Category: Thundercats

As I’ve said so many times, I’m stunned by the undying loyalty of ThunderCats fans. Nick Carver introduced me to Egmond who tirelessly promotes the show and the toys. A fanatic in the best sense of that word! His words:

I’ve been around only 5 years longer than my favorite cartoon. I know I was 6 or around there when ThunderCats aired in South Africa. Just before I went to 1st Grade but I’d been hooked since before the toon came out. When they started running ads for it, my 6 year old self and my 4 year old sister Elda always were hyped for the show and my stay-at-home-mom was partly to blame. She kept an eye out for its TV debut and I remember that day vividly: we were playing in the garden and my mom stormed out “kom, ThunderCats gaan begin!” – which translates to “come, ThunderCats is about to begin!”. I was bilingual from an early age because the shows we watched on the telly were in both Afrikaans (my home language) and English. Many cartoons were dubbed into Afrikaans, but thankfully they left ThunderCats in its original tongue because, frankly, if you were to translate Thunder to Afrikaans, its counterpart “Donder” is also a swearword! I doubt parents would’ve been happy with kids running around shouting “donder, donder, donder”. We would all have been “donder-ed” (beaten!) by our elders.

I remember the Exodus episode so well. The funny thing is, I think we had a Black & White TV back then but I still see it in technicolor. It was a joyride I’ll love to experience again the day I die – one of those “flash before your eyes” memories to be slowed down to the second just to experience the wonder of it once more. We were hooked. We watched Season One religiously.

I only found out about Season Two in the early 2000s, alongside the Lunataks and so forth. So I got to experience ThunderCats all over again, this time as an adult.

My first toy experience wasn’t long after the debut of the toon here, when by happy accident we walked into the shop CNA which had rows and rows of LJN ThunderCats on display. We were visiting my cousin, so while the two of us were standing there admiring it, our parents said it was time to go. I begged to have one, but dad said no. I broke down in tears, sobbing. I left with Cheetara and WilyKit, while my cousin took home Lion-O. That was the beginning of the toy bug. I eventually got my own Lion-O and Snarf, Tygra, WilyKat and Mumm-Ra with Ma-Mutt. I never owned Panthro, but a friend had him. I’d go play at his house and the team would be complete.

It was a year later that I one day decided the girls – Cheetara and Wilykat – wanted to  sleep outside on a bed of raked fall leaves. They were gone the next day. Stolen. I was devastated. At least I have a photo as proof that I owned them, even though I’m wearing my mom’s old stockings as a kangaroo pouch with the toys in front!! But I moved on, grew older, occasionally saw the Beta Video Cassettes at my other cousin’s house where we’d watch the episodes, and while new cartoons eventually took over the household with other toys like Bionic Six and TMNT, ThunderCats laid that foundation in terms of how happy the toys would make me.

I was 12 when a boy from high school stopped me on the way home, asking if I’d wanted to buy some toys. In his sports bag was a bunch of ThunderCats! I borrowed R50 from my dad and bought the lot the next day. Come high school, the toys were passed on to my younger cousin, and some went down the drain in a box I thought would be a fun way to send them off. Oh the shame!!

Fast forward to adulthood when I visited an old teacher at school, and she pulled out her son’s old toys. ThunderCats!! I borrowed them for a while. I wanted to put them in my music video AS JY WIL (If You Want To). I had the boy play with these toys as if it were me as a kid. But upon returning them, there was something missing. I still wanted those toys, and the eBay bug bit me. Living on this side of the world meant I had to find the toys from across the globe. And I did. I amassed an almost complete vintage toyline. Then WB released the cartoon on DVD. Finally, after only getting a TV-copied digital copy from a friend in late 2005, I managed to get my hands on the physical media. It was great indeed. I had the toys and the toon from my youth. I was in such a good place that I revisited the toys in my music videos idea, and made my own Toy Story version with the gang for a song called JY’S IN MY BLOED (meaning You Are In My Blood). It was a great experience. It had the 2011 toys in there too from the reboot. It also led me to the ThunderCats.Org site – where the forums had people talking about all things ThunderCats. I met my best friend Jacques there. We’re still BFFs. We still talk ThunderCats almost every day.

My Toy Story inspired video debuted on the front page of ThunderCats.Org. That was a highlight for me. Even though it was silly, it was just a fun idea to immerse myself into the toy world. It’s still a fun video for me.

