it being the Just Say No campaign. After the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in which cartoon characters from competing studios appeared in a single film, it was suggested that a similar concept could be done with Saturday morning cartoon characters for the cause of Just Say No to drugs. (For nearly fifty years the major networks would air cartoons every Saturday morning until the Clinton Administration killed them with regulations in the 1990's.) Reagan called upon the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation to produce such a project that had not been attempted before or since.

Over the next couple of years the project came together as Cartoon All Stars To the Rescue. It was largely funded by McDonalds Children's Charities and would include characters from the most popular Saturday morning cartoons at the time from the three major networks and the recently launched Fox network. Since most Saturday morning cartoons were voiced by the same voice actors and animated in the same Japanese studios, Wang Films, this wouldn't be a problem.

The Saturday morning cartoons characters come from the following network shows:

The Bugs Bunny Show - 1960-2000, ABC
The Smurfs - 1981-1989, NBC
Alvin & the Chipmunks - 1983-1990, NBC
Muppet Babies - 1984 - 1991, CBS
The Real Ghostbusters - 1986-1991, ABC
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - 1987-1996, NBC
DuckTales* - 1987-1990, Fox
Alf" The Animated Series - 1987-1990, NBC
Garfield & Friends - 1988-1994, CBS
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - 1988-1991, ABC

*DuckTales was a weekday show that some Fox affiliates aired on Saturday mornings as well.

All the original voice actors performing these characters on Saturday morning cartoons at the time appear as their characters. Award winning actor George C Scott plays the personified spirit of drugs Mr. Smoke. Scott was on the Walt Disney Studio lot recording the villain Percival McLeach for the Rescuers Down Under. Jason Marsden, who was a staple in animated voices and live action sitcoms of the time, voiced Micheal, the boy addicted to drugs.

Roy Disney Jr was brought on to executive produce the project. Songs were written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman who'd just completed The Little Mermaid and would go on to produce the songs for Beauty & the Beast and Aladdin.

Once completed, Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue would air on the very same Saturday morning on all the major networks, several local stations, PBS, and a few cable channels. It also aired overseas in several countries but always on the same day across multiple networks. The American broadcast was in April 1990 while in Australia it was in November of that same year.

An introduction with President and First Lady Bush with their dog Millie introduced the American broadcast. (Reagan had since left office.) Some smaller networks accompanied the broadcast with their own introduction (we've included one of these here with 7 Network's Bob and Hazel Hawke.)

After its broadcast, McDonald's distributed the TV special on VHS through their restaurants. The VHS manufacturing was handled by the Walt Disney Company's home video arm Buena Vista Home Video. Disney was becoming a powerhouse in the home video market and no one else was more qualified at the time to handle such a release. Copies of Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue was also provided to video rental stores with the stipulation to be a title for free rental because this was a public service project.

In the aftermath, the pro drugs mainstream academia has often criticized the Reagan Administration's War on Drugs campaign and even sneer that drugs can be harmful to people. Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue also gets dismissed as being preachy right wing propaganda rather than as the educational tool it was at the time. In reality, Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue was a successful project that did have an impact on the generation of children in the target audience at the time. It's also a historical snapshot in what was popular on Saturday morning cartoons at the time. Since Saturday morning cartoons have been put out to pasture, it's likely we'll never see a project like this attempted again.

Original airdate April 21, 1990

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.