The Epic Failure of Bravestarr: How Can Hubris & Research Be Wrong? 

I watched the cartoon as a kid. I am 41 years I never knew there was a toy line for it.

Neither did I. At some point I noticed that it was basically trying to be as similar to _He-Man_ as possible without being _He-Man._ The character portrayal is stronger, but it runs on the same tropes: secret powers, magic, high tech all mixed together in space, and a bit of morality at the end. Filmation cheaped out AND miscalculated; one they could have recovered from, both not so much.

@@achtsekundenfurz7876 Bravestarr episodes actually cost Filmation more to produce than He-Man & Masters Of The Universe. They didn't cheap out. There was such a thing as the Children's Television Code back then that all animated shows had to adhere to, particularly those with stylised violence, weapons & guns. There had to be a moral or it wouldn't get aired. Nowadays children's television is basically amoral 😂

@@Merchant1521 I'm 44 and I vividly remember wanting the Lazer guns. Did you not watch commercials? Everyone I knew were aware of these toys' existence. The only problem was they were nowhere to be found. No toy stare had them, Toys R Us nor did Lionel Playworld.

@@Merchant1521 You never saw any figures? wow. I didn't have any of the figures but I remember a kid who had a figure of the character Sandstorm.

They should have sent.. The DOOM Slayer

Hi ​@@hotmatrixx what is DOOM Slayer?

Yeah, and why did he make that mistake? She didn't even have a freckled face, so it wasn't as if her character design was the prettiest possible.

I never saw the judge as his love interest, I thought they were good friends. Huh, and here I was, same age and everything, shipping He-Man and Teela and She-Ra and Sea Hawk.

@@BPJD2004The prequel film definitely shows them as love interests

Sarah Jane was my favourite!

Backside of a human

Don’t forget “Ears of the Wolf!!”

Wouldn't nose of the wolf make more sense? Just like dogs wolves are not known for their hearing as much as they are their senses of smell.

"Bravestar honey I can't find the wine opener..." "... OF A DUCK!"

He was too good looking, lmao

Meanwhile, Hordak kept abducting Barbie and her friends whenever I was playing with a friend and his sister. The weird part? Hordak was hers (between us, we had almost the entire He-Man/She-Ra and Blackstar cast)

My Bravestarr use to sit on top of my dresser. He was too good for the toy box 😎

Bravestarr and Barbie look like the the show Spike and his crew would watch for updates on bounties. Cowboy Bebop

Shotgun wedding?

Unfortunately, 4 years on, the sucking is still going on.

Yep they’d definitely make bravestar black 🙄

Agree 100%; He-Man's animal sidekick is a pussy in comparison. * _ba-dum tsssss_ *

Dude I had the 30 30 toy. Even had the removeable 'coal' crystal thing in his bunker. He was awesome.

100% agreed.

I would say Fallen Idol was the best Jingles may have seemed friendly on the surface but the fact he murdered a man in cold blood over losing an exhibition match says a lot about his true self: a man who was arrogant, petty, and vindictive who was used to always winning and getting praise, they could've gone the cliche route revealing Morgan was set up or was spying on Tex Hex and teaming up with Bravestarr or Bravestarr letting him go, but they showed that even though Jingles was his hero, to Bravestarr he was still a murderer, and his duty as a marshall came first but also showing that he chooses to remember the good times they'd had as well as Jingles' fall from grace

Thirty/thirty is the best, hands down. Fun fact: He's named after a type of .30cal rifle that whose cartridges contained 30 grains of smokeless gunpowder. I looked it up. Must be a similar build to his laser rifle "Sara Jane".

I like you mister you have a kind face

I always liked Thirty/Thirty. I also love that his mane is totally 80s hair.

@@Baalek1 Hell yeah.

lets see .... asuming the right standing (cough, cough) ¡heey hoooooo Thirty/Thirty ! yeah sounds good to me

Yes! I still remember that episode, it properly freaked me out.

@@blacksheep9950 very shocking one.

The drug was called Spin . They had to have a shocking ending in that episode so kids can get the message that drugs are not good.

Sadly, we went from telling kids to stay away from drugs to now "it's recreational!"

@@XiaoFury This show as made back when studios were not reluctant to take risks.

If Bravestarr gets a reboot, then they should do a redesign/makeover on the prairie people and few of the others that were too cringe to look at.

I feel it failed cause did not know what they had nor they under how go about things either. They failed the show in my opinion. With all that said it's still a master piece as you said

I was always curious how the Native population felt about this show. But i always appreciated that they at least showed that spiritual figures from the tribes could still be found even far away in the future, thus showing that even cultures that are rooted with the earth need not be tied to it. Always was hoping for a reboot for Bravestarr.

