Cartoon all stars to the rescue.

[Tim]

I may still have to original TV Guide ad for it someplace. They pretty much ripped off the idea from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" mixing up all the characters like that. It ran aon all threee Networks at the same time that Saturday morning-quite an event for it's time. I thought it was cool that they all knew each other no matter which Network or Studio they were from.

I saw it available on VHS years ago in educational media catalogs. Probably long out of print, but it might be a place to try to get a copy.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

Whoa, that was totally out there man, but I liked it.

 

[Infinity Sirius]

What's the "Too Smart for Strangers" special about?

 

[Erine81981]

I can't seem to play it. Can someone tell me which video player would work with this video? I have pretty much all the video players but none of them work for me. signed Help me please.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

Well, I played it on Windows Media Player.

 

[G-MAN]

"Too Smart For Strangers" was an educational special featuring the cast of Welcome To Pooh Corner (now why don't they put that show on DVD). In it, the characters talked about the warning signs of strangers, and how you should be careful around people you don't know, and of course to tell a grownup if someone bothers you. Pooh, Tigger, Roo, and I think Rabbit had the most screentime. A cool thing they used was they showed segments in which real kids showed you how you were supposed to act while the character would narrate in the background

 

[MustangRockstar]

I remember the media push this received back in the day. This was a continuation of the 80's/Reagan war on drugs campaign. It was actually a brilliantly conceived plan: make a cartoon featuring many of the top cartoon characters of the time, feature the President and First Lady (unheard of) and there you go.

It was a great PR move for everyone involved and though at times hokey, the end product was very well done.

I remember watching this over and over and over again in elementary school. It seemed like whenever we had a rainy day we'd either end up watching Disney's The Story of Little Toot or this during recess.

From an adult perspective and with a little bit of hindsight, this was probably the begining of the end for those saturday morning cartoons and it was really the begining of the end for the syndicated weekday cartoons.

Around 91, things really started to change. Networks convinced themselves they'd make more money by showing news programs (and while they did it was fairly marginal). The cartoons of the 1980's animation revival (Muppet Babies, Ducktales, etc.) were slowly ending their runs and being phased out by cheaper, faster, easier animation again. Cartoons in general were being replaced by live action shows which were cheaper to produce. Kids of the 80's were growing up and moving on and the younger generations were more into video games and cable tv than a network saturday morning block.

From there you lost a lot of shows and really the last two holdouts were Garfield and Ninja Turtles, the latter of which became a shell of it's former self around 1992/93.

The last gasp of air (which was really around 95-97 when Garfield and Turtles finally packed it in) was really all started around the time of this cartoon. Not because of it, but shortly afterwards.

So as I DL this I'll remember not only watching it as a little kid, but also with a sense of sadness that this was kind of the last hurrah for both the 80's, animation of that style and in many ways the begining of the end of my childhood.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

You said it well.

 

[MustangRockstar]

The downfall of Saturday morning cartoons is such an interesting subject. Years later it still doesn't make sense to me, but life seldom does.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

I think networks have caused this upon themselves by putting on low quality programming, and the viewers, turned the channel.