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DuckTales is an American animated television series produced by The Walt Disney Company starring characters from the Scrooge McDuck universe as largely created by Carl Barks. The pilot episode first aired on September 11, 1987. CharactersThe main stars of the series were Scrooge McDuck himself and his grandnephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are also the nephews of Donald Duck in many other cartoons, but Donald only shows up a few times in DuckTales. (The story was that Donald had gone off to join the Navy, leaving Huey, Dewey, and Louie in Scrooge's care until his return.) Duckburg was the show's setting. The residents of Duckburg were usually ducks, dogs and pigs.Other characters from the comics include Gyro Gearloose, Gladstone Gander, Glittering Goldie O'Gilt, Magica De Spell, Flintheart Glomgold and the Beagle Boys. The series also introduced many original characters, such as Launchpad McQuack, Gizmo Duck (both would be seen later in the series Darkwing Duck), Mrs. Bentina Beakley, Webby Vanderquack, Doofus Drake, and Duckworth the Butler. ImpactDuckTales was the most successful of Disney's early attempts to create high-quality animation for a TV animated series (earlier shows included The Wuzzles and The Gummi Bears in 1985). Disney invested a far greater amount of money into the TV series than had previously been spent on animated shows of the time. This was considered a risky move, because animated TV series were generally considered low-budget, throwaway investments for most of the history of TV cartoons up through the 1980s. Most DuckTales episodes were animated in Asia by companies such as Cuckoo's Nest Studios, Wang Film Productions of Taiwan, and Tokyo Movie Shinsha of Japan.Many critics say that Disney's own animation studio had lost most of its luster during the period from Walt Disney's passing through the 1980s. However, the studio took a number of risks that paid off handsomely, and DuckTales was one of those risks that won big. The studio gambled on the idea that a larger investment into quality animation could be made back through syndication--a concept that worked well with live-action TV reruns, but which had only been used with inexpensive cartoon series that either recycled theatrical shorts from decades past or only featured limited, low-budget animation. The 1987-1988 season of DuckTales consisted of 65 episodes (the standard length for a Disney TV show nowadays). The next season (1989-1990) included an additional 35 episodes, bringing the total to 100 episodes â€" making DuckTales one of the longest-running Disney shows episode-wise. (The longest-running Disney show is Dumbo's Circus). In the second season, Bubba the Caveduck and his pet triceratops, Tootsie, and Fenton Crackshell and his alter ego Gizmo Duck appeared. The show was so successful it spawned a feature film, DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, and two spinoff series: Darkwing Duck and Quack Pack. The success of DuckTales also paved the way for a new wave of high-quality animated TV series, including Disney's own The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1988. The new for 1989 series Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers was paired with DuckTales in an hour-long syndicated show through the 1989-1990 television season. In the 1990-1991 season, Disney expanded the idea even further, to create The Disney Afternoon, a two-hour long syndicated block of half-hour cartoons. DuckTales was one of the early flagship cartoons in the series. DuckTales inspired competing studios such as Warner Bros. to make their own investments in animation with Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. Huey, Dewey, and Louie all appeared in the drug prevention video Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. Scrooge and Launchpad appeared in Disney's short-lived animated series Raw Toonage (originally aired on CBS in 1992 and 1993). DuckTales was last seen on Toon Disney, a Disney-owned network that airs mostly animated cartoons. After the addition of JETIX in February 2004, the show left circulation along with a number of other shows, and as of 2006, it is currently being syndicated in the United Kingdom channel Disney Cinemagic. It is unknown if it will ever return to the network, but a 3-disc DVD set of DuckTales with the series' first 27 episodes was released on November 8, 2005. A second volume will be released in November 2006. The Disney Channel reran the series in the late-1990s until their pre-teen lineup took over. Additionally, Gemstone Publishing will be publishing two trade paperbacks printing the Barks stories that were later adaptated into DuckTales episodes. These books are to be titled Carl Barks' Greatest DuckTales Adventures. Spin-off merchandiseDuckTales had two series of comic books. The first series was from Gladstone and ran for 13 issues from 1988 to 1990, and the second series was from Disney Comics and ran for 18 issues from 1990 to 1991. Disney also published a children's magazine based on the show, which also featured comic stories, one of which was the only story Don Rosa wrote without also illustrating. Subsequent comic stories were printed in the magazine Disney Adventures from 1990 to 1996.The series also spawned two video games for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy, DuckTales and DuckTales 2, both by Capcom, as well as a computer game for the PC, Amiga and Commodore 64, called Duck Tales - The Quest for Gold. The first Ducktales game for NES is considered by many to be the best of all the Disney Afternoon themed games by Capcom. Foreign translationsThe success of DuckTales led to the translation of the show into various languages including Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and others.DuckTales was the first American animated TV series to be officially broadcast in syndication in the former USSR. Featured together with "Chip ‘n Dale's Rescue Rangers" in a Sunday evening program simply called "Walt Disney Presents", the show premiered for millions of excited Soviet children in 1990. Some of the show's characters were dubbed by popular veteran voice actors of Soviet animation. The show's theme song however remained in English for a number of episodes. The first Russian version of the song was inexplicably replaced mid-way through the series with an alternate rendition that contained completely different lyrics. See also* List of DuckTales episodes* DuckTales DVD Releases * Darkwing Duck * Quack Pack External links* DuckTales: Volume 1 DVD Review at UltimateDisney.com* Official web page at the Toon Disney Channel * DuckTales on TV.com * DuckTales on The Big Cartoon Database * DuckTales on Retro Junk * Allt om DuckTales v.3.0. (Swedish) * All about DuckTales - A lot of screenshots, games, music etc (even virtual journey in mansion McDuck or journey in Gyro Gearloose's house.
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