Is Princess Ariel from "Thundarr" also Native American? In my own canon, she is.@@TheCastellan

@@TheCastellan if your scared, go hide and leave this character to be buried. Reboots also gave us a black Nick Fury, a female Starbuck, and a black-latino spider-man.

@@tomservo5007 They were supporting class at best. THEY GAVE HIM A SHOULDER MOUNTED BOW AND ARROW!!!

@@TheCastellan Your opinion on those works is irrelevant to the fact that they were successful reboots. Reboots CAN be done well. Im all up for some of the tribes to get some mainstream influence in media again.

it had a dozen mindblowing amazing episodes, about a dozen relatively decent episodes, and 4 dozen unwatchable episodes that were just incredibly awful

@@aaronbuffalo7769 So, a typically decent 80s cartoon then. :D

@@magnusthereddidnithingwrong i guess, Lot of shows had some great eps and a lot of just generic ones. The main problem was they kept screwing up the formats of a lot of great 80s shows, MASK went from GI Joe / The avengers come Transformers to literally Wacky Races , and they gave Inspector gadget a mentally challenged annoying goofball assistant and changed the episode structure drastically, REAL GHOSTBUSTERS they got the network producers to take a stranglehold and make slimer the focus and toned down the horror stories.

It is AWESOME and one of the most underrated cartoons EVER

It wasn't a Dragon, Stampede was supposed to be some zombie ox ghost thing

A "Live action BraveStarr" character would probably be Chakotay (of ST:VOY) but NOT in space! Well _technically_ in space, but on the surface of a body that's indistinguishable from Texas. ;)

Too many western and galatically diverse opportunities are possible, with the native American theme stay vital to the backstory. And the crux of who BraceStarr is!

"BraceStarr" ? ;) This week had another very interesting and funny typo, which involved the C key, too. Somebody asked for a "lice action" version of a cartoon, either of BraveStar or the other two "Western, but IN SPACE" comics of the 1980s, _Star Sheriffs_ (the one with the giant robot wit a giant revolver) and _Star Rangers_ (the one with the awesome theme song and the CGI hacking scenes). But really, BraveStarr has the most live action potential of the three (and neither of them was bad; all three had good production values and came out above average; the sudden competition in the new genre just meant that neither of them paid out the way they would have deserved). While it IS sort of "Another He-Man cartoon without actually being He-Man", the character portrayal of the BraveStarr franchise was lightyears ahead of anything else made by Filmation.

We did. Rex from Napoleon Dynamite. Strength of the Grizzly, Reflexes of the Puma, and wisdom of a man

@@KendrickHarrisKenfinity They could do a Bravestarr movie easily. In fact I would do a crossover with Galaxy Rangers.

People didn't even think about that stuff in the 80's, the annoying obsession with diversity and inclusion is a recent thing, and a silly one at that too, if you start looking back on movie and series catalogues you discover that variety has always been the spice of life.

I always thought he was black (african)

Just look at Star Trek, or Star Trek Voyager from the 90s and how inclusive it was, before it was cool. Today Star Trek fans are blamed to be racist, even if they did all that before it was forced. And just because they want to have the old shows back, which are inclusive, but well

Shows have always been inclusive 's just that nobody got cocky about it and rubbed it in other peoples face to show off what great people they are...

Dude I'm Native American and that was never why I liked it. It was just a good show. Nothing more or less. Only well written characters without the virtue signaling.

😲 now i see it, he does look like bravestar.

Same here. I liked Brave Star too.

Amilcar Lopez he's the chocolate sheriff

TV azteca

I actually still have one of those action figures. Press a button on his back and he quick-draws a pistol.

Yup - my spouse didn’t get to watch much TV while growing up so I’ve shared many examples about how surprisingly hardcore some of this stuff was. Bravestarr’s “let’s kill a kid with drugs” and *everything* to do with Inhumanoids were top of the list.

That makes the 2nd 80s kids show I've discovered that had a kid die via overdosing. (The other one is Captian Planet if anyone was wondering.)

Yeah starring Johnny Depp

You're not wrong actually

This, along with a new Turok. Native Americans as main characters are horribly underrepresented in media in general.

@@CommanderBohn Indeed! Strangely enough though, Fox has recently been representing, with the characters of John Proudstar in The Gifted, and Kerry Loudermilk in Legion, so I guess there's just something about the X-Men universe...

Don't let michael bay here that

Filmation had two murderers. The first was syndication. As Disney and WB got into the act with Disney Afternoon and Fox Kids it squeezed out long time players. Ruby & Spears and even HB didn't last much longer. The second was Nintendo. The NES devastated the toy market. And brought a swift end to many kids action figure buying days. Without the toys sales, shows like Bravestarr didn't last long enough to find an audience.

