Halloween Howlers
Obnoxious brat Punky Brewster, her fugly little leprechaun gopher named "Glomer", and her band of extremely bland friends do supposedly what any average kid does on Halloween night…fly around the globe on a magical broomstick before dinner time. You see the 1970’s and 80’s were a time where a person would find a lot of Saturday Morning cartoons adapted from popular primetime shows of the day. “Punky Brewster” was one of those shows. While admittedly a corny show as other shows were of its time to be fair, it did leave a mark for its innocence of the title character that resonated with audiences of the decade. It was popular with the younger demographics than it was with the adults. It was no surprise then that the network decided to cash in on the show by making it into an animated series for Saturday Morning TV. I guess the thinking behind the show was that the writers wanted to set it apart from the live action show by doing their own thing. This was a really good idea on paper. Look at how “Batman: The Animated Series” turned out in forging its own artistic and sophisticated identity from the live action films. The problem however is that we are still in the middle of the 80’s where such creative approaches were pretty hard to come by. What mattered most above everything else was selling merchandise off the shelves. So the concept they ultimately came up with was to give Punky Brewster a magical leprechaun gopher from the enchanted city of Chaundoon…complete with a rainbow! The gopher plot device allowed Punky Brewster and her friends to go on whatever magical misadventure and escapade they could think of. It’s a strange and absurd concept no matter what way you look at it. It is for that reason why many cartoons based on primetime shows or by extension iconic characters in that period of time frankly sucked. The studio could have easily done an animated show with Punky Brewster doing her usual sthick while still taking advantage of the medium. But instead they went with a very lazy approach of throwing in a tacked on fantasy element in order to appeal to children which is sadly not a shock.
