Center Neptune Control -

I wanna discuss something. I want to get a clearer picture of the era BOTP was made from its fans. People nowadays have a very clear idea of what happened in the past. Hindsight is 20/20 and the history has been documented extensively. But I want to know of the personal memories of people who lived in the enviroment in media back when Gatchaman was dubbed into becoming Battle Of The Planets. In an era of no internet, the infancy of VHS, No Uncut Home Media, and most certainly NO FANSUBS. Why Battle Of The Planets captivated you and created a love that has endured over the years and why despite not being a faithful version you come to see it as one of the defining cartoons of the generation.

If these sounds too vague or too unclear, tell me about your childhood, the place BOTP had in it, how similar or different it was to other cartoons and if you liked it better or worse.

I was very young when Battle of the Planets captured my imagination - about 3 or 4 years old, maybe 5?

I have vivid memories of (role) playing the characters with the boys at kindy (pre-school) - they never let me be Jason because I was a girl, so I had to be Princess! This would have been around 1981 or 1982.
The vehicles and the transformations were a big part of the attraction to this cartoon for me - and the music!

Other cartoons that captivated me back then (through the early '80s, in my primary/elementary school years) included Astroboy and Voltron, and later Mysterious Cities of Gold. Those ones, along with Battle of the Planets probably made the deepest impact on me as a kid and stuck in my memory for decades.

Of course I remember watching the Flintstones and the Smurfs almost every morning, Inspector Gadget in the afternoons, The Wacky Races, Masters of the Universe, Transformers (and countless others) on weekends, and little short cartoons from the UK like Superted, The Raggy Dolls, Bananaman and Danger Mouse (which was longer) almost every day.

It was also an era of family variety shows like the Muppet Show and Young Talent Time that we could watch with our parents on Saturday nights, often before a Disney movie of the week.

Despite being the kind of kid who was happy watching TV (and I certainly seem to have watched a lot!), I remember playing outside most of the time.
We rode our bikes to each others' houses - by the time I was 9 or 10 I was riding to kids houses a few streets away, but our neighbourhood didn't have a lot of traffic.
We role-played our favourites shows and made up our own stories, sometimes with the aid of action figures (Masters of the Universe, Transformers), but most of the time without anything but imagination.
We raced Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars and built race tracks in the dirt.
We put on puppet shows in the back yard with and for our friends, using hand puppets and stuffed animal toys. Sometimes we wrote plays and performed them to no-one at all!
I had dolls that I sometimes dressed up or threw tea parties for.
I had slot car sets. Our family had an Atari 2600, but with 4 kids all trying to get their turn at playing games on the one TV set in the house, game time was limited! (I actually really liked the ET game - it was one of the ones I could actually finish almost every time!)

Is this the kind of stuff you want to know?
(If not, sorry for the ramble!)

Katblu, you're awesome!

I didn't live in a neighborhood but I rode my bike A LOT - playing various Battle adventures in my head - on a trail beside our house.

I didn't mind that ramble at all!!!

Katblu42 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 4:14 am I was very young when Battle of the Planets captured my imagination - about 3 or 4 years old, maybe 5?

I have vivid memories of (role) playing the characters with the boys at kindy (pre-school) - they never let me be Jason because I was a girl, so I had to be Princess! This would have been around 1981 or 1982.
The vehicles and the transformations were a big part of the attraction to this cartoon for me - and the music!

Other cartoons that captivated me back then (through the early '80s, in my primary/elementary school years) included Astroboy and Voltron, and later Mysterious Cities of Gold. Those ones, along with Battle of the Planets probably made the deepest impact on me as a kid and stuck in my memory for decades.

Of course I remember watching the Flintstones and the Smurfs almost every morning, Inspector Gadget in the afternoons, The Wacky Races, Masters of the Universe, Transformers (and countless others) on weekends, and little short cartoons from the UK like Superted, The Raggy Dolls, Bananaman and Danger Mouse (which was longer) almost every day.

It was also an era of family variety shows like the Muppet Show and Young Talent Time that we could watch with our parents on Saturday nights, often before a Disney movie of the week.

Despite being the kind of kid who was happy watching TV (and I certainly seem to have watched a lot!), I remember playing outside most of the time.
We rode our bikes to each others' houses - by the time I was 9 or 10 I was riding to kids houses a few streets away, but our neighbourhood didn't have a lot of traffic.
We role-played our favourites shows and made up our own stories, sometimes with the aid of action figures (Masters of the Universe, Transformers), but most of the time without anything but imagination.
We raced Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars and built race tracks in the dirt.
We put on puppet shows in the back yard with and for our friends, using hand puppets and stuffed animal toys. Sometimes we wrote plays and performed them to no-one at all!
I had dolls that I sometimes dressed up or threw tea parties for.
I had slot car sets. Our family had an Atari 2600, but with 4 kids all trying to get their turn at playing games on the one TV set in the house, game time was limited! (I actually really liked the ET game - it was one of the ones I could actually finish almost every time!)

Is this the kind of stuff you want to know?
(If not, sorry for the ramble!)

This is EXACTLY what I wanted to know! Thanks KatBlu. Your contribution was awesome and it REALLY made my day.

BTW anyone else is free to ramble. This is the RAMBLE ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.

Hi Cure DragonEagle and Katblu,

Katblu42 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 4:14 am I was very young when Battle of the Planets captured my imagination - about 3 or 4 years old, maybe 5?

