Walter Melon | |
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Country of origin | France |
Release | |
Original network |
Fox Family Channel CITV France 2 |
Original release | 1998 |
Walter Melon is a 1998 animated TV show, very loosely adapted from the Franco-Belgian comic Achille Talon. The show was produced and funded by France 2, Saban Entertainment and Scottish Television, and aired in the United States on the Fox Family Channel from 1998 to 1999. In the UK the series was broadcast on CITV (via Scottish Television), and later reran on Fox Kids. Each episode consists of two shorter adventures, and a total of 52 episodes were produced.
Walter Melon and his assistant Bitterbug run a company as "heroes for hire". Whenever people get in trouble, go missing, or fall victim to a villains' latest scheme, Melon and Bitterbug (Lefuneste) take their places temporarily. In the show, Walter and Bitterbug replaced spoofs of character from pop culture such as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Kirk and Spock, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, Tarzan, Mad Max, two of the Power Rangers, Jason Lee Scott and Billy Cranston, the Terminator, Fox Mulder, John Rambo, Little Red Riding Hood and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Unlike most heroes, Walter is a dim-witted, overweight jolly French American time traveller with a large melon-shaped nose and a lot of luck, but nobody ever notices the apparent change in appearance, with his character's apparent weight gain merely being commented on immediately after his arrival and subsequently ignored. When he impersonates the heroes, he fights Sneero, the main antagonist of the series who represents the main villain of the parody universe. Additionally, Walter is sometimes partnered with Ameila, a woman who represents the heroines, token female characters, female sidekicks, and love interests of the story. In a second season to make the show educational, Walter and Bitterbug would receive cross-time distress messages from historical figures such as George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, Thomas Edison, Lewis and Clark, Georges Méliès, and the Apollo 11 astronauts, rather than fictional characters, unlike the first season.