द रियल घोस्टबस्टर्स

I loved this cartoon as much as the movie (except for the slimer and the real ghostbusters part, with only the ghostmaster's revenge as an exception). I love the dark and spooky theme the first three seasons have. I bet you any amount of money that there are some episodes that would frighten even older people (thankfully not in the gory and bloody manner) like the episode "Mrs. Roger's neighborhood where the customer is a ghost that possesses Peter that the other busters need to make an extremely risky move. I loved the Sandman episode and Egon's dragon. But the one episode I love the most would have to be "Ragnarok and Roll" about a man with a southern accent who gets a flute that can bring about the end of the world and his fiancée and quasimodo partner must convince him and the busters must battle the demon in the sky. Watch this show and have the time and fright of your life!

Like most animated shows, The Real Ghostbusters got off to a bit of a shaky start and things really improved soon after. Like the movie, there's more to it than just silly stories. The writers took many of their ideas from works of HP Lovecraft and made up their own wild but imaginative plots.

There were some slight changes made to the characters. Peter Venkman became younger, Ray Stantz shorter, fatter, ginger and more enthusiastic, Egon Spengler became blonde with round, red glasses, Winston Zeddemore looks nothing like Ernie Hudson, Janine Melnitz become hotter and Onionhead/Slimer became good instead of malevolent. And they also had different colored overalls. Why? Because kids respond better to colors.

Though it did bug me that there weren't many references to Gozer, why Dana and Louis disappeared and how all of a sudden the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was good.

Animation fans will be unable to not think of Garfield or Fred from Scooby Doo whenever Peter or Ray talk as they are voiced by the same guys and sound exactly alike.

The show did go on for a good while and spawned a new generation of Ghostbusters toys and merchandise. There have been many bad animated TV shows made out of movies (The Mummy, Evolution, Ace Ventura, The Mask…I could go on) but The Real Ghostbusters ain't one of them. Extreme Ghostbusters followed in the mid-90's, but it didn't catch on too well.

I do wish Columbia would release season box sets on DVD but for now there are ultra-cheap 4-episode DVDs available from Columbia only in Britain. They'll do for now.

The Real Ghostbusters is the animated spin off to 1984's kick-ass classic movie "Ghostbusters" which deals with four ghost eliminators (Peter, Egon, Winston and Ray) catching all sorts of poltergeists and saving New York from destruction while at the same time not losing it's nerve to be a comedy. What's different about The Real Ghostbusters after the first movie's release was how they make the character of Janine Melnitz more developed and making her not afraid while adding the character of Slimer as the group's mascot. The highlights of the show were things that people of today wouldn't handle from spooky music; bringing in mythical creatures, classic fairy tales and spirits in the cartoons such as The Bogeyman, The Sandman, even a revised version of The Headless Horseman on a motorcycle was awesome. Even though the series doesn't come on cable anymore, The Real Ghostbusters was a real guilty pleasure in my childhood where every Saturday morning i would wake up to see the cartoons along with having my action figures to recreate the scenes.

That's a memory.

I grew up watching the Real Ghostbusters, and I gotta tell ya, it blew my mind. The voice acting was great, the stories were very original and the effects were incredible. What made the stories great was that the writers didn't insult the intelligence of the audience and presented it like the movie did when dealing with scientific problems. But what interested me were the episodes written by Michael Reaves, the man responsible for the two Bogeyman episodes. What I still don't know is what gave him the idea to not only reveal the reason why Egon wanted to be a Ghostbuster and why he didn't make the Bogeyman a ghost. Pure genius. Too bad he didn't write a Bogeyman episode for the Extreme Ghostbusters, but I guess that's my job. Well, till next time.

I wish I could go back and see this show again as a kid even though I do act like a kid at times. I loved the interaction between Peter Venkman and Slimer. The goofy Ray was always funny for his good ol' boy attitude and Winston and Egon were always there to provide insight. This is one of those series I'm going to one day get on DVD so I can feel like a kid again while eating ice cream all day long.