Saturday Night Showcase> Peter Cullen & Tim Curry voice fest

This is a week of bad timing, for cartoon fans and me personally.

I’m going to spare you the major details, but a declutter project that I could have worked around was joined with a bunch of surprise distractions that ate up most of my week. I’ll save it for the update, but I don’t know if I’m going to have a comic review this week as I write this, and I can’t even go over the project until next week because I’m too mad. Sort version: I hate this week.

The fact that it took three big celebrities one day after another didn’t help, either. Dolly Parton, then Tim Curry, and then Peter Cullen. Parton and Curry were known to be dealing with different medical issues, while if anything was announced for Cullen’s cause of death I’ve been too buried in home videos to find out. I want to do a good tribute to some of my favorite Tim Curry and Peter Cullen roles, since Dolly Parton wasn’t known for voice acting, but I’m swamped. I seriously hate this week!

Fortunately, Orbital Bacon can least give me something to post, though I wouldn’t have made all the same choices. No Saturday Supercade and no Vitor: Starfire Champion, but this is the best I can do. Did I mention I hate this week? In addition to Saturday morning podcasts, he does a weekly livestream on Saturday mornings, recapturing the Saturday morning experience…even though many of his choices come from syndication. This week he did his own tribute to Cullen and Curry, including some of the obvious choices. I’ll put a list of timestamps to all the shows he covered so you can pick and choose, or sit back and watch all the old shows and commercials from a programming schedule long past. Enjoy…before some copywrite bot forces it down.

0:00 – Intro

3:17 – The Transformers: He chose the episode I would have, in which Optimus deals with a human hunter looking to introduce a robot with centuries of war experience to “the most dangerous game”, and the Decepticons try to take advantage. It was either that or that time Megatron created an Optimus “clone”, and this was the less stupid option

29:23 – Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs: Though based on his brother, Cullen’s Optimus Prime was often compared to John Wayne. Well, he went full Duke as the voice of the computer for the hero’s transforming base vehicle.

53:23 –Dungeons & Dragons: If you’re going to look at Cullen’s villain roles, Venger is the best one to go with. I never really watch the show so it’s not the one I would have chosen, but I can blame this guy.

1:19:10 – Peter Pan and the Pirates: Now we’re on to Tim Curry’s, and this is the show I would have chosen. Curry’s Captain Hook might be the best take on the character, and we would later take on Long John Silver for Muppet Treasure Island.

1:44:03 – Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad: His role as Kilokhan in this rework of Hyper Agent Gridman, when everyone wanted their own “Power Rangers”, is a great choice. Shame it was one of the dumbest episodes that he chose. I never got into the show, so there’s my bias. It’s like getting coal and calling it a Christmas episode. DIC never gave their live-action shows the budget they needed. See their other attempt, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills, and you’ll see why they should have stuck to animation.

2:09:55 – Xyber 9: I didn’t get to finish this show, so I didn’t even know he appeared in an episode. Or I forgot. All I remember about this show is some kid got a floating robot computer thingy that everybody and their godmother wanted.

2:34:30 – Time Jam: Val and Lolo: I have never heard of this show until just now, and as previously noted I’m swamped with many other things. So this will be new to both of us. I did a few seconds of research and learned two things: Tim Curry and Peter Cullen weren’t involved and it’s adapted from an anime of Valerian And Laureline, the French comic that was turned into a surprisingly boring live-action movie. I don’t know why it was chosen. Hunt down the rare occasion of Curry doing a good guy role would have been my choice. I guess he was worried the people behind The Wild Thornberries would come for him…but not Hasbro?  In that case, do an episode of Rescue Bots with Cullen as Optimus and Curry as Doctor Morocco! There’s an episode where the Aligned version of Optimus and Bumblebee help the Rescue Bots protect Griffin Rock from Morocco’s “Morphobots”. That would have been a great ending to the tribute. Or one of the shows I mentioned earlier that showcased Cullen’s range as Mario and the king of war.

I wish I had time to put my own together (this….#$%#$%#$^%….week!), but if you look around previous Showcases you’ll find more of Cullen’s work, though I don’t think I really spotlighted any of Tim Curry’s work on here. As for Dolly Parton, I’m sure something will eventually make their way to Sing Me A Story or if 9-5 ever become embeddable, but that’s three big losses in one week. That’s really not a good thing, but as we get older, so do the people from our childhood who were already adults. My condolences to all their friends and families.