Everything was going well. Then a sad day came when I had to sell the lot. I know many collectors who have been in a similar financial crunch and these toys saved them. It wasn’t an easy thing to do but the toys that brought me so much joy gave me an out. Sounds silly perhaps but the day I chose to sell them I prayed “please can I have them  back one day?”  That day rolled in courtesy of Mattel in 2015, just months later. They announced their new Classic line. My prayer was answered. Talking with other collectors on the ThunderCats.Org forums was so awesome. We were a brotherhood (and sisterhood) and we were all there for each other. Even with the fighting and extremely sensitive name-callers, things were always good. We were all very opinionated. Unfortunately, before the line even hit their website, they had cancelled it! ThunderCats seemed to be over. Again. Just like the failed Bandai Classic line.

Then a tease at Power Con by Mattel of a potential restart of the line delivered a phrase that wasn’t meant for ThunderCats, but I took the cue from their production designer who told folk that if they wanted more MOTU or She-Ra, they should use those hashtags. I thought that was a great plan to do it for ThunderCats and so I started the #wewantmorethundercats campaign. Other fans joined. And then more started voicing their support. I started speaking to Super7’s Brian Flynn too at the time and was fortunate to hear that they had acquired the license. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. There’s an interesting behind-the-scenes story here. One fan, whom I’m proud to call my dear friend, managed to get in touch with the highest power at WB about ThunderCats and shared a bunch of facts about the cancelled toyline, its fanbase, and more support for Super7, who had been trying to get the go ahead from WB for a while.

That one email had a ripple effect, and very soon Super7 announced they officially would be restarting the line as ULTIMATES! I became a vocal supporter of anything and everything Super7 ThunderCats related.My passion online was so infectious that the owner of ThunderCats.Org reached out to me to join the team and manage their social media platforms. Their Instagram account jumped from a few thousand followers, to a staggering 70k+ in the years since I took over. It was evident there was and still is a massive following. What’s more, it is not just US-based. It is global and, being from Africa, I’m super-aware of that. (And hey the ThunderCats landed in Egypt, right?!)

With the Super7-focused #wewantmorethundercats profile, as well as the more generic over-arching ThunderCatsOrg profiles in my hands, it’s been a wonderful journey to meet people who share their love of this brand too. ThunderCats is a part of my life. My passion for these toys by Super7 is one thing that has allowed the toon to become three dimensional and give me a deeper appreciation for the show.

Gran with Snarf!

I binge it regularly. And even after 40 years I still discover new things. I’ve met fantastic friends all around the world. There’s still such a treasure trove of information to discover, which is why ThunderCats “doesn’t get old”. There is always something new that enhances my experience of this excellent show.

I’ve been privileged to not only review the excellent toys that Super7 makes, but to also speak first hand with Brian Flynn, the man behind Super7, and to interview him regularly to get all the latest news and secrets from the Super7 team.  I’ve been honoured to break the news about several reveals, some as recent as the SDCC and Amazon exclusives for 2025, and others as far back as confirming that TigerSharks would also be joining the ranks like SilverHawks did. I’ve made suggestions in the past that became actual figures, and I’ve consulted very excitedly on something as small as the incoming SkyCutter vehicle. There is always something new and different that Super7 has in the pipeline and I’m on the ride. All the way! I even wrote a song singing the praises of the “Super7 ThunderCats” in my 2022 single HELLO and dressed myself up as the mentioned toys in the video too!  What’s more, I managed to interview Larry Kenney too and be one of the first people to interview the creators of the new Dynamite comic book series. ThunderCats truly left its mark on my soul. it tattooed itself onto me with that brilliant logo. The ThunderCats community has so many different branches, and it’s easy to get lost in everything that is out there. From the new Dynamite comics to the Mondo figures, to the new Mattel MOTU crossover toys, and many other customs and creations by fans, like my good friend @nickfromthundera, the creator of the gorgeous Black Widow Shark toy that had never had been released in action figure form before. I’m proud to own one.

I’ve found my niche in my little corner of the ThunderCats universe. It’s the Super7 collection, and it ticks all the boxes. Not just because it brings the cartoon to life, but because I get to relive my childhood. I hope to one day be mentioned in the ThunderCats analogues as someone who did their part for the continuation of this iconic cartoon. Forty years on and it is even bigger in my life now than it has ever been. All because of the beautiful stories that formed me as a person, with its lessons of life, of good and bad, of honor, loyalty, truth, and justice. May whatever I do now have that effect one day on someone else, the same way that the creators of the IP did way way back. To get to meet a name from the show many years later, even if it is only virtually, amazes me. You never think that the few seconds the writer’s name appears on your screen that it will ever be on your path to actually talk to them. So being able to share my story with Peter for his blog just shows me how big ThunderCats is, and that I can count on enjoying decades more of stories about this life-changing cartoon.

