The Real Ghostbusters
 

Since we got an announcement for a new animated series how about revisiting the first one. So who else is a fan?

I love this series...at least before it become Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters.

Anyone remember the user Jakesully, who got banned?

No, what does that have to do with The Real Ghostbusters?

I am surprised there are no fans of this one.

The show's been over for more than 30 years and outside of the first few seasons, didn't age particularly well. The seasons with the Slimer shorts, Junior Ghostbusters and den mom Janine in particular were f*cking awful

The cartoon was at it's best when J. Michael Strazynski was working on it. At least he briefly came back to it to 'fix' everything, but I don't think that helped, as the show wasn't all that 'hot' with the kids at the time by then.

I am a fan.

Haha, THAT guy..l

Who was he?

The pre Q5 episodes, which were the first 78 episodes, were fantastic. Especially for their time.

I think, I've watched only first few seasons, so I think I've seen the best this show had to offer, I think.
It was my first exposure to the Ghostbusters and I was very surprised, when almost ten years later I've discovered that cartoon series was based on the movies. And that some of it was written by the same guy who made Babylon 5, which I was big fan of.

All in all, I was very impressed by it, when I was a kid, especially since I was big fan of supernatural stuff, like ghosts, UFOs and the like. I've watched couple episodes few years ago and it was...not quite good. Maybe those were bad seasons...

This was sort of my experience too, except I watched some of the movie on TV then caught some of the show, and also Extreme Ghostbusters later on. Then when I got older (teenager), I managed to watch the two GB movies proper followed by re-watching the cartoon(s).

I was a fan of the supernatural as a kid too. :lol: Ghostbusters might be a huge reason why. Well, that, and maybe Unsolved Mysteries?

And hm, you might've seen the bad episodes. I re-watched the first few seasons as an adult, and they held up. Well, for 80s/90s cartoons. I didn't re-watch the post-Strazynski stuff.

The post-Strazynski stuff was utter garbage

-They made Slimer the star. (he even magically started talking)
-They made Janine more family friendly/motherly. (whatever the hell that means)
-They focused more on kid characters
-They changed Peter's voice actor and made him BFFs with Slimer.
-They made Winston Ecto-1's official driver simply because he was black. (I swear I'm not making this up)
-They also tried to get rid of Ray, saying he was useless.

:x:x:x:x:x

They did my two faves super dirty in those trash seasons.

Janine's big transformation was the one and only time that adding Kath Soucie to a cartoon did not make things immediately better. Real shame.

The earliest Seasons were golden, though. Possibly the objective "best" of the 80s cartoons.

I've watched Extreme Ghostbusters as well, but I don't remember whether it was before or after the movies.

I think it was an episode, where Ghostbusters turned into musicians to defeat ghost musicians or something...animation was pretty horrible. Atrocious dub didn't help.

Real Ghostbusters was definitely after the first movie. The first episode was about the Stay Puft goo on their movie jumpsuits possessing them, wasn't it?

Pretty sure there was stuff about Vigo and slime-blowers later on, so I think the idea was that GB2 happened somewhere in the middle of it. Somehow.

The one with "When the Saints Come Marching I" playing? I loved that one. One of the most memorable episodes to me, even now.

No, but it was in the first Season, Episode 11 specifically, "Citizen Ghost". I think a lot of people assume it was the first chronological episode because it deals with what technically would have been "their first post-movie adventure". But it wasn't until the end of Season 1.

I don't recall ever seeing the later episodes in question but Google does confirm that there were a few verbal references made to Vigo, the "mood slime", and digging up First Avenue in a couple of episodes, as well as Louis being added to the cartoon and being cited as a tax attorney.

The cartoon and the movies had an interesting relationship in that while "some" version of the movies' events did happen in the cartoon canon, they happened somewhat differently. For example, in the cartoon canon the Ghostbusters never went out of business after the Gozer Incident and so the Vigo incident was not their "big comeback" but instead simply one of their bigger cases. So while the "event" happened, the surrounding details differ. For example, Dana more or less "doesn't exist" in the cartoon canon, as she's never seen or referenced at all outside of the NOW Comics "Ghostbusters II" mini-series.

For the purposes of "the larger Ghostbusters canon", the cartoons and at least some of the NOW Comics were considered to be "what really happened" and the live-action films were simply Hollywood re-enactments of some of those events. But of course, as with any type of "canon" it's whatever you want it to be. But regardless, that's the "in-universe" explanation for those things.

That raises an interesting question. I know Walter Peck appears in the IDW Ghostbusters comics, but did Dana ever make an appearance or get a reference?

Sorry, I've confused you: I've meant to say "I don't remember, if I watched it before or after I've watched movies".

Love the show. It's just as watchable now as it was back then. If someone could just do something to enrich or deepen the color saturation, it could in many instances, look like it was made today.

It also drew a great balance of "heroic scary drama" and "slapstick comedy" across episodes. It lost a lot though when it became the "Slimer" show. When they did that it felt like they took the show away from regular kids and gave it to kids who ate paste and flicked boogers or otherwise that kind of kid who would snot out of his nose and just leave it hanging there waiting for someone to tell him to remove it.

I have a RGB set of some kind in a thicker case, but I have this nagging feeling that it's actually missing episodes or something for some reason. Loved the episode that Andrew mentioned as well - it actually gave this continuity reason why they wore colorful uniforms in the cartoon and sort of merged TRGB with the movie continuity. I don't remember any mention of Vigo or slime blowers ever though. That might've been after I got out of it as a kid if it happened....

