Category: Uncategorized

My Love Affair with the Thundercats

Where do I begin? On September 18, 1985, I was out sick from my job as an airline reservations agent with a nasty head cold. It was around 4pm and I was lounging on the couch looking for something to watch on the TV to take my mind off of feeling miserable. I came across a cartoon whose animation and colors caught my eye. It was Thundercats episode 8, Tower of Traps, by Leonard Starr. I sat up and watched as WilyKit and WilyKat investigated the black tower that led to Lion-O and WilyKit later needing to rescue WilyKat from Robber Baron Karnor by traversing a series of traps.  The kicker was that Robber Baron Karnor was no longer alive. Wonderful story and animation! I was hooked.

Now, in 1985, I was a thirty-year-old female; an adult who loved animation/cartoons, comic books and toys. I had no children as I had not met my husband yet. I was the crazy aunt then to my nieces and nephews, with whom I shared my love of science fiction, fantasy and creativity. 

As a little girl, I loved Astro Boy, Fireball XL5, Bugs Bunny and Disney animated movies. Live action was for grown-ups. These early shows sparked my imagination, and they became a stepping stone to my hobbies as an adult. I would create my own stories and play them out in my head. 

As I grew up, the quality of animation faded, especially in the 70s. That decade brought limited animation and cycled clips along with the not so desirable backgrounds. Finding a cartoon with the animation seen in Thundercats was the first thing I noticed. The superb writing appealed to children and to adults. That was something I hadn’t seen since the Termite Terrace animators created their cartoon shorts for the movie theaters. 

I started writing fan fiction. I could unleash my universe on paper. I wrote Star Trek, Doctor Who, Knight Rider and Hawaii Five-O stories and, via the fanzine route enjoyed sharing my universe of the characters I so dearly loved with other fans. I even picked up a pencil and learned how to draw—somewhat.

I found out a friend I had met via my travels in fandom and also wrote fan stories (and has since become a NY best-selling author of cozy mysteries) loved He-Man. We talked, and she found out I loved Thundercats. We put our heads together and published a fan magazine and called it Animazine. With a small run, we were able to recoup our materials costs at the fan conventions we attended. At that time, Star Comics had a letter column, so we sent flyers to fans who wrote into the publication. Through this I met CJ Johnston. I was able to see her bloom into the fantastic artist she is today. We still keep in touch along with another pen pal fan that lives in Georgia.  

So I wrote a Thundercats trilogy. I loved it. Being able to create and fill in the gaps we fans find in the shows we love is what fanfiction is all about. By 1990, life took over, so my writing and drawing faded as my schooling and work took over, but I still love and remember the universe I created of my favorite characters. And I got to meet many great people along the way. 

In all, I know Lion-O was a big kid, but so was I. I guess we grew up in a wonderful way.

                                                                    My niece Melanie Simpson, Larry Kenney and me.

                                                                   This was taken in 2010 at a convention in Miami. 

PL: Jim was the  first Secondary Character designer brought on to ThunderCats – and it was he who brought in Bob Camp and Pepe Moreno. ‘Secondary Character Designer’ undersells the role, in my view, because those characters – the supporting actors, if you like, played a huge role in the show; and, of course, have spun off many toys. Jim went on to a very consdierable acting career. You can see him currently in Landman.

Jim’s words: You’re passionate about art, studying at the University of California, Santa Cruz, determined to be an artist, but you also do theater on the side. You study with a visiting Spanish artist, Miguel Arguello, who mentors you. He invites you to go to Spain to continue your studies and you live in Galicia for a couple years, going back and forth between Europe and the US. It’s in Madrid that you meet the actor Harvey Keitel on the Gran Villa, and that spurs your epiphany – that painting is a great career, but you really want to act! That you will thrive doing an art form that is less solitary than oil painting.

So you move to New York City, intending to support your acting ambitions by using your artistic talent: drawing, illustration, cartoons.

An artist’s rep tells you that Rankin/Bass is looking for storyboard artists. They are producing a new action-adventure animated series, ThunderCats, You’ve only worked as a storyboard assistant at Hanna Barbera studios one summer during your college years, but, eager for opportunities, you to go for an interview with Jules Bass.  He hires you based on your ability to convince him you know what you’re doing, and for a week you struggle, trying to figure out storyboarding, for which you are unsuited. Bass senses you’d be better used elsewhere. He switches you to designing the show’s secondary and supporting characters. PummRa is the first – that initial design launches you into a two year career as as an animation character designer. You design the secondary characters for every ThunderCats script up to about number 90 – at which point Rankin/Bass switches you to the development of SilverHawks.

Developing SilverHawks – an unending stream of conceptual sketches that result in more finished designs – so many of them, and coming so hard and fast, that all these years later you can’t remember them all and, sadly, have not kept any.

