One
of the best things about being a kid was running home after suffering
through a day at school, grabbing a snack out of the refrigerator,
sitting down on the living room sofa, and watching some of my
favourite cartoons.
Back
in the days in which I was a kid, there was never a shortage of
cartoons to watch. I think I almost had an addiction to cartoons.
There were many days in which I would end up having to finish
homework assignments the morning before school because my addiction
to cartoons took over.
(Yet
I still managed to get fantastic grades...go figure.)
As
you might have already guessed by the blog, I love talking about
cartoons that I used to watch as a child. Some of them were
well-known cartoons that millions of kids watched, such as Bugs Bunny
and Tweety, Garfield and Friends, and Spider-Man.
But
I also loved cartoons that were one-shot deals. Cartoons that only
lasted a season or two. And whenever I try to talk to people about
cartoons that were short-lived, many don't even know what I am
talking about. They either don't remember the show, or they believe
that the show didn't even exist.
Such
was the case with this particular television series.
“Denver
the Last Dinosaur” came out at a time in which dinosaur themed
television shows seemed to be in vogue (“Dink the Little Dinosaur”,
“The Land Before Time”, etc.).
For
whatever reason though, I always liked “Denver the Last Dinosaur”
the best out of all of them (and that's despite the fact that the
opening theme song doesn't hold up as well in 2012 as it did in the
late 1980s).
The
show debuted in syndication as a one-hour television special on April
1, 1988 and ran until early 1990, and was one of the few cartoons to
air that was recommended by the National Educational Association
(NEA) as the program focused on subjects such as ecology,
conservation, and friendship. The voice cast for the cartoon
included Pat Fraley, Rob Paulsen, Kath Soucie, Adam Carl, Brian
Cummings, and Cam Clarke.
So,
what was the show all about?
This
is Denver. His species name is Corythosaurus
and he is the only dinosaur to be born in the twentieth century. How
did this happen?
It
all began with the teenagers preparing for an Ancient History Test.
The teenagers included Jeremy, Mario, Shades, Casey, and Wally. In
preparation for the test, they decide to take a trip to the La Brea
Tar Pits, which was a huge source for extinct plant and animal
fossils.
They
also make a visit to the museum where they happen to run into a gang
of bullies. The leader of the pack of bullies, Nick, and his
followers, Scott and Rod, have a confrontation with the teens, and
chase them back to the Tar Pits. They manage to lose the bullies
when they hide behind a fence nearby, but they notice something
rather peculiar on the other side of the fence. When they go to
investigate what it is, they accidentally fall on top of a large
dark-coloured egg. Soon after that, the egg begins to hatch, and
Denver is born, leaving the four boys and one girl with their mouths
open-wide in astonishment. Until that moment, they had never seen a
real-life dinosaur, let alone having one of them hatch right in front
of them. Luckily for them, Denver doesn't decide to make them into
his first meal. He just wanted to be friends with them.
TRIVIA:
The name “Denver” came from an advertisement on the side of a
tour bus, telling people to visit Denver, Colorado.
At
first, the kids all have fun with their prehistoric friend, Denver.
They teach him how to use a skateboard, they show him the wonderful
fashion accessory known as sunglasses, and he apparently even
understands English! But, there's a problem. Eventually, people
were going to start noticing that a seven-foot tall dinosaur was
wandering the streets, and the kids had enough common sense to know
that they could never tell anyone else about Denver's existence.
After
all, if the wrong person ever discovered Denver, such as the greedy,
nefarious concert promoter, Morton Fizzback, there was a good chance
that Denver's life would be endangered. Fortunately, Wally's house
was big enough that he could keep Denver there. But when Wally's
sister, Heather, found out about Denver, Wally had her promise that
she would keep Denver a secret from the world. Of course, with
Heather now knowing the truth, the kids worried about Heather's
friends stumbling upon the secret, so the decision was made to move
Denver to a school gymnasium.
Denver
also has a secret power that he can use through a piece of the egg
that he hatched out of. With the eggshell, he has the ability to
transport the kids back in time sixty-five million years to his own
time period (as you likely have already seen by watching the intro of
the cartoon series).
All
in all, it was a rather interesting show, and one that I really liked
watching a lot. I think it's only fitting that we end this blog
entry off by watching an episode of Denver the Last Dinosaur. Just
click on the link below, and you can watch how it all began.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeBwKaCOgTM
No comments:
Post a Comment