I have vivid memories of (role) playing the characters with the boys at kindy (pre-school) - they never let me be Jason because I was a girl, so I had to be Princess! This would have been around 1981 or 1982.
The vehicles and the transformations were a big part of the attraction to this cartoon for me - and the music!

Other cartoons that captivated me back then (through the early '80s, in my primary/elementary school years) included Astroboy and Voltron, and later Mysterious Cities of Gold. Those ones, along with Battle of the Planets probably made the deepest impact on me as a kid and stuck in my memory for decades.

Of course I remember watching the Flintstones and the Smurfs almost every morning, Inspector Gadget in the afternoons, The Wacky Races, Masters of the Universe, Transformers (and countless others) on weekends, and little short cartoons from the UK like Superted, The Raggy Dolls, Bananaman and Danger Mouse (which was longer) almost every day.

It was also an era of family variety shows like the Muppet Show and Young Talent Time that we could watch with our parents on Saturday nights, often before a Disney movie of the week.

Wow, Katblu! A few years difference, a giant ocean in the middle of our continents... and such similar experiences!

It's always amazing to me how much reach US programming has had around the world. We were never exposed to much international programming. To the point I used to seek it out as much as I could - just to see different things.

Like you, I watched a lot of TV. Mostly on my own, but sometimes with friends. I got to see just about everything you mentioned, except for The Raggy Dolls and Bananaman. I vaguely remember Superted. Danger Mouse was a particular favorite of mine, the program used to run on the kids' channel, Nickelodeon. Although I didn't learn until I got DVD sets that Stiletto's voice was re-dubbed for North American audiences. (They changed his Italian accent to a cockney one for some reason)

I did so much of what you mentioned as a lad. Riding bikes all over the place with friends. Playing in the giant dirt field behind one of my houses. My friends and I (especially in the first place we lived) used to roam freely through almost all of our neighbor's yards, and sometimes houses. So we were all over the place playing. We also did shows for each other. I once reenacted all of Empire Strikes Back myself (with voices and choreography) for a friend and his younger brother who weren't allowed to go see it. Since I'd seen it a couple times, I was an "expert," you know. Heh, Imagine C-3PO telling their story to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi... and you kind of get the idea.

I had a lot of toys as a youngster. My good friend lived across the street, and my mom and his mom got made a pact that they wouldn't buy us the same things. He got some types of toys while I got others. We both loved Mego dolls for instance... I got the Star Trek ones, and he got Planet of the Apes.

For Star Wars stuff, I got small action figures and vehicles... He got playsets/games and large 12" action figures. It all worked out. We rarely ever got the same things, or parts of one another's collections. Except for one thing. My friend's mother got him a Mego Star Trek Gorn doll. So I didn't get one. It was the only Star Trek Mego doll I didn't have. Until eBay, many many years later, that is.

Oh, and books. I loved books. We had a news agent just around the corner from us and I was allowed to walk there on my own and I haunted that place. Comics, sci-fi movie and TV show magazines and paperbacks, MAD magazines and paperbacks... TV and movie tie-in books. If it was entertainment-related, I probably tried to buy it.

But on to Cure DragonEagle's question...

In the middle of all that came Battle of the Planets. I remember it looked a lot different than anything else. Not many of us would have put it into words at that point, but it was attractive on many points that have been discussed by us before. The detail of the art, the colors, the dynamic animation and action, the music, William Woodson's cool voice in the opening, the Phoenix... It was like a superhero show, and my friends and I were already into those from comics and toys. It fit right in with all of that.

I think a major factor for Battle being a hit was that it was on every day. Kids in most markets didn't have to wait for Saturday mornings to see it. They could hear the theme and enjoy the adventures several times a week. Frequency and repetition helped. That's how I think kids of our era coped without home video or other ways to see it.

If you were fans of other major kid's shows, you could get all kinds of things to hold you over, but not with Battle. There weren't comics right away. There was very, very little coverage of the show in magazines. No toys. When goods were made available, they were kind of late into the game and there was no real way for many fans to know. Other than to walk into a shop and luck into something. TV remained the main (and almost only) way to really experience the series. I think that's why kids who enjoyed the show were so eager to catch it.

Hopefully that helps a bit more.

I love all these stories and thank you all for posting here! Thank you everyone.

One thing that blew me away about BOTP was that the animation and premise were nothing like I had ever seen before. Up until then I had grown up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the like. The BOTP animation looked way superior (except for the bits Sandy Frank added).

Animelia wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 3:05 pm One thing that blew me away about BOTP was that the animation and premise were nothing like I had ever seen before. Up until then I had grown up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the like. The BOTP animation looked way superior (except for the bits Sandy Frank added).

Agreed, that is exactly what pulled me in as well.

Animelia wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 3:05 pm One thing that blew me away about BOTP was that the animation and premise were nothing like I had ever seen before. Up until then I had grown up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the like. The BOTP animation looked way superior (except for the bits Sandy Frank added).

Terrific first post from Animelia, thank you!

Hi Animelia,

Animelia wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 3:05 pm One thing that blew me away about BOTP was that the animation and premise were nothing like I had ever seen before. Up until then I had grown up on Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the like. The BOTP animation looked way superior (except for the bits Sandy Frank added).

Welcome, and thanks for your thoughts about the series! I think it was the same for most of us. At that time, there was just nothing else like it around.