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I have a confession to make; embarrassing as it may be, I'm absolutely fascinated with DIC's animated pilot for its undeveloped Battletoads cartoon series.
Admittedly, I never grew up with the cartoon, but thanks to its widespread availability on YouTube, I've occasionally found myself drawn to it, wondering how the show came to be and how familiar the writers were with the source material they were tasked with adapting.
The Battletoads cartoon, in case you're unfamiliar, aired on TV in 1992, one year after the release of the original NES game, and focused on three normal teenagers who are transformed into a group of intergalactic heroes with gross-sounding names who must foil the evil plans of the nefarious Dark Queen. Initially conceived as a pilot for a TV show, in the same vein as Playmate Toys' popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, the studio even brought on board one of that show's writers, David Wise (not to be confused with the Rare composer of the same name), to write the pilot's script. However, the project ultimately missed the mark and was cancelled after receiving poor ratings, only to resurface in 1994 as a VHS release.
Fuelled by curiosity, I've made a few different attempts in the past to track down and get in touch with people involved with the show to put together a feature, but never had all that much luck, with the only insight I could find into the project being bewildered Rare developers, who seem to have had very little input on the final product, and this tweet from former DIC employee Brian A. Miller. Recently, though, while chatting to Phil Harnage, a former DIC employee and one of the developers of the show's story bible, for an upcoming article on the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, I couldn't help but remember seeing his name in the show's credits, and decided to ask him about the project.
"I knew nothing about the game," Harnage admits. "I came in because they were having trouble coming in for the Bible. So I came in and helped with that. Then they gave it to David Wise to actually do the script. That happens a lot; you know, I’d come across something I really love, but I wouldn’t get to write the script.
"So, I actually wanted to write Battletoads. And, of course, they kind of did it as a pilot. Because at the time, Battletoads was a great name. You can't get a better name than that. But it just wasn't known enough. It seemed to be more popular outside the US at that time. But I thought it was a slam dunk. You got these three guys, and each one has a silly name: Rash, Zitz, and Pimple."
One of the things Harnage was able to confirm was a previous statement from Miller, who hinted that DIC may have been among the companies that turned down the chance to produce a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show.
"The guys that came up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pitched Andy first," said Harnage. "And he turned them down. He's the guy that turned down Star Wars. The animated version of it, at least.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of the most successful shows in history. And for once, his radar — his spider sense — it didn’t go off. He didn’t get it. But they didn't come in with a huge presentation package with fancy drawings and storyboards or anything. Just some notes on a napkin." He joked, therefore, that Battletoads seemed like "a good opportunity [for DIC] to get on that particular gravy train."
Retrospective reviews and videos from fans of the Battletoads games haven't exactly been kind to the show, but Harnage is convinced there was potential, stating that the major issue with getting picked up wasn't the quality, but getting its name out to a wider audience.
"It was a good pilot," he said. "David Wise did a good job, but you couldn't sell it until you know it. And to make 65 episodes for syndication would be really difficult. Somebody has to pay for it, and when you're making that many episodes, you really want to make sure that it's going to fly. But it didn't really matter in the end."
If you're wondering why, that's because DIC would eventually try again to capture a slice of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles audience with Street Sharks, another show Harnage would help develop for TV, based on a concept from David Siegel and Joe Galliani. This would have much more success than the Battletoads pilot, getting its own Mattel toy line, three seasons' worth of episodes, and a spin-off show called Extreme Dinosaurs.