COPS (Centre d'opération de police spéciale)

The early 80s brought some of the coolest, most nostalgic.cartoons of any era, even if they were just massive campaigns to illegally sell stuff to kids. Anyway, we had the likes of Thundercats, He-Man, She-Ra, G. I. Joe and many more that set a template for the rest of the decade. However, the ideas started getting wilder and darker as people started running out of them.

We had monsters battling each other in the Earth's core, space cowboys (and space Texas Rangers!!), space hawks wrapped in silver, people that could turn into underwater creatures, and even people using dinosaurs for war! Honestly, this weird stuff sat better with me than any of the main stream properties people yammer on about these days. C. O. P. S. Happened to fall under this era for me.

I'm not surprised too many people remember this show, for it had a bizarre rebrand after the reality show Cops came out, but as people tries looking for the next best thing, it was just too damn weird for its own good (along with the other shows of the late 80s).

While this show is not iconic, it still had some fun voice casting and had some cool ideas about the future. Big Boss was a great bad guy, for he was incompetent enough to stay out of trouble but megalomaniacal enough to fail. It was a fun format. However, the variety of the characters was what made the show so cool. I mean they had a mustachioed cowboy on the show!

Hopefully this show won't be lost forever in The annals of cartoon history.

COPS is one of the 80s classics that I did not catch when I was young. Heard about it here and there and the previews looked nice. When I finally heard that Richard Raynis, Fil Barlow and Duane Capizzi et al who were behind the development of the brilliant and amazing Extreme Ghostbusters series, were also involved in COPS, I went ahead and bought some tapes.

This series is downright impressive, mature and highly polished. The characters are all very nice and interesting. All in all, an excellent production. Perhaps if it had a movie preceding it, it would have been as well known as the also good, although slightly over-rated, The Real Ghostbusters, also directed by Richard Raynis, which it compares favorably against. All of them are certainly the better ones of the 80s.

Like XGB, COPS remains something obscure and rare, but rewards he who tracks and follows it, beyond imagination. Very impressive stuff from the same clique of geniuses. Too bad I did'nt catch this wonderful series during the 80s!

The one thing that I really liked about this cartoon was that the main character and leader of the C.O.P.S (Central Organization of Police Specialists) team (composed of whites) was a Black man. Most other team oriented cartoons always has one black character usually stereotypical and almost always not the leader (this cartoon being the exception). Now if only other cartoon writers/producers would follow that example and realize that not only white kids watch cartoons and minorities should be shown in strong leadership positions as well. Anyway besides having a positive and strong portrayal of a black male in a cartoon series, it had above average animation. The plots were standard children's cartoon material, which means little character development and conflicts which are resolved within a half hour. Not a bad cartoon and it's worth checking out at least once.

I remember watching C.O.P.S. and buying the toys and all that jazz. It was great! Very entertaining and interesting, a cops show designed for the Saturday morning set. I even remember friends debating a scene where they catch a criminal and he begins to cry, one friend wonders why and the other goes on about the conditions of living in prison. See this was my childhood OZ!

Of all the shows I watched as a kid, "C.O.P.S." definitely falls in the bland category; simplistic morality and cookie-cutter cops and robbers (complete with clichéd dialogue - everyone's "copper" this and "citizen" that) and the animation's surprisingly lazy. It's ideal for small children.

Speaking of which, this is one hell of a toy commercial. Every character comes with just the right physique and gear to make for a kickass action figure. And that opening sequence is one tantalizing vehicle after another. Man, I still love the Ironsides unit (louvers!) and I always took to Long Arm (grappling hooks are cool).

It doesn't do much for me now, but that classic '80s consumerism is on full display here.

6/10