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Thundarr the Barbarian

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Thundarr the Barbarian was a Saturday morning animated cartoon show, produced by Ruby-Spears Productions. It was broadcast during the early 1980s.

Thundarr the Barbarian home video. From left to right, Ookla, Ariel, and Thundarr
Thundarr the Barbarian home video. From left to right, Ookla, Ariel, and Thundarr

Concept and characters

21 half-hour episodes were produced from October, 1980 to September, 1982, when the show went off the air. The show ran on the ABC network. Reruns of the program appeared on NBC's Saturday morning lineup in 1983.

The show was set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland whose ruins typically featured recognisable geographical features from the United States, such as Mount Rushmore, New York City, or Washington, DC. Other episodes with recognizable settings are located in Central America, while one is in London, England. Through this setting, Thundarr and his companions Princess Ariel and the Wookiee-like Ookla the Mok battled evil wizards who combined magical spells with technologies from the pre-catastrophe world. Bob Ridgely was Thundarr's voice actor; Princess Ariel was played by Nellie Bellflower. Henry Corden was Ookla.

Comic book writer-artist Jack Kirby worked on the production design for the show. While many people believe that Kirby was the primary designer of the show (mainly due to his similarly themed Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth), the main characters were in fact designed by fellow comic book writer-artist Alex Toth, who also designed the popular character Space Ghost for Saturday morning television. Toth, however, was unavailable to continue working on the show, so most of the wizards and other villains and secondary characters that appear on the show were designed by Kirby. The evil wizard Gemini, the only repeating villain on the show, resembles Darkseid, an infamous Kirby villain. The show itself was actually the creation of comic writer Steve Gerber, creator of Marvel Comics' Howard the Duck. The name Ookla actually comes from UCLA, where Gerber's friend Marty Pasko went to college; Pasko invented the name.

The opening narration to the show is as follows:

The year: 1994. From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction! Man's civilization is cast in ruin!
Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn...
A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil.
He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!

Episodes and locations

Season 1 (1980-1981)

Season 2 (1981-1982)

External links

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