During this evolution, Jules asks you if you know other artists that he might hire to help. You recommend cartoonist extraordinaire Bob Camp, who helped you get jobs in your earliest days in New York. This recommendation leads to Bob working for Rankin/Bass and becomes the entry point of Bob’s eventual career as an animated show creator for Ren & Stimpy and others.

During these years at Rankin/Bass, you’re banging on every acting door. Auditions, auditions, auditions. Studying improvisation and helping to establish an improv theater school. The occasional commercial. Then small campaigns. You’re learning your craft and making steady progress. It’s at this point that lightning strikes. While working one afternoon for Rankin Bass, you’re invited to audition for the shows within the Comic Strip package. In the art studio on 53rd Street where Rankin/Bass has their artists, there are cassette tapes of ThunderCats and Silverhawks. Listening to them as you draw, you get a feeling for the work, the voices, the style. You do the audition in the Rankin/Bass offices and what feels like the next day you’re in Howard Schwartz recording studio performing the roles of Redfin and the Little Wolf Boy  and others for two segments in the Comic Strip, Tigersharks and Minimonsters.

There’s a lot of down time while recording episodes. You, Bob McFadden and Seth Green develop a pastime. One of you draws, say, the head of a creature, folds the paper to hide what you’ve drawn and then passes it on to the next, who sketches the midsection without looking at the prior drawing, then the last provides the legs and feet. You end up with a drawing of the most bizarre creature imaginable; the product of the imagination of three. A lot of time passes painlessly with a lot of laughs.

As a voice artist, suddenly, your life has changed – not just that you’re acting more or less full time but also you’re making an excellent living.

Then, lightning strikes again. You score at a commercial audition for a Texas grocery chain, Skaggs Alpha Beta.  You improvise a man on the street interview. The campaign takes off and you are THE man – featuring in every one of their radio and TV commercials for the next five years, launching you into a new niche as a “man-on-the-street”, and a cascade of residuals powered by the explosion of cable TV.

You leave commercial art and painting behind for now. There’s too much activity in your VoiceOver, spokesman and improvisation career.  And the cloistered life of a visual artist that you knew would be onerous has been forever supplanted.

You’re getting legit TV offers and you have enough income and security to dedicate yourself to your dreamed-of acting career, which eventually brings you back home to Los Angeles as a somewhat established professional.

All these years later, you’re featuring in Landman, one of the most successful TV series of the day and, by the way, you’ve long since moved back to Los Angeles from New York and are living in the house in which you grew up, with your wife of 38 years.

Your face is well known to audiences from appearances in The Grinch, Apollo 13, Parks and Recreation, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and many more. Also, your social media content, featuring your celebrity impressions have brought you worldwide fame. A wonderful career, built on that long ago fortuitous meeting with Jules Bass, when you were a  struggling artist on ThunderCats.

                                                                                               Thank you Rankin/Bass, and thank you Jules.

PL: A final word. Jim’s words about Jules are welcome. He has taken something of a beating in some of the posts here but – no question – none of these shows would have been developed or produced without him.

Dr. Kuisis

PL writes: Please forgive a longer than usual preamble. When I joined ThunderCats, Dr. Kuisis was in full flow. A memo written by Arthur and Jules August 16^th 1984 : ‘We have retained the services of Dr. Robert Kuisis to act as our psychological consultant for the series. Dr. Kuisis will be consulting with our writing staff on all scripts with particular emphasis placed on areas of potential difficulty including violence and morality. He will be approving treatments, outlines and plots for the series as well as reviewing all final scripts as to their acceptability. Additionally… a copy of his remarks concerning the teaching and/or moral or pro-social message(s) that is contained in each episode. Dr. Kuisis will also be reviewing the larger area of violence, fantasy and action in children’s television and will report to us on his findings, as they concern our series… A copy of his “White Paper” will be made available. The more I became involved in the scripting and editing, the more I realized that Dr. Kuisis’ contribution went beyond the ‘morality question’ and how it often enriched story. Take the second script I wrote, ‘Mongor.’ It could so easily have been a straightforward account to a somewhat Satanic villain. Out of our discussions came the underlying theme: that fear compounds itself – Mongor becoming more powerful the more he was feared. Not a bad lesson for today, come to think of it!

 In any analysis of the success of the show I believe that this psychological underpinning (if that’s not too pompous a description) held together the very different stories, the very different writers’ ideas. I valued these – often rambling – departures from the base theme Len Starr had laid down but one element that tied these explorations of the show’s wilder shores together was Dr. Kuisis’ contribution. Later, When I developed The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest I thought back to these questions of how to show violence and gunplay on screen in a realistic show. But that’s another story!