Certainly ballsy for a American cartoon to do that at the time.

There were so many anti-drug messages in cartoons around then, but most of them were of the "Drugs are bad, mm'kay?" variety. I remember when they mentioned them in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Scooby would turn to the camera and say "Drugs? Yuck." That was the usual level of urgency they had. But Bravestarr and Galaxy High School both managed to make compelling episodes. Plus, I LOVED Bravestarr's obligatory A Christmas Carol episode. It was all about Tex and his origin story. I mean, sure, some episodes were standard 80's cartoon fare, but quite a bit of them had something poignant to say. At least, at the time.

@@mightyfilm Remember the episode of the late 80's Mighty Mouse produced by Ralph Bakshi where in 1 episode Mighty Mouse sniffing a bouquet of flowers was mistaken for him snorting a drug? Good times.

And no one gave a crap about the episode where Mighty Mouse dreamed he was married to Pearl, and they had a son that clearly was the result of Pearl cheating on Mighty with The Cow. No one even talks about that.

Thirty-Thirty and his Kerium powered blunderbuss Sarah Jane

....The horses name is a gun....

Funny, since the horse is named after a gun...

I loved this show! I had 30/30 but not Brave Star. Loved the mounts on this 80’s shows.

Yeah man, in spanish he name was Sara Juana and since we were kids sometimes we said Mari Juana and our mothers told us not to say that ever again

I had the laser pistol, (the the infrared one) the only Toy I remember getting from the whole line

He was my favorite character for awhile when I was a kid. Loved that show. Actually started watching it again out of curiosity.

Yeah really a shame they screwed up the toys, because the show was pretty good for saturday mornings.

@@lokilxix So true. I watched it when I was a kid and liked what I saw but it was a 1 season wonder because from a marketing standpoint it was already dead when the cartoon started. If they had launched the toys and cartoon together it could have been as big as He-Man.

Too bad it's John Bravestar

My parents did the same thing!

I also liked the toys, and never saw any cartoon of it. There’s nothing hard to grasp about “western in space”, it didn’t need a cartoon.

You know what I want to know

Your father is a man of culture. I salute him.

You should be proud of him. Send him our regards.

@@franciscogerardohernandezr4788 I am. And if I ever end up becoming half the man he is, then I'll be happy. I'll be sure to pass on your regards to the living legend that is my Dad.

No, that's Skinstarr, Bravestarr's brother. He works at the Space Chippendale's. I can understand the confusion though.

I assumed some joke like that was going to be made somewhere XD

Damn now I want puma shoes again 😂

Yep me too. Speed of the puma!

😆

😊

Mmm... I buy a pair of *KangaROOS* but never touch the rim.

Fighting crime in a future time!

Crap, I forgot they already did a History of COPS video.

Roll Call!!

He did C.O.P.S. like 2 years ago

C.O.P.S was the shit back then.

I missed out on a lot of great shows in my youth.

Bionic 6 for the win! Loved the family dynamic, even on missions! _The Incredibles_ always makes me think of it.

All these years and i didn't even relise he was Native American, way cool

Today that show would be shunned from creation "A native American portrayed in a wild west themed world? That's kind of racist."

@@Tom-sc2vu that and/or "A non-white lead? SJWs are forcing diversity on us!"

As Filipino kids, we thought Thirty-Thirty was one of our mythological characters that was cleverly snuck in as a "take that".

no. leave it where it is, in our hearts where no greedy reboot can harm it.

I remember silver hawlks but cant find anyone else that does.

@@talasblue4450 I recorded the theme song on cassette and memorized it. I wish I was joking.

I had a silver Hawks lunch box lol

Consider yourself thoroughly judged.

I love Silverhawks and the action figure.. you squeeze the legs together and the body will spin like a tornado...

Fallen Idol was the first episode I ever saw during the original broadcast run. Which to me is a good one to start out to show this wasn't going to be your "typical" kids cartoon show. Sadly, I would end up living that scenario not once but twice in my life (not involving some overpaid Pro-Athlete but "local" people I looked up too/interacted with). So that was a good life lesson for 11 year old me at the time.

What about Cowboy Bebop?

@@andrewdevine3920 i couldn't get into it, but i can definitely see how it would be on a lot of people's favourite List as well.

It certainly was the most literal space western.

What? No love for Galaxy Rangers? :(

Love Preacher too: literal angels doing coke! Don't remember the kid OD'ing though

I never had one but i remember them being big and sturdy. You could have clubbed a man to death with one.

I still have mine. All accessories still on him.

