The life and premature death of this Saturday-morning animated series about robots who also were more than met the eye.
by Rich Watson
To a Generation X kid growing up in the eighties, cartoons about transforming robots were the coolest thing since light sabers. They usually were made in Japan, and we were learning that Japanese animation looked way better and had more action than what we were used to seeing.
In a year, 1984, in which transforming robots were hot, ABC released one series less remembered today than the others, called Mighty Orbots.
Saturday morning cartoons
The magic—there really isn’t a better way to describe it—of spending Saturday morning in front of the TV, bowl of sugary cereal in your lap, watching one’s favorite cartoons has been described on numerous Gen X blogs and websites around the Net.
I planned my TV schedule using ads in comic books featuring each season’s new Saturday morning lineups, and stuck to it as best as possible, flipping from one channel to another depending on what I wanted to see. And don’t forget: this was when we only had three networks to choose from.
I watched MO for the animation (which was stellar), plus story elements which resonated with me such as outer space adventure, technology, and teams.
Especially teams: seeing different characters interacting with each other, the roles they play as they work towards a goal. Five was always the right amount of members: five Power Rangers, five members of G-Force, five Voltron lions. Often in a team story, individual members got solo moments to develop and grow before applying that growth to the group dynamic. Think of the moment in comics, for example, when Wolverine rescues the X-Men after the Hellfire Club captures them and we see what he’s capable of without the others as a restraining influence.
MO just told an entertaining story for kids. It might’ve been one of the last adventure cartoons I watched where I didn’t demand more.
Transforming robots
This video goes into a history of transforming robots prior to the eighties. I thought Astro Boy might’ve been the earliest, but the narrator finds precedents for that too.
1984 was the year they went mainstream in America, thanks to several cartoon shows, of which MO was one:
- Transformers was the biggest. Hasbro teamed up with Tomy and Marvel Comics to create a line of toys: sentient alien robots that kids could change into vehicles and other objects. It was inspired by a similar line made by Tomy in Japan and rebranded in the States. The TV show ran in syndication beginning in September, leading to spinoffs, plus the live-action movies.
- GoBots, like TF, originated in Japan. Tonka marketed the American versions of the toys beginning in 1983. The ‘84 animated series Challenge of the GoBots also ran in syndication, but premiered a little before TF. Hasbro now owns the fictional incarnations, though not the toy rights.
- Voltron was based on a Japanese animated series, or anime, called Beast King Go-Lion, produced in America by World Events Productions. It, too, was syndicated. In this one, human pilots operated robots resembling lions that could change and fuse into one humanoid mega-robot. None of the robots are sentient; the emphasis is on the human operators.
The following year, the robot craze continued with Robotech, based on three similar anime programs in Japan.
In 2022, Scientific American wrote about a way for modern robots to change shape.
Mighty Orbots and their brief time in the spotlight
MO looked like a Japanese import, but it was an American series, a collaboration between Japan’s TMS Entertainment and America’s Intermedia Entertainment, with MGM/UA Television.
In the 23rd Century, Earth is part of a galactic governing body. Opposing the bad guys are a team of super-powered robots:
- Tor, the strongest physically,
- Bort, a shape-changer,
- Bo, who can control the elements,
- Boo, who generates illusions, and
- Crunch, who consumes anything.
Their inventor, a young human named Rob Simmons, also leads them in combat, assisted by the diminutive robot Ohno.
When they need to, the Orbots can transform into the limbs and torso of a single mega-robot.
MO aired on ABC for one season of thirteen episodes, created by Barry Glasser and directed by Osamu Dezaki. Gary Owens, the familiar voice of Space Ghost, among other cartoon characters, narrated.
While MO and TF (and GoBots) were family-friendly and had lots of action, the latter felt more serious. MO, due to the campy and hyperbolic voice of Owens, plus Ohno, who looked like a kid in relation to the other Orbots and functioned as a sidekick, skewed younger. The Orbots were broader, more cartoonish, than TF in general, but still heroic.
Re-watching it now, forty years removed, made me wish it were more sophisticated than perhaps it was. Compare this with something like Star Trek: Prodigy—also mainstream, also meant for a young audience—and the difference is obvious. Still, some things should stay as they were.
Why didn’t it last longer? Tonka believed people would confuse the Orbots with the GoBots. They sued. The legal issues, plus competition on TV with The Smurfs and the brand-new Muppet Babies, led to the show’s downfall. The Tonka lawsuit also scuttled plans for a toy line Mattel had planned for 1985.
MO did get a definitive ending, a rarity in animated series at the time.
Since 2018, it has been available on DVD.
It’s a show that deserves a second chance. Who knows if it’ll ever get one?
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Also in 1984:
- Muppet Babies, based on characters from the live-action Muppet Show, debuts.
- Dragon’s Lair, based on the video game, debuts.
- My Little Pony, based on the Hasbro toy line, debuts.
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is released.
- Looney Toons animator Bob Clampett dies.
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A Halloween double-header:
October 8: A horror story out of Colonial-era Brooklyn.
October 22: A kinda spooky movie.
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