Dr. Kuisis writes:

Thanks to Nick Carver, I was put in touch with Peter and introduced to his website and the impressive Thundercats fan club.  I immediately felt on familiar ground while reading about his many and widespread encounters with the fans as it mirrored, though more expansively, my own experience in the 40 some years of post-show history. At the time of the show, I was living and working in New York City, having just finished my doctorate, directing a counseling service in NYU’s school of education, and developing a private psychotherapy practice.  I went on to do postdoctoral analytic studies and the practice evolved into a successful psychotherapy and psychoanalytic practice.

Life went on and for a time I developed a practice both on the East End of Long Island (yes “The Hamptons” though I cringe at that image reduction) and NYC.  Eventually I gave up whatever teaching I was doing in the city and moved full time to Sag Harbor.  But most of my professional development was on that other side of computers (I used IBM punch cards for my dissertation research) and social media. So I never did develop an online website or presence.  However, beyond the perfunctory lists that include me as a “healthcare provider” I do exist online.

Yes, by way of the Thundercats.  Any search for me online will primarily turn up my role and credits, including some photos.  I continue to be amused and pleased that I have an IMDb credit as additional crew/psychological consultant.  So over the years I’ve been contacted by fans or even patients regarding my role. The images that come up on Google were part of an interview done for a special feature that appeared in a DVD set of Season One/Volume Two.  The success and longevity of the show continues to surprise.

So what was my role and how did it develop?  As I recall it, activist groups like Action for Children’s Television were lobbying for more educational programming and cautioning against shows with violent content or that were designed more to sell toylines than benefit the child viewers.  This led producers to develop internal methods to create standards, which included hiring psychological consultants.  Of 12 animated shows introduced in 1085, half had such positions.  A 1982 report of the National Institute of Mental Health, Television and Behavior:  Ten Years of Scientific Progress and Implications for the Eighties, described a mixed picture, the negative effects of violence countered by the possibility of teaching prosocial behaviors.  So that’s what became a central focus of the writers and me.

I wrote a “white paper” Thundercats as Pro-Social describing how the show would function to serve that purpose, pointing out themes that would relate to developmental tasks in the cognitive, emotional, social, and moral realms.  I would receive the first draft and review it for any problematic elements.  I think I only objected once to something having to do with the occult, though I don’t recall any specifics. My sense was my opinion would not necessarily be welcomed by the writers, and probably Peter played more of this role than I did.

PL writes: An interesting question! My memory is that I was initially bit cynical and put Dr. Kuisis’ presence down to a producers’ attempt to mollify the many critics of this genre. However, I very soon changed my view – not least because Lee Dannacher took it very seriously. As to the other writers, I don’t think it took much persuasion for them to accept the process because so very often the ‘lesson’ was really an underlying theme which pulled the story together. Having said that – sure, there were episodes in which one had to work hard to find the ‘lesson’! A lot of rewriting!

Once the final draft was complete, I would write a “moral” or lesson based on the episode’s content.  And that was packaged into an educational program of synopses and morals which also included learning and activities for grades one through six.

I never did learn how many school systems used it or heard of any follow up study on its effectiveness. In looking back on what I wrote, I’m not sure if I was directing it to the teachers or the children, or both.  I do recall feeling after about episode 40 of the 65 that there weren’t any more morals to include.  But “Truth, Justice, Honor, and Loyalty,”  find them we did!

Robert also worked on SilverHawks and the Comic Strip.

ThunderCat of the Day – Jorge ‘JP’ Pelaez

PL: Putting these stories together, I’m intrigued by how differently everyone experienced the show. Of course, Lion-O and the ThunderCats (not to forget Mumm-Ra and the Mutants) are the common ground but for some the show seemed to have been a home away from home; for others simply a crazy adventure; and for some a kind of therapy! Some seem to be able to remember every moment of their ThunderCat experience, from the moment they saw the first title sequence to the very last episode. Others’ memories are far more general – perhaps more the feelings than the specifics.

In addition to thanking JP for contributing here, I owe him for his clear exposition of the adult toy collecting market.

JP – Jorge Pelaez writes:

Vivid memories of watching the show and eating Captain Crunch!

I was born in Miami Florida and was raised by grandparents who migrated from Cuba in the early 60’s. During my childhood, my grandfather worked as a sandwich maker at a restaurant during the day and a baker overnight to make ends meet so they didn’t have the spare cash for a whole bunch of toys but I did manage to acquire figures of Panthro, my favourite, Lion-O, Monkian and the mail away Mumm-Ra. Now, as an adult and with a bit of spare cash in hand, I’ve become an avid collector. A fanatic, I suppose you could say. I buy everything that comes my way, large scale, small scale, vintage… you name it!

I turned that hobby into an endeavor by creating the Toyaddict26 channel and doing toy reviews and sharing my passion for toys and collectibles on YouTube in the early 2000’s reaching almost 6,000 subscribers before being shut down by google for supposed policy violations that occurred when my channel was hacked for a 24-hour period in late 2022.

