Animation fans we have spent the past few days getting news from some event in San Diego it must have been a small little known event no one has ever heard of. So I thought that i'd cover a show that very little people know about just because why not and let's just say that I didn't have to watch that many episodes of this show to understand the formular behind this show and so here is my review of Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels.
The basic set up behind this show is Captain Caveman is the world's first super hero and was frozen in ice many years ago and now he's been freed and travels with the Teen Angels and helps them solve mysteries. If your wondering why this set up sounds familiar it's because it's almost the exact same set up as Scooby-Doo and that is a huge issue for me because there's nothing that sets this show apart from Scooby-Doo at all.
Starring in the show was Mel Blanc as Captain Caveman , Laurel Page as Taffy Dare , Marilyn Schreffler as Brenda Chance and Vernee Watson-Johnson as Dee Dee Skyes. This has a very small cast list and given one of the voices that's a good thing. In terms of what i thought about the acting tho it's not as bad as I thought it would be and it's alot better then it really had any right to be but there is an issue that i'm going to talk about later on.
It's later and that issue is one of the voices more specifically the voice of Taffy it's super annoying and almost off putting. I don't know why but they gave Taffy a New York / Southern accent and it just comes across as super annoying i'm not kidding I considered turning this show of several times because of the voice and I have to wonder that since she's a main character why the heck didn't they give her a more pleasing voice.
The animation was done by giants Hanna-Barbera and it's pretty much there usual standerd in terms of TV animation. By that I mean it looks cheap and there's a lot of repeating backgrounds but there's a certain charm to the cheap animation and that's not just in this show but in all of their shows both good and bad. I also didn't notice any animation errors which is always a good sign because it means that the show was well made and that the creators put in actual effort.
This show is one of the many Scooby-Doo clones that came out during the seventies and out of all of them this is perhaps the most subtle. Just because all of the others have the exact same amount of main human characters plus a wacky comical character and they all travel in a vehicle of some sort and I think it's the most subtle because this show was made by the same guys behind Scooby-Doo Joe Ruby and Ken Spears.
When this show first debuted it was apart of a block called Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics which was a show that lasted around two or so hours and also included Blue Falcon and Dynomutt. When the show was cancelled tho Captain Caveman and The Teen Angels became it's own show starting with it's second season so it did technically last three seasons even tho that first season aired as part of another show.
Like I said the show aired for three seasons starting on September 10th 1977 and ending on June 21st 1980. The show aired when HB were i'd say on the way down in terms of shows since they were all either Flintstones spin-offs , Scooby-Doo spin off's or Scooby-Doo Rip offs but it nice to see that they were still at least trying to turn out original shows even if those shows were very strongly tied to the formular of Scooby-Doo.
I hated the character of Brenda she's not badly acted nor is she badly animated she is however badly written. She's the typical cowardly character who's just there to get a few laughs and nothing more and while that character trope works for characters like Scooby and Shaggy it doesn't work here because they over do it. They really could have tones it down or if not at least pair her with someone else who is a coward so it would kind of balance it out a little bit.
Each episode is roughly around eleven minuets each which when edited together means each episode is the standerd twenty two minuets long. I have no idea why they made the show with eleven minuet segments since it leaves no time to tell a good mystery because by the time you've set up the location and introduced some of the key players there's very little time left to tell a decent mystery and that's the most important thing in a mystery show.
There is comedy in this show and all of it comes from Captain Caveman himself and I have to say not all of the comedy is bad there are jokes that just aren't funny. Alot of the humour comes from the fact that Captain Caveman is trying to adjust to life in the present day and so mixes things up which it can be funny at times but then there are times where they use that joke multiple times in an episode and that's when it becomes unfunny.
Overall I can't honestly say the show is that bad but it's not that good either and i'm glad that the characters are due to make an appearance in next years Scoob but as a show this gets a 5 out of 10 from me.