|
TICA: The Toonami Inner Circle Alliance
(C) and TM 1998 - 2008 Toonami Inner Circle Alliance.
Toonami
and all related elements (C), (R), and TM 1997 - 2008 Cartoon Network, a unit of Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc, a TimeWarner company.
This site is unofficial and not affiliated with Cartoon Network, Turner, and TimeWarner.
All other characters, series, and elements (C) and TM their established companies.
The X Bridge (C) and TM 1998 - 2008 Jeff Harris DBA Nami49 Productions.
|
|
 St. Patrick's Day is usually a day when people wear green. On this holiday in the year 1997, Cartoon Network's greenest block made its debut. For about a year, Ghost Planet Industries, the folks behind the popular Space Ghost Coast To Coast and TBS's popular afternoon cartoon showcase Cartoon Planet, worked hard to create, as the promos suggested, "a better cartoon show." The result of their nearly year long collaboration was unveiled on March 17, 1997 and, in a way, forever changed the way people looked at Cartoon Network. Live-action extreme sports segments (a feature that returned to the block and Williams Street's Miguzi block in 2004), classic action-animation shorts from Hanna-Barbera and Fleischer, and a trio of familiar properties made up this thing we call Toonami, and viewers ate it up.
Okay, that's not entirely true. While fans of the classic properties on the block like Thundercats, Voltron, and the Roulette shorts as well as Jonny Quest fans enjoyed Toonami, Cartoon Network wasn't sure if the block had enough footing to stay around beyond its limited airing window. In fact, Toonami was the first major facelift to the Super Adventures weekday afternoon block since Power Zone/Afternoon Adventures, which temporarily aired James Bond, Jr., Speed Racer and G-Force.
The difference between Power Zone/Afternoon Adventures and Toonami was that Toonami seemed like a separate brand from Cartoon Network creating its own persona that was creatively different than anything on television, let alone Cartoon Network. Where else could you see the original undubbed Japanese opening to Mach Go Go aka Speed Racer, interviews with extreme sports athletes, video game reviews, and old-school cartoons? Only Toonami, a phrase that still has some relevance today.
1997 was the year that the world was introduced to Toonami, and the world of television animation would never be the same.
- Jeff Harris, Creator/Webmaster
|
|
