Ghostbusters

Sammy Chris crushing the Ghostbusters' car (Ghost Buggy).

Ghostbusters (more commonly known as "Filmation's Ghostbusters" nowadays to avoid confusion) was a syndicated television cartoon that ran 65 episodes in late 1986, and destined to join the marked-down VHS tapes of local department stores (see American Rabbit).

Christian Weston Chandler is among the minuscule number of people who ever gave a shit about this show.

Ghostbusters

The show was created by Filmation as a spinoff of its 1970s live-action show The Ghost Busters, capitalizing on the name recognition created by the unrelated 1984 film Ghostbusters starring Bill Murray. Filmation sued Columbia Pictures in 1985 over the use of the title. In the settlement, Columbia agreed it would not use the title "Ghostbusters" for the cartoon based on the 1984 film, and so Columbia instead used the title The Real Ghostbusters for its 1986-1991 animated series. Filmation's series is therefore technically the only cartoon officially called Ghostbusters, although it is far more obscure and generally referred to as "Filmation's Ghostbusters" to distinguish it from the series about Peter Venkman, Slimer, and company.

The ghost hunters on the show lived in a headquarters called Ghost Command, where they would receive missions from a television called Skelevision. When going into action they would enter the Skelevator which would send them through an absurd, Rube Goldberg-esque system that would change their casual dress to safari outfits and then deposit them into their transport, the Ghost Buggy. The "joke" of this sequence is that the team's leader, Jake Kong, Jr., has no difficulty going through the system, while the show's overweight comedy relief, Eddie Spencer, Jr., bounces around awkwardly. This "transformation sequence" was a fixture of the show, and was accompanied by the show's main theme. You can see it yourself here.

Chris's plagiarism of the series

Brings back fond childhood memories to, uh, ... nobody else

The original image by Evan which Chris used to "improve" the sketch

While working on Sonichu 7 Chris decided to interject a non-sequitur TV reference (in the style of Family Guy) and chose Ghostbusters as the subject. He portrayed himself as a morbidly obese Peter Griffin analogue inexplicably living with Ghost Command, until he mistakes the Skelevator for a restroom and undergoes the transformation sequence, sharing Jake Kong's mannerisms. When he lands in the Ghost Buggy, his Peter Griffin-esque weight causes the car to collapse from the impact, thus enthusing lulz. Throughout the series, the Ghost Buggy constantly malfunctions and responds with "ohhh...my achin' <car part>."

This scene makes even less sense to people who only know about the Ghostbusters characters of the 1984 & 1989 Ivan Reitman movies, which is about 99.999999999996% of the human race. While episodes of The REAL Ghostbusters were available on video, it's safe to say that Chris's parents were too cheap to buy them, hence digging deep into the bargain bin to buy the inferior series. This leads to the assumption that Chris's early childhood was one with videos from the bargain bins designed to keep him out of Bob and Barb's hair.

Chris quotes the real Ghostbusters theme tune in his "autistic Carrie" story. At the end of that particular jaunt, Chris says that Mary Lee Walsh and Count Graduon "ain't 'fraid of no ghost" before munching on a ghost haunting the high school they take over. In the Mailbag, Chris has expressed a preference for the Filmation version, and seems upset that the other group gets to be called the REAL Ghostbusters.

See also

• Sammy

External links

• Filmation's Ghostbusters on Wikipedia