Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue

Cartoon All-Stars to the Resuce
Airdate	April 21, 1990
Written by	Duane Poole & Tom Swale
Directed by	Milton Gray Marsh Lamore Bob Shellhorn Mike Svayko
Network	ABC, CBS, NBC, Syndication, Nickelodeon, USA, BET, Disney Channel, WGN America
Style	30-minute animated special
Company	Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation Southern Star Studios Wang Film Productions
Origin	USA

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was a commercial-free half-hour animated special that aired on NBC, ABC, CBS, local stations, Nickelodeon, USA, BET, Disney Channel, and WGN America on April 21, 1990. TBS, TNT, and Lifetime aired it shortly thereafter, as did Mexican amd Canadian stations.

Several cartoon stars join in to help Michael, a fourteen-year-old kid who has been swayed to drugs and alcohol by Mr. Smoke, a sentient puff of marijuana smoke. Meanwhile Michael's nine-year-old sister Corey is trying to figure out what's wrong with her brother.

In spite of the criticism that the message was cheesy and sugar-coated and the cartoon stars were merely a draw, the special racked up a 22.0 rating, a record on Saturday morning that stands today. The special is introduced by George and Barbara Bush, the US presidential couple at the time.

The program features characters from 10 of the most notable animated franchises of Saturday morning network television and first-run syndication from the late 1980's and early 1990's: NBC's ALF: The Animated Series/ALF Tales, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Smurfs; ABC's The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and The Real Ghostbusters/Slimer!; CBS's Garfield and Friends, and Muppet Babies; and the syndicated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which moved to CBS less than six months later) and DuckTales. Thus it used franchises from most of the major television animation studios of the time: DiC Entertainment, Film Roman, Hanna-Barbera, Marvel Productions, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson Film Productions, Walt Disney Television Animation, and Warner Bros. Animation. The animation for this production was however done by Southern Star Studios in Australia and Wang Film Productions in Taiwan.

The special was financed by Ronald McDonald Children's Charities and distributed by Buena Vista Television.