I think that's the kid sidekick from Galtar and the Golden Lance.

many of these shows where toy comercials only, so it didnt matter if the show was popular or not... dinosaucers was very popular and still got canned after one season, even he man bit the dust for no reason but yeah the animation was subpar at best

Filmation production values were indeed quite cheap; they went farther than Hanna-Barbera did, for sure. But I remember both Blackstar and Bravestarr, and several other Filmation properties: Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Tarzan, and kept up with syndication enough to catch more series I didn't as a kid, like Star Trek being rerun on Nickelodeon. I was too young, I reckon, to care about Filmation's lack, and didn't realize at the time that Duck Tales was quite special. And see, Don Bluth is one of my father's cousins (I double-checked, Dad's not just pulling my leg). Tiny Toons and Animaniacs (not to mention Freakazoid) I think were popular with my high school and college buddies because they were not as tripey and idiotic in script (because of lack of animation) and had scripts teens and young adults could appreciate. Seriously, I've gone back to cartoons I loved as a kid but realized the characters yammered so much to explain want the animation wasn't really showing, or were just vapid in their simplicity. I was dismayed to learn Marv Wolfman (a comic book writer known for his work with DC at that time) agreed to writing a kid-dumb script for the second part of the Return of Optimus Prime, but encouraged to realize that Joe "J. Michael" Stracynski refused to do so, especially when he wrote for The Real Ghostbusters.

Show me your tattoo, please...

TBH, that´s a subpar tattoo, the linework is partially wobbly. Have a look at mine for comparison: img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/thirtyseitefi69zdsbalyu9j.jpg

PS: Still a pleasure to see another one with a 30/30 tattoo...we´re not so many, you know...^^

...my backpiece: www.independent-tattoo.de/images/galerie_index/4.jpg

@@chrisf1604 tbh, Stuart's actually evokes nostalgic memories of 30/30 due to his tattoo being a much closer resemblance. yours are not poor quality but perhaps a bit too 'enhanced' to immediately recognize the source inspiration. all that matters is you're happy with them - hell, you're clearly proud of them.

i don't think a native americam caracter will fly in todays SJW world, i mean they took out the feather head dress from mr game n watch from smash bros ultimate.

@@riseofloganxlogan4230 Wouldn't "todays SJW world," embrace a minority main character, isn't that the whole point?

@@HAGZ0483 only if said character is a minority in name only, if they were to act anything close to a stereotype then the REEEing would be instantaneous

@@Pariahwulfen Slight correction, they would in fact want the character to act very stereotypical, only in the sense of being stereotypically "proud" and resentful towards "The Man" which of course would have to be a white guy villain.

thundercats got a reboot and got crushed under poor writing, recicled gerneric plots and the format of the show itself being so outdated that hurt. the pilot episode was good but all the rest was just a mess

I have a Bravestar figure. It has real quick-draw action .

And it was also pretty big here in South Africa too

Even in the philippines, man!!! I love my childhood

i was 14 in 87, i dont remember it being in the pilot episode, or a direct spinoff, but i do remember there was a "crossover" episode involving characters from both shows.

Sherlock Holmes in the 23rd century was the name of that, only had the two-part episode.

Great idea, but there's so much they'd likely need a multi parter like they did with the spectacular Robotech videos.

Yes I just mentioned Battle of the Planets on another channel not 10 minutes ago. I agree with you completely. Somebody, PLEASE, do a BOTP\ G-force video. Please???

G-Force was my first anime that I knew was anime (Speed Racer was almost certainly my actual first, but I legit didn't even realize it was anime until I was probably in high school).

The original Super Sentai show, pre-dating all the others. Still holds up well today for a cartoon from the 70's.

Trans-MUTE!!!!

Wasn't that a Movie-Special of Bravestar at the end?

The Burning Sensation real men ride each other!

DL Lambert cyborg. Enhanced mind and body. He does transform and become humanoid.

I guess he didn’t know how to quit him...

We've all been there...

You just ruined my childhood.

IKR

TV Executives are *that* dumb

Right?!? It's such a great show!

Seems to be a recurring idea. Bruce Campbell's Brisco County Jr also talked to his horse and Comet the horse was credited as one of the show's stars in the opening credits. Bravestarr and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr both ruled, of course.

I remember the show, but absolutely NONE of the toys. That's rather your answer, right there. It certainly wasn't the first show to be pulled because of failure of the toy line, and it won't be the last.

I got like the whole town and several figures for Christmas one year. I wonder if they were on clearance, or if my parents shelled out big time. It was a great Christmas!

Exactly, they were more expensive and it was tougher to get parents to buy them. I think that’s a bigger reason for their failure than no cartoon ready at launch, because masters of the universe and others did the same thing. I also think space westerns just weren’t something kids wanted. As was mentioned, there were other attempts, none of them successful.

​​@darkhearsttoys5224? ?D😊😊😊a😊ee's

W😊ad Daz😊😊😊

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