The Get Along Gang | |
---|---|
Created by | Those Characters from Cleveland |
Developed by |
DIC Entertainment Nelvana (pilot episode) |
Starring |
Sparky Marcus Bettina Bush Sherry Lynn Robbie Lee Georgi Irene Scott Menville Timothy Gibbs Nicky Katt Frank Welker Don Messick Chuck McCann |
Country of origin | France United States Canada (pilot episode) |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of episodes | 14 (including the pilot) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) |
Andy Heyward Jean Chalopin |
Running time | 22 minutes |
Release | |
Original network |
Nickelodeon (Pilot, 1984) CBS (TV series) (1984) |
Original release | May 6 (Pilot), September 15, 1984 – December 8, 1984 (TV series) |
The Get Along Gang are characters created in 1983 by American Greetings' toy design and licensing division, "Those Characters from Cleveland" (now American Greetings Properties), for a series of greeting cards. The Get Along Gang are a group of twelve (and later, fourteen) pre-adolescent anthropomorphic animal characters in the fictional town of Green Meadow, who form a club that meets in an abandoned caboose and who have various adventures whose upbeat stories intended to show the importance of teamwork and friendship. The success of the greeting card line led to a Saturday morning television series, which aired on CBS for 13 episodes in the 1984-1985 season, with reruns showing from January until June 1986.
The Get Along Gang franchise was loosely inspired by Hal Roach's Our Gang series of short films. The following six members of the gang were the core members, while the other six did not make many appearances in the series, but they were regulars in merchandising and on storybooks. Sometime after the thirteen television episodes were produced, two more members were added to the gang.
Each of the characters also has obvious faults, which they learned to overcome with the help of friends. For instance, Montgomery Moose, the group's leader, is quite clumsy; Woolma Lamb is extremely vain and self-centered; Dotty Dog could be careless; Zipper Cat could be overbearing, Portia Porcupine could get upset easily; Bingo Beaver could be greedy and tended to get himself and/or others into trouble (although he was not mean-spirited like the Gang's enemy, Catchum Crocodile).
The two regular villains of the show were the only non-mammals in the series aside from Braker:
Both of their outfits suffer from recoloring or discoloring issues.
Other characters included:
Canadian studio Nelvana, in association with Scholastic Entertainment, Those Characters from Cleveland, and LBS produced a pilot episode of The Get Along Gang, which was broadcast on the Nickelodeon cable network on May 6, 1984. The plot revolved around the twelve members of the gang as they try to win a scavenger hunt despite Catchum's cheating and their own competition-fueled infighting. Although all twelve characters were involved, only the six core gang members (Montgomery, Dotty, Zipper, Bingo, Woolma, and Portia) had speaking roles. Among the voice talents in the pilot were Charles Haid (then of Hill Street Blues) as Montgomery and Dave Thomas (fresh from his days on SCTV) as Leland. The pilot also aired in syndication nationwide during the summer of 1984. John Sebastian, famous for working for Nelvana at the time, wrote and sang for the pilot.