Don't let your kids watch Ghostbusters!!
 

If you're reading this review, chances are you've seen the excellent Ghostbusters movie. If you haven't, stop right now and go buy the Ghostbusters I & II Boxset. Not only will you get an awesome film and its decent sequel, you'll also get a couple of episodes of The Real Ghostbusters, an animated spinoff series created in the late 80s.

Now, given that that show was a spinoff of a movie called Ghostbusters, why did they have to add "Real" to the title? Because Filmation had managed to snag the "Ghostbusters" name for this incredibly forgettable series.

After inheriting their fathers' company, Jake Kong Jr. and Eddie Spenser Jr. team up with the super-smart gorilla Tracy and, using sophisticated technology and their Plot Device Back Packs (PDBPs), defend the Earth from Prime Evil and his horde of ghosts from the future. Sometimes our heroes have to time travel to defeat the bad guys and so team up with Futura, self-proclaimed Ghostbuster of the Future; and when the full moon's out, Jake can radio Fuddy, a wizard in King Arthur's Court, who can give him extraordinary abilities like invincibility (though the spell rarely works the way it's supposed to). And that's pretty much the extent of the plot.

After slogging through all 32 episodes on this set—which wasn't easy; the first one and half gave me convulsions—I am amazed at how utterly Filmation screwed up here. Nothing in this series makes sense.

The Ghostbusters equip themselves by taking an elevator up to a weird demon-esque transformation conveyor belt, where they are stripped to their boxers, thrown down a chute, given their PDBPs, then sent sliding through a hole in the wall that is covered up by a folding mattress. They always land right inside the talking Ghost Buggy (think Speed Buggy, only more sarcastic), who's always sleeping in the garage, even if ten seconds earlier he had been in the living room getting repaired. How is all this supposed to work? Then again, all of Tracy's Ghost Command inventions, like the Ansabone, are antagonistic towards their creators for some odd reason; and the Ghostbusters are able to waltz in and out of Prime Evil's Hauntquarters (which is set in its own dimensional quadrant) any time they want. So it seems clear that logic is not a high priority in the series. Even the people are illogical. People in the past, you'd think, should at least be startled by a flying car, a talking gorilla, or a purple-skinned woman. But on this show you'd be wrong. And why would Futura, who's from it, call the future "The Future"?

The plots are so inane it makes G.I. Joe look like Ghost in the Shell, and the comedy is charmlessly forced. The series, for instance, starts with a five-part pilot that has the Ghostbusters traversing the time stream in order to find pieces of a mysterious tablet that tells them to find their fathers and save the future. (Yes, that's definitely a helpful message, well worth the bother of time travel.) During this adventure, they meet a caveman who invents the bicycle, receive King Arthur's Excalibur for defeating a dragon Arthur himself was too lazy to fight, and mistake a Pharaoh's scepter for an award for ghostbusting. In other adventures, they re-freeze Antarctica and the North Pole after they melt and flood the Earth; expose the jury in the Salem witch trials as some of Prime Evil's henchmen; and stop a giant dragon by going to the Fire Extinguisher Factory and attaching a ten-foot-tall fire extinguisher to the back of the Ghost Buggy.

Seriously, it feels like the writers just said, "What the hell, put whatever in. Kids are stupid. They'll watch anything." Most cartoons, even in the 80's, usually have some kind of rules. In ThunderCats, Panthro doesn't have super speed. Cars in The Flintstones are foot-powered. But Ghostbusters has no rules. Ghost Buggy never runs out of power and is seemingly invincible. The Ghostbusters can breathe in space. Their PDBPs hold anything and everything imaginable, allowing them to solve any situation with extreme ease. Without any real boundaries, it all comes off like ra

Wow somebody does not like themselves the Filmation Ghostbusters LOL

I disagree with almost every point they make, and you can OBVIOUSLY tell they are fans of the Sony "Real" Ghostbusters so their bias is not hidden.

His comments on the dvd packaging are hilarious because he must be retarded, I have been able to get the discs out with ease and so somebody is being a bit dramatic [88]

Its a shame that the Filmation show made it out on restored dvd before the Sony one, when the Sony one would probably sell better!

I'm still in shock they decided to put out "Ghostbusters," instead of "Real Ghosbusters." I think I threw up a little in my mouth after hearing that.Ugh....RGB deserves a real, complete dvd release.

I liked Filmation Ghostbusters better than RGB.

but what about the live action show that came years before the cartoon version? I know bci was supposed to release that as well

The pilot episode is on the last disc and the series is coming either this summer of fall for around $25