The year was 1991, and a new Kids TV show was slated to air in America that fall. However, apparently the character stereotypes were deemed to offensive for American culture. I stumbled upon a clip on Youtube today by accident, and I almost wish I can take it back. There’s something eerily familiar about these “Doozy Bots”. See if you can figure out what it is by watching the video I posted as I don’t want to spoil the surprise.
Pay Special Attention To What Happens Around 1:29….If You’re Still Concious That Is
If people thought that the next attempt at making a kids show out of this long lived franchise was a big mistake, they should count their blessings that this one went mostly unnoticed. It never aired and as far as I know only this short pilot clip exists. I apologize for any trauma I may have caused people in bringing this to light. Hopefully they can still look at the franchise the same way.
I refuse to accept your apology.
The copyright screen at the end was disturbing…
I’m glad I didn’t have a TV in 1991.
I am filled with equal helpings of rage and horror. Excuse me while I go off and take the Oedipus solution of blinding myself with the pin of a brooch.
That was kind of the mentality from the early 90s. All most people knew were “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto” and “Turning Japanese”. Wherever capitalist companies could get licenses, they’ll use their material however they want. Who cares about quality when there’s easy money to be made?
It’s not like we had Internet back then to verify if what they had was a ripoff or not…
But I guess I’m glad the show didn’t make it. I remember the infamous “Saban Moon” trailer for Sailormoon that really would have changed the show for me.
Well… Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. This time they didn’t. But personally I still stand by SatAM as one of the greatest shows of the times, and it was made in the same way. A company letting America do what they wanted with something they created.
The two things I’m most amazed about is how irritating the shows theme song is and the absolutely ridiculous voice acting on some of the bad guy robots (I think one of them sounded like Waspinator from Beast Wars). Apparently that weird turkey thing was supposed to lay a gashapon egg every now and then and out would pop a new licenced robot. Also according to an exective the final enemy the “Doozy Bots” were supposed to fight against was the “red one from the movie”.
There was also another U.S TV the licensor helped make. If anyone remembers the old Street Fighter U.S TV Series, that was outsourced to Japan and done by Madhouse Studios for season one and Sunrise for the next. The partnerships from hell would end in the 21st century though and nowadays we get shows like The Boondocks animated in Japan instead of really bad Saturday morning cartoons.
Ah yes, Doozybots. The most horrible thing with the likeness of a Gundam. It’s worse than G-Saviour, or even the SD show that aired in the US. The most offensive thing in the video in my opinion was the black kid in the wheel chair getting turned into Guntank. How on Earth did anyone think that was a good idea?
Well the whole idea was proposed by Bandai and Sunrise executives in a partnership with Cartoon Network. Obviously the Japanese parties were completely out of the loop when it came to political correctness in America.