I’ve said it before. No matter how brilliant the voices or compelling the scripts, ThunderCats simply would not have happened without great recording, animation and production crews. Sadly, so far, I have not been able to track down the key PAC artists and animators to ask them to add their comments, but at least most of the studio crew will feature. (Still a couple missing but perhaps they’ll respond when they see this.)

Everyone says Larry Franke was the prince of the engineers and crew that put ThunderCats’ tracks together. I only met him a couple of times – which seems hard to believe – but when we opened this conversation, which rambled far and wide beyond ThunderCats, I was fascinated. Though we worked – and work – mostly in two different areas of what’s laughingly called ‘the Entertainment Business’ we have many parallel experiences and views.

Larry writes: My first real job was at A&R – Arnold and Ramone – where Rankin/Bass recorded their shows, voice tracks and music.  ‘The Last Unicorn’ was the first R/B show I worked on.                         

Bernie Hoffer was their go-to composer, an original talent, prolific. Surprisingly easy going and great to work with.

A&R was famous for training recording engineers. I could not have had a better start and as I went along, I worked on sessions with John Lennon, Steely Dan, Bill Joel and on Frank Sinatra’s ‘LA’s My Lady’ project among many others. Imagine that. Stars dropped in and out, Michael Jackson just one of them. What a perfect start to a career, except perhaps for Phil Ramone’s crazy scheduling. One time we were simultaneously recording Paul Smon, Get Wet, and Billy Joel – with Karen Carpenter on deck! Incidentally, I rehearsed Karen’s songs with her, in Phil’s house, before she went on to record the solo album in the studio.

It all became too stressful and I was on the point of leaving when John Curcio called to tell me that Rankin/Bass had a new project, an animated series called ThunderCats. They were recording in a studio tailored for them by Howard Schwarz. Trying to persuade me, John said It would be an easier ride – little did we know! – and a lot more money. The only problem, I would be recording dialogue, something I had not done before and, hubris calling, felt was below me. Hell, I was a music engineer! Worked with Lennon and Sinatra!

Fortunately, my wife Sharon suggested it would be a great move. Once more she proved a better judge than I and it was one of the great decisions of my life – not least because John Curcio became something of a guru and straightened me out pretty damn quickly: voice recording was just as much an art as working with music. It turned out, too, to be an easier ride than A&R, not because of a lighter workload but because a great crew came together.

One of those serendipitous things almost impossible to plan. As others have noted, the working day became one extended laugh track.

But we got the work done – and to an unmatched quality.

I feel that the art of voice recording has been lost in the welter of digitization, new technologies and now AI. How often we watch movies and shows and have to resort to subtitles to follow badly recorded dialogue. This isn’t just a perfectionist talking – though I am one; it’s an experience shared by many people.

PL: hearing Larry’s views about current voice recording, whether big Hollywood movies or regular TV shows, was a great relief. For years I wondered if I was going deaf despite the fact that watching movies and shows was the only area in which I seemed to have hearing problems even though the systems I was using were reasonably sophisticated. It’s something of a diversion but watch 20 Feet From Stardom, a brilliant documentary about back-up singers, now more or less disappeared, exiled by autotune and the soulless precision of AI-backed technology. Thus we lose the ‘perfection of imperfection’ – that feeling that you’re in reality rather than an aseptic sound clinic. 

Larry: Back to Curcio. He knocked the hubris clean out of me and I learned. And learned. You didn’t just set the levels and sit back. ‘Ride the fader!’

ThunderCats became one of the great working experiences of my life. Talking to others, crew, actors, writers, artists, production staff – even all these years later so many who worked on these shows will tell you they’ve never had a better working environment.

Great work, a great crew and a lot – a lot – of laughs. The laughs, of course, compensated for those moments of horrible pressure. The schedule sometimes seemed impossible; Jules Bass was a talent but certainly not all sweetness and light. He put Lee Dannacher under immense pressure; and yet she maintained her passion for the work and her humour despite a workload that would have broken just about anyone else I’ve known. It seems to me that the studio became a home away from home for Lee. An escape. A place she could exercise her creative skills without constant oversight – whereas back at ‘the office’ she was constantly under the pump.

