Look who’s turning 100?
Disney was pretty cool in the 1980s. Well, they started out cool, but as we all know they had a real dry spell after the death of Walt Disney, and during the seventies it was touch and go as to whether the company would last the decade.
In my opinion, once Tron came out, Disney started getting their groove back. Suddenly we were seeing the Disney Sunday Movie, Star Tours and in the afternoons starting on September 18, 1987, DuckTales. That show was on KTVU Channel 2 in my neck of the woods, and I remember it was kind of a novelty because the Disney Channel had recently started and all the good stuff was over there, so having a top notch Disney show on local broadcast TV was a big deal. We felt like we were part of the club.
The characters on the show weren’t new, of course. Donald Duck had been around since 1934, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie made their debut in 1937. Scrooge McDuck was a relative latecomer, having made his debut in 1947. According to Disney Wiki, it was thought that even though Donald Duck was and is one of Disney’s best characters, he was best in small doses.
Meanwhile, Scrooge McDuck, wonderfully voiced by Alan Young, seemed to be prime material for DuckTales, with Donald making an occasional appearance. The first five episodes were either broadcast as a feature-length film, Treasure of the Golden Suns or as five separate-but-connected story arcs, and it does an excellent job of setting up the basic character dynamics and what viewers could expect.
It all starts when Donald Duck joins the Navy and leaves his three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie in Duckburg with his Uncle Scrooge. Scrooge McDuck isn’t happy about this new development to say the least. Even though he’s fabulously wealthy, he’s also a miser. He’ll clean out the poor demo lady at the local deli of her cheese samples instead of spending money on food. Money is for diving into and swimming around in like a porpoise, not for spending.
Huey, Dewey, and Louie are installed in a tower room at Scrooge’s mansion, with Duckworth, the butler, to look after them, while Scrooge tries to decide what to do with them. He floats the idea of boarding school, but the only thing that seems to stick is having the boys join the Junior Woodchucks (The tower thing doesn’t last).
Meanwhile, the baddies are busy being baddies. The infamous Beagle Boys are in the Duckburg Jail, and when they get a package containing some interesting-looking explosives, one of them chows down as if they’re apples. The explosives, naturally, are for breaking out of prison, and the Beagle Boys’ benefactors are El Capitan, a wheezy elderly fellow who’s all about hunting gold, and Flintheart Glomgold, who’s all about getting richer than Scrooge. They’re after a model ship in Scrooge’s collection because it has a treasure map to a real ship.
Their plot is foiled, and Scrooge and the boys head to South America, where they find the ship in question, as well as torrential rain that’s enough to float the ship. Unfortunately, El Capitan and Glomgold have followed them down there and set Scrooge and his nephews adrift in a rowboat, but as they say, pride goes before a fall, or in this case, pride goes before a ship full of gold sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Scrooge makes out like a bandit with the only remaining coin, a sizeable piece with a sun printed on it.
Oh yeah, and as if that isn’t enough, there’s the matter of hiring a governess for the boys, and that brings us to Mrs. Beakley, who agrees to work only for her room and board, and arrives with her little granddaughter, Webigail in tow. Meanwhile, Scrooge and Launchpad McQuack go to South America to find the map associated with Scrooge’s gold coin. Then Scrooge goes off by himself to Antarctica to find the other half and gets taken prisoner by a bunch of color-hungry penguins. Fortunately Launchpad, Mrs. Beakley, Webigail and the boys are hot on his trail.
Speaking of hot, after that it’s back to South America, where our adventurers find an Aztec temple built out of solid gold. They also find El Capitan, who’s suffering from Gold Fever, which is, of course, catching. Like many hidden treasures, there are booby traps and plenty of hazards to be outrun, but we all know things end well, at least for Scrooge and Company.
There’s a lot of detail in these five episodes, and I haven’t even told the half of it. Naturally, it’s not like a movie because it doesn’t arc like a movie but a serial. I don’t know why the powers that be chose to show this one to us in one long string, but I don’t think anyone cared because Treasure of the Golden Suns is just so danged cute and fun. Still, it seems to work best taken episode by episode.
One of the things I like about Treasure of the Golden Suns, and the whole series, for that matter, is that it’s very intelligent. These characters use their brains. They ask questions. They’re flexible and know how to roll with the punches. It wasn’t afraid to get a little dark now and then, dipping into parallel universes and a possible dystopian future. It’s very literate, historically and otherwise (One of my favorite episodes involves the characters going to an island that’s straight out of Shakespeare’s plays). That, plus the wonderful acting and music make for a very memorable series.
Now, we all know the series was rebooted in 2017, and while it seemed to be done pretty well, it’s pretty safe to say no one has forgotten the original DuckTales. What little bits I’ve saw made me immediately miss Alan Young, who passed away the year before, having played Scrooge McDuck for over thirty years. When someone becomes a character that well, it’s pretty hard to top. Still, it’s nice that DuckTales is still fondly remembered.
For more of the 100 Years of Disney Blogathon, please visit Annette at Silver Scenes. Thanks for hosting this, Annette–it was a blast! Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you tomorrow for another post…
DuckTales, Volume 2 is available to own on DVD from Amazon.
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