Yes, I recall a reference and appearance, but I don’t recall the issue numbers.

I definitely recall seeing slime-blowers in the show because I distinctly remember tuning into some episode -- maybe a little while after I'd generally stopped keeping up with it -- and me going, "Oh wow! The slime-blowers, like from GB2." Though I don't think they were using the slime-blowers in the same way they used them in GB2. And I think the slime was green, or something.

That's exactly what made me always scoff at it.

One divergence from the films is that Janine never strayed from her crush on Egon in the show that I recall. I'm curious, when Tully showed up on the show, did they have any interactions?

My biggest question about the show is:

Why was Stay Puft in the show? Didn't he blow up at the end of the first movie? And he's technically Gozer. I'm surprised the GBs didn't take him more seriously.

I think they pretty much ignored that Stay Puft was a form of Gozer and made him his own entity. He was rather friendly and would sometimes help the crew and remain somewhat controlled since he trusted Slimer.

As for the mood slime there was an episode where Peter had to go into the containment unit for some reason and they covered him with the mood slime. Since it was mood slime, he has to keep his temper under control or it would freak out on him.

Again, the movies and the cartoons do not 100% share the same continuity. In the cartoons Stay-Puft is clearly his own individual entity separate from Gozer, so we can assume that in the cartoon universe when they faced him for the first time he was simply a minion or underling of Gozer, and not Gozer itself.

Stay Puft kind of became his own character in the GB video game. That wasn't Gozer at the wheel.

Stay Puft was in the show for one important reason: to sell toys (I still have an original Stay Puft pencil sharpener around here somewhere.)

In Afterlife Ray calls the Mini Pufts a manifestation of Gozer. So they’re separate minions too. (Can we say some survived because they stayed at Wal-Mart? :D )

I don’t remember much of the episodes. Wanted the complete dvd set of the RGB for years but they’re probably gonna make a new collection now.

Someone said they wanted the new Netflix series to be a continuation. I guess keeping Extreme in continuity. I think it’s better if it’s own cartoon though.

One thing I find interesting is they changed the look of the proton packs/wands a bit. Not just the color. I don’t mind. They still look cool but why bother?

Hm. I don't think it's very likely there would be a continuation of anything but the core GB/GB2/GBA universe. There's definitely Real Ghostbusters/Extreme Ghostbusters fans out there, but that's the niche of the niche at this point, decades later.

I guess the Netflix cartoon is supposed to stay in continuity with the movies. I know they wanted everything to tie together but we really don’t know yet. If so I imagine it takes place in the future and/or in some other part of the world.

It’s certainly possible to keep the old cartoons in continuity with Netflix but that assumes everyone is familiar enough with them or would go back and watch them but that’s a lot to catch up on. With Afterlife you’d just have to watch 2 movies or just the first at least.

Still mad that I never got the whole series on DVD though at this point a blu ray release would be awesome....though I doubt that will happen.

You can pick the whole series up on DVD pretty cheap now that they have released it outside of that TIME Magazine Firehouse set some years back. They upscale relatively well too.

I can't imagine the money that would have to go into giving these an appropriate 1080p blu ray release.

Unfortunately that cheaper re-release is not the complete series.

The official Ghostbusters youtube channel is generous with free uploads though.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Ghostbusters/videos

I forgot about that. That's the one I have. How weird is it that they packed that set with so many episodes, but yet not all of them?

Disney is notoriously bad at almost-but-not-complete series releases:
https://www.amazon.com/DuckTales-Com.../dp/B014C20UU6

https://www.amazon.com/Disneys-Adven...tv%2C82&sr=1-1

And Scooby Doo too:

https://www.amazon.com/Best-New-Scoo...33163008&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/New-Scooby-Do...tv%2C91&sr=1-1

If you're in Canada, CTV Throwback has all of them. The Real Ghostbusters is bascially the incomplete re-release, and "Slimer" is a compilation of all the Slimer shorts, RGB shorts and remaining full episodes. Deja-Boo is in the Slimer package and is the shorter version.

What specifically is missing from the "Complete" series DVD? I own it but I confess I haven't had time to watch it, nor compare it to a full episode list. If it's just some of the late-period "Slimer" stuff then that's no great loss. I wasn't aware that it was incomplete, though, that's kind of a bummer.

If you got the TimeLife set, you get everything, but if you go the budgeted Sony set, then:
HOWEVER, the Sony set features some alternative versions of episodes (animation and voice casts) so that could be considered a perk.

https://ghostbusters.fandom.com/wiki...016_DVD_Series

So far as I know, the current officially available digital episodes match up with the Sony re-release DVDs.

I've got half a mind to download the missing episodes somewhere, burn them to a disc and slap the disc into the case.

Thanks, I don't have the Firehouse set, I have the more recent set.

That all seems like late-series stuff so I guess I can survive without it. Still a bit of a bummer but I absolutely hated the Slimer stuff as a kid and I know I'd only watch it once anyways and never again.

I'm a fan of those late-run episodes, not so much the Slimer! stuff but even those little 15-minute RGB episodes had some memorable moments, like the final confrontation with Ghostmaster (actually a bit anti-climatic considering his build-up, but it's still a notable moment). Plus, some of the episodes were animated by top-tier animation studios like Tokyo Movie Shinsha, so they look great even if the plot is mundane.