PL: Gathering these stories, I’ve learned that Lee could be a hard, difficult boss. It’s a great testament to the people under her cosh that they have asked me not to write about that aspect of  ‘the work.’ They prefer to recall the best of the ThunderCats experience – and everyone agrees that  the studio was indeed Lee’s refuge. Here’s an example of the pressure she was under at the office. PAC sent the storyboards to New York for comments – those comments largely, or at least initially, being Lee’s responsibility. With everything else that she had in hand, she sometimes fell behind with the boards which in turn threatened the schedule and the vital delivery to broadcasters. On one occasion, having pressed for the corrected boards – several times – Jules stormed into her office, picked five or six of them off her desk and threw them in the waste bin. “Right. Now you’re back on schedule.” I don’t recall which shows they were but they were animated to those original, uncorrected boards, Lee’s copies never retrieved from the waste bin.

Larry: But it wasn’t just the laughs. There was something about ThunderCats that engaged us. Or perhaps not just the show, which at first seemed like standard kids’ action/adventure, but something about the crew. John Curcio. John Crenshaw. Mike Ungar. Steve Gruskin. Matthew Malach. Tony Giovanelli. Not to mention the actors – talented, funny and totally on the mark. Give Earl Hyman a one-line pick-up and he took that as seriously as any stage play he’d starred in. Seems like every company claims ‘we’re family’;  our crew really was like family. Despite all the hours we spent together working, we also hung out. Sharon still says that Matthew and Karen’s wedding was one of the most beautiful she’s been to. Not to mention the Halloween parties!

Lee bought us a rowing machine because she thought we were getting too fat – a direct result of Rankin/Bass picking up all our meal tabs. At one point, Tony, or maybe it was Lee herself, told us Rankin/Bass was cracking down on the food bills. They presented me with an $800 overage which I was to pay out of my own pocket. Luckily, at the point at which I was about to have a stroke, they couldn’t keep straight faces.

Really, every session was a laugh factory but, by Thundera, we got the work done. And to a very, very high standard. An unmatched experience in a long career.

After I had left Rankin/Bass and New York, I didn’t give ThunderCats much thought. My involvement in the show saved me from a Trinidadian jail cell once and David Crichton’s interview for his book brought memories back as did the occasional interview but, by and large, it didn’t rent any more space than any other show I’d worked on. But a few years ago, Sean ‘Buddha’ McKeone (already featured) and I began to exchange emails about his upcoming book. They opened my eyes to the enormity of the show’s following. As I’ve written elsewhere, to discover this international group of aficionados is pretty humbling because if a show doesn’t have a following it’s like that philosophical saw “if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” So when I first thought about including a ThunderCats page on my website I quickly realized I should go beyond my own experiences and include posts about the unsung heroes of the crew and the extraordinary phenomenon and loyalty of the show’s supporters. And that’s what they are. ‘Fans’ doesn’t cover it!

… and here’s Nick Carver.

Nicholas Carver is an educator and producer who developed live events, many of them based on 80’s cartoons.  In his role as executive producer, he co-created a Jem and the Holograms live concert and several Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles promotional parties.  He also created a class about the history of the ThunderCats with special permission from Warner Bros. His collection of production material has helped to preserve the earliest development stages of the show.

Nick writes: It was nearly Christmas of 1989. Like most kids, season two of ThunderCats had me glued to the tv screen. As the ThunderCats searched for the Treasure of Thundera, I was on my own hunt for the toys. Thanks to the little fold-out cross-sell booklet, I had my Christmas list ready. By that time, the ThunderCats toys had nearly cleared completely from stores. There was only one thing left for a kid to do; ask Santa!  I sent Santa a detailed list of the characters I hoped I had been good enough to receive for Christmas. Not long after, my grandmother and aunt stopped at Toys “R” Us after a long day of running errands with me tagging along. I was nearly asleep in the back seat, too tired to go into the store with grandma. She returned to the car quickly.  Believing I was asleep, she said to my aunt, “I can’t find them anywhere.  I don’t know what I’m going to do.”  I knew she meant ThunderCats toys, but I didn’t worry too much.  Santa had his magic! Then, it was Christmas morning.  I woke early and hurried to the tree, somewhat prepared for disappointment, but reassured with excitement.  And there they were!  A few ThunderCats posed on top of presents!  I was screaming and ran to wake mom.  “It’s a miracle!,” I exclaimed. 