I put together my Thundercats Classics Instagram account in 2015 right after Mattel announced they would be producing Thundercats licensed action figures because, as a collector, it was one of the most exciting pieces of news  I could ever receive as you can see from fame from my video of me announcing this news.

I created the account intending it to be a one-stop-shop for all things ThunderCats, to celebrate and champion the brand; growing it through more licensed products in the world of collectibles. The account has grown enormously since then to 104K followers and continues to grow by the day.

I found it surprising that there are no Thundercats specific channels on youtube other than my good friend Egmond’s We Want More Thundercats, which focuses primarily on the Super7 toys. Hence a joint venture with Mega Jay Retro was born: the ThunderCats Lair channel on YouTube. Our goal for the ThunderCats Lair channel is to make it an all-inclusive ThunderCats video encyclopedia combining behind the scenes stories with interviews and current news; everything show- and IP-related. I have been fortunate to make connections throughout my Thundercats social media endeavors, that have led me on the path to fulfilling my creative goals which has been one of the most rewarding achievements of my life.

Though I have no formal art training, I’ve always wanted to be involved in art and design and, recently, have been able to fulfil that ambition and within the world of Thundercats.

Some of my art!

I have an official ThunderCat collectible figure coming out soon from MONDO but the details are embargoed for the moment. Maybe I’ll be able to post again when the figure is available.  In this design, I’ve gone beyond the actual figure itself. I’ve taken the props and weapons associated and developed them to help express the personality. I think of it as my homage to this particular character, a love letter of sorts! This journey started in 2023 at the Power-Con convention in Anaheim, where a friend introduced me to the Senior Creative Director at Mondo, Hector Arce. I showed him some of my art samples and told him I was a big fan of what they were doing with their Masters of the Universe figures and said “If you ever get the ThunderCats license, I’m your guy”. A year later, MONDO announced the license. I DM’ed Hector, letting him know I was ready and later that week we had a formal phone call to discuss the project. The rest is history.

I also collaborated creatively with Bull Airs and designed a Thundercats homage shoe releasing in 2026 and hope to eventually make toy design and development my main job rather than, as it is now, a passionate sideline.

I’d like to end this with a shout out to all my fellow Spanish-speaking ThunderCats fans. 80% of my 104,000 Instagram followers are from Latin America – and, if you read some of the posts on this site, you’ll see that they’re not just my contemporaries who watched the show in the 80s; a lot of them are teens and twenties who never saw the broadcast show and only know it from DVDs, YouTube and social media. Seeing how ThunderCats holds up 40 years later and still earns such a faithful following is a great compliment to the show and to the international following that keeps it alive and I am so proud and excited to continue spreading awareness of this most amazing animated series from the 80’s.

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.

Shortly after I began to story edit the show, I looked for writers. I was astonished that only one New York agent showed any interest in connecting me. Surely I thought, there must be dozens of writers who – first – would want to be paid to write; and – second – actually see their work on screen. I lost patience with the process and called Chris, then living in London. We’d written books together, TV material and worked in advertising together. I knew he could, as they say, ‘write the shit out of anything.’

He ended up writing more episodes than any other contracted writer except perhaps Len.

Chris: “Peter and I have known each other for almost our whole lives and have been writing together for almost as long. Although we lost touch for a while after leaving school, we eventually ran into each other in London’s Park Lane and discovered that our apartments were no more than half a mile apart. A quick catch-up revealed that I was working as a trade journalist, and Peter had sold a screenplay and was making industrial and promo films. Clearly we were destined to collaborate and take the world by storm!

Actually success for our partnership came quickly, with two best-selling comic novels for Quartet Books, and later Full Moon for W H Allen. In between times we were recruited by London Weekend Television as potential comedy writers, although in the end we baulked at having to write gags for old-school comics like Larry Grayson. Later we worked together on Thundercats and other hit US shows, and in the UK on the TV revival of Dennis and Gnasher. We’ve never stopped writing together – and in a world where creative partnerships break up with monotonous regularity, we’ve never had a cross word. Whether books, movies or TV, commissioned or on spec we’re still on the case – perhaps because it’s always been fun!”

Chris is one of Europe’s leading animation writers, his credits including Lavender Castle, co-written with the legendary Gerry Anderson. He co-developed and wrote the bible for Bob The Builder plus multiple scripts; was instrumental in the writing of King Arthur’s Disasters which starred the late great Rick Mayall and was nominated for both BAA and BAFTA awards. He was series editor for Dennis and Gnasher. The credits go on and on – including Turbozaurs which has rolled out to over 30 countries in 20 languages.

Sidestepping into the world of theatre, he recently translated into English DAS HUHN AUF DEM RUCKEN, a play by well-known German playwright Fred Apke. Successfully produced in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, under its new title PRETTY DEAD it is now available to the UK market.

For more about Chris, see christrengove.com.