TV Review #6: Gilligan's Planet (1982)

 

This review goes out to shain a man I've known for 21 years now. We met on the ol' Internet Relay Chat in like 2000? or maybe it was 2001. I do not remember but he and I have had tons of erotic internet fun since then. I asked in my discord for stuff to review and he said this, well originally he said The Brady Kids but fuck anything related to the Brady Bunch right in the dickhole hard. Anyway I decided to talk about this show because I had always been curious about it ever since seeing it on one of those "30 MINUTES OF 80S CARTOON INTROS" that were on youtube in like 2007. Good stuff. I'm sure I will end up talking about The Brady Kids one day but that's probably after I run out of things I want to talk about.

This cartoon was created by the animation company Filmation, known best for He-Man, She-Ra and probably BraveStarr. In fact this was the last show they did for Saturday Morning before they went whole hog in on the syndicated shows like He-Man. I know most blogs when talking about Filmation the first show they would review would probably be one of them but not this one! No sir! I talk about the weird Gilligan's Island spinoff because I'm cool like that. Filmation started in 1962 by Norm Prescott, Lou Scheimer(who's dad punched Hitler in the face. Now that's cool!) and Hal Sutherland. They made about 52,000 cartoons during those eras for TV. In fact the only other competition they had were Hanna Barbera and probably reruns of cartoons from like the theatre days for Saturday Morning fun! So if you didn't like either like a lot of jerky animation snobs don't well you are shit outta luck, I guess. However I had a ball of a time watching reruns of stuff like He-Man and She-Ra and all that so these rascals still hold a special place in my heart no matter how cheap a lot of the cartoons admittedly are.

Gilligan's Planet was an animated spinoff of Gilligan's Island. The second in fact actually. The first was also made by Filmation in 1974. The New Adventures of Gilligan. The show also had 3 TV Movies too which is were I some dumb YouTube channel like Cinema Sins I would complain about how the cartoons spinoffs ruin the continuity of Gilligan's Island. Then I would shoot myself for literally worrying about the continuity of something as silly as Gilligan's Island (which is something that I like by the way) 1982 was a big year for spinoffs of sitcoms into cartoons, as Mork and Mindy, Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley all got their own shows, and yes I will talk about them too because why not?

I must admit the animation in the show is cheap as I mentioned before but it's not that bad. I guess I'm used to the stuff like that now? They do reuse a lot of scenes because why not? It ain't a damn crime son! I must say I enjoy the painted backgrounds of the animation a lot. They were always fun and nicely designed. Also the character designs are very fun too, they definitely look like the characters from the original show (except Ginger is a platinum blonde like Jayne Mansfield who apparently the creators wanted for the original role... they do know Ginger means redhead right??) The stories are silly but very fun and I totally laughed several times and some very goofy jokes but I think you know that already. Also another neat note was that Tom Ruegger who would later go on to Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and Freakazoid did some of his earliest work on this series. Wild huh!? 

Final Verdict: This isn't amazing television. It won't get the highest grades of stuff I cover from Filmation or any other series. It's just simple fun comfort food TV. It's very silly but entertaining. It's also worth watching if you enjoy all those silly sitcoms from the past, which I do. I recommend watching it if you enjoy the Filmation stuff of this era. It's charming and silly and I had fun with it. Much more fun than if I had watched The Brady Kids.