Back to the tree, there were only a few figures, but I was thrilled. Mom finally came in, groggy. It was time to open boxes, and inside each one was another ThunderCat!  It was the whole set! I later learned that my sweet mom got so tired from wrapping all those figures that she eventually gave up and just set the figures up all around the tree.

How did Santa pull it off?  Well, grandmother was teaching elementary school.  One day, after class, she complained to a fellow teacher that I had asked for ThunderCats for Christmas and that she couldn’t find them anywhere.  To that, the other teacher replied, “my son has the whole set and doesn’t play with them anymore.”  It was a real Christmas miracle!

This wouldn’t be my only ThunderCats miracle.  The ThunderCats had their Treasure of Thundera, but I would find my own box of treasure, straight from Stan Weston’s office at Leisure Concepts. A maintenance person found a box full of cartoon material from Stan that was set to be thrown out.  Instead of destroying it, he saved the box for a friend who later sold it to me on eBay. The listing didn’t do much to describe the contents of the box.  There were some scripts, model sheets, and memos shown, but that’s all.  It was enough for me!  When the box arrived, I could hardly lift it.  If I remember correctly, the shipping label said it was 70 pounds.  When opening the box, I felt like Indiana Jones discovering a long-lost relic. Inside was a real ThunderCats treasure trove.  It was a complete overview of the entire production process.  There were memos describing the progress of the production, including the hiring of Leonard Starr and Dr. Robert Kuisis, the psychologist who would review scripts and help develop the moral lessons for the show. There were model sheets with early production artwork of the characters, teaching kits that were sent out to schools, licensing contracts, Leonard’s series bible, and 90 scripts!  You could track the entire production from concept to screen.  It was an impossible find and later proved useful in my career as teacher.

In 2014, I was teaching for an entertainment university.  We taught students who were studying for careers in film, music, live events, and even animation.  When the students were out for spring and summer breaks, teachers kept their education current by teaching each other special classes based on their area of expertise.  By this time, I had collected even more production material and met the voice actors, some writers, and toymakers from the show.  The production material I had, combined with first-hand knowledge I had learned from the ThunderCats team, gave me unique insight into the history of the production.

There was plenty to learn from the team that created such an iconic cartoon, so I developed a special class called The History of the ThunderCats.  Warner Bros. gave me permission rights to create the course and showcase the production material I had collected. 

They even gave me permission to have an exclusive poster made to promote the class.

The art is by Amanda Tullis, a great digital artist who did many of the posters for my productions. I taught the course twice for teachers and entertainment professionals, and a third time for our students as a special seminar.

In both versions of the class, we studied the life-lessons that were built into the ThunderCats episodes.  I used the show as an example of assembling a unique team who could develop a concept, get it ready for the screen, and more importantly, give it purpose.

One of my favorite pieces from the Stan Weston box was Dr. Kuisis’ booklet containing every moral lesson from the first season of the show.  These characters were deliberately placed in situations that kids could learn from.  We watched Lion-O develop the skills he needed to lead, all with the help of his fellow ThunderCats and his new friends on Third Earth. Everyone played a role in building their society, and they were responsible for each other.

We also studied the idea of creating a show with merchandising in mind.  The merchandising power of the show meant kids could continue to play out the life lessons with their toys.  These were no ordinary toys either.  The character likeness and action features with light-up eyes helped to bring the characters right out of the screen and into your hands.

Lesson plans were also created and sent out to schools so that teachers could reinforce the life-lessons in their classrooms.  The show became a part of your life, and in a very positive way.  It must be one of the reasons the show has such a devoted world-wide following and continues to gain new fans today.  I hoped that my class would inspire other teachers and students to view entertainment as an educational tool and a valuable medium for promoting social values. While watching the cartoon, I never imagined that one day I would get to teach a class about the show’s history.

The real treasure is in the friendships I’ve made with some of the production team and the extended family of ThunderCats fans.

I recently made a custom toy of the Black Widow Shark, a monstrous character that was never made into a toy for the original Ljn line.

I have had so much fun sharing pictures and making new ThunderCats friends because of it all.

There are many reasons for the lasting success of this cartoon and its impact on pop culture.  Undeniably, one reason is that we had an example of a family of heroes who cared about each other and protected their friends unwaveringly.  That exciting cartoon, with its magical characters, fascinating locations, and thrilling toys is still bringing people together, 40 years later.  Maybe that can be the moral of this story.