Disney Television Animation - History

History

The Walt Disney Company first ventured into the television industry as early as 1950, beginning with the one-hour one-off special, One Hour in Wonderland. This was followed by the long-running (1954–2008) anthology series, The Wonderful World of Disney (which was Disney's first regular series as a whole), the children's variety show The Mickey Mouse Club, and the 1957-1959 adventure series, Zorro. However, one element was missing from Disney's expansion into television: An original animated television series. Until the early 80's, the studio had never produced its own original animated shows in-house, because Walt Disney felt it was economically impossible. Nearly all pre-1985 TV animation was wrap-around segments made to bridge the gaps on existing theatrical material on The Wonderful World of Disney. Osamu Tezuka met Walt at the 1964 World's Fair, at which time Disney said he hoped to "make something just like" Tezuka's Astro Boy someday, but unfortunately nothing came of it.

But under new management, the studio, (originally known as Walt Disney Productions), formed in 1985 what was originally christened the Walt Disney Pictures Television Animation Group, but then was later renamed as Walt Disney Television Animation, to produce high-quality animated television series. They invested far more money into the television 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 investments for most of the history of TV cartoons up through the 1980s. 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. The studio successfully gambled on the idea that a substantially larger investment into quality animation could be made back through both network television and over-the-air in syndication, as well as cable. The final result is a string of higher budgeted animated television productions which proved to be profitable ventures and raised the standard for the TV medium.

The Disney television animation cycle began in mid-1985, with The Wuzzles (which premiered on CBS on September 14, 1985) and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears (which had premiered on NBC on September 14, 1985 at the same time as and shown first-run back-to-back with The Wuzzles), both which are based upon funny animal-based conceptions, the Gummi Bears being named after a common candy and the Wuzzles originating as a hybrid of two animals put together into one creature. The supposedly (and possibly) final third series in the incidentally so-called "magic animal"-based "trilogy" of original character sets was going to be Disney's Fluppy Dogs (which premiered only as an hour-long TV movie pilot on ABC on November 27, 1986), itself loosely based a series of children's books and line of toys about a race of anthropomorphic pastel-colored dimension-hopping alien (fluppy) dogs. It was not a successful hit (due to low viewership and support) however, as the proposed series was not picked up after it never went beyond that one pilot episode, and the studio instead quickly fell into a routine of adapting its old properties into the new use, which ultimately, Disney coincidentally really did.

In 1987, Disney finally unveiled the newest series yet in its cycle, and the first in their successful long-time line of syndicated animated shows, DuckTales, which premiered on September 18, 1987. The show was successful enough to spawn a feature film, DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, and two spin-off 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. Later, early that spring, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers debuted on March 4, 1989, and 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, which premiered much later on September 10, 1990. DuckTales was one of the early flagship cartoons in the series.

Over the next few years - and later, many more to come, Disney experimented with more television animation fare, such as Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, Raw Toonage, Bonkers, Marsupilami and Gargoyles (which was Disney's first serious action-based animated series, that infinitely later gained a large cult/fan following) and The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show and Disney's Doug (which was the sequel to and revival version of the Nickelodeon animated series of the same name) and Nightmare Ned. The TV animation unit was also responsible for even adapting some of the films from the Disney animated features canon and other film sources as well (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Timon & Pumbaa, The Mighty Ducks, itself loosely based on Disney's The Mighty Ducks film series, Jungle Cubs, the second spin-off of Disney's The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians: The Series, Hercules, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, based on Disney/Pixar's Toy Story franchise, The Legend of Tarzan, etc.) and later finally bought back Mickey Mouse and company for two both brand new animated anthology and variety series, Mickey Mouse Works and Disney's House of Mouse. At the same time, the Disney Television Animation banner was strongly associated with Saturday morning cartoons and, more recently since 1998, The Disney Channel, and may have adversely affected the widely commercial, and ratings, successes of its other cartoon series that premiered on ABC's Saturday morning programming block, such as Recess and The Weekenders. Other WDTA series include Kim Possible, Phineas and Ferb, Fish Hooks and Gravity Falls.

Most of the following shows produced by WDTA premiered on ABC and some on NBC, CBS and over-the-air in first-run syndication, and are (or were) currently being re-run almost every day on various incarnations of The Disney Channel (despite whom since 2002, the cable network now produces exclusive material of its own from WDTA) and its spin-offs, the now-defunct Toon Disney and Playhouse Disney and their successors Disney XD and Disney Junior.