January 2022 Update

 Happy New Year all.  Here are some newly-released items to kick off 2022.

Bigfoot And The Muscle Machines

First up is material from the Flint Dille Collection, supplied by owner Steve Chu.  Concerning the "forgotten son" of Super Sunday: Bigfoot And The Muscle Machines.

Backstory

SST Muscle Machines was a toyline of battery-operated monster trucks, first released by Milton Bradley subsidiary Playskool in 1983.  Starting out with the titular Big Foot - licensed by Bob Chandler, owner of the real-life vehicle.

In 1984, Playskool added licensed trucks Orange Blossom and Black Gold to the toyline, along with several other accessories.  That year, Hasbro bought out Milton Bradley, thus acquiring SST Muscle Machines.

1984 also saw the debut of The Transformers on weekend syndication, to huge ratings.  Seeking to keep those weekend ratings going as Transformers was scheduled to make the jump to weekday afternoons in the 1985 season.  Griffin-Bacal introduced the Super Sunday concept:  A trio of five-part miniseries, broken down into their individual 7-minute Acts and aired as an anthology series over 15 weekends.  With plans to re-edit those 15 shorts back into TV movies for syndication and home video release.

Needing "Boys Action" toylines that could be quickly developed into shows.  Hasbro looked to SST Muscle Machines, as well as fellow Milton Bradley acquisition Robotix.  To accompany their new fashion doll line in development: Jem.   

The Show

Ron Friedman was tasked to develop a show to promote the SST Muscle Machines toyline.  On March 5th, 1985 he turned in a "beats" outline and character lineup.  Detailing a group of drivers and mechanics led by Yank Justice, known as the Rolling Rodeo.  The story would detail the Rodeo's run-ins with the corrupt Judge Skullheart who practically controlled the county through bribery, extortion and abuse of power.  Along with his rogue's gallery of sheriffs, biker gangs, mercenaries and other hired thugs.

Included with this outline are three additional story premises.  As well as plot breakdowns and character summaries written up by Elise Goyette, Production Co-Ordinator for Sunbow in New York

Evidently, Hasbro and Griffin-Bacal were not impressed by Friedman's creation.  He was apparently told to go back to the drawing board.  Coming up with a second outline and a brand new story set-up, on March 26th.  

It is unclear whether this outline was satisfactory either, as Friedman was tasked to immediately start work on his second attempt at a screenplay for The Transformers The Movie.  Which would be listed as "complete" on April 27th.

In the interim, retail orders for the SST toyline in 1985 (which introduced the "funny car" War Lord) were evidently low enough that Hasbro decided to scale back their investment, cutting the supporting cartoon down to 9 segments.  Flint Dille was tasked to create a new miniseries.  Retaining the Friedman-created characters of Yank Justice, Professor D, twins Red & Redder and Close McCall.  He wrote a brand new story detailing the Rolling Rodeo's entanglement with an archaeologist on the run and their battles over a mysterious map.  Sought by the reclusive, elderly billionaire Adrian Ravenscroft in his quest to find the Fountain Of Youth.

The miniseries was released on VHS as a 53-minute movie, but has never received a DVD or streaming release.

At time of writing, no material from the Flint Dille 9 segment version is available for public viewing.

MP 5205 Jem

By the use of screen caps of a featurette found on the Shout Factory DVD set.  The Archive now hosts the storyboards for the music video Can't Get My Love Together.  Drawn by Will Meugniot, from the Marv Wolfman-written episode Broadway Magic.

MP 500 Muppet Babies

Added 9 pages of mouth guides and 25 pages of walk cycles for the main cast.

MP 7000 Little Muppet Monsters

Added a new page for Marvel Productions and Jim Henson's ill-fated attempt in 1985 to produce a combination animated/live-action Muppet program.  13 episodes were ordered, but due to delays in producing the animated segments, only 3 were ever aired.

At the link are 35 pages of mouth guides and walk cycles from the animated segments.

The Flint Dille Collection

(Updated 08/01/22.  Bigfoot And The Muscle Machines material added)

One year ago, Sunbow Productions alumni Flint Dille began auctioning off items from his nearly 40 year career in animation, RPG and computer game writing.  Listed below are the items that have been contributed by owners to the Sunbow Marvel Archive.

If there are owners of relevant auctioned items not listed here that wish to contribute.  Please let me know via the following email: simon.letch42@gmail.com

Listed in chronological order.  Click on the links below to be taken to the relevant show page.

Mister T (cartoon, Ruby-Spears)

Mystery Of The Forbidden Monastery full script

Bigfoot And The Muscle Machines

Ron Friedman 15 segment version - first outline, character descriptions, additional story ideas, plot and characters breakdowns by Elise Goyette

Ron Friedman 15 segment version - second outline, additional story premise by Doug Booth

MP 700 The Transformers

35 Megatron's Master Plan, Part 2 - Additional Material section storyboard

MP 5206 Inhumanoids

05 The Evil Eye full storyboard (final revision, missing pages 101-106)

06 Primal Passions full storyboard (final revision, complete)

870108 Visionaries: Knights Of The Magical Light

Show Bible

Unproduced script 01: The Magic Unloosed

Unproduced script 02: The Powers Bestowed

Unproduced script 03: The Dark Hand Of Treachery

Full scripts:

01 The Age Of Magic Begins

02 The Dark Hand Of Treachery

03 Quest For The Dragon's Eye

07 The Overthrow Of Merklynn

10 Trail Of The Three Wizards

11 Honor Among Thieves

November 2021 Update

870108 Visionaries: Knights Of The Magical Light

With thanks to the Mapes brothers, the archive now hosts the following material for Visionaries:

• The show bible
• 3 unproduced scripts by Flint Dille, for an intended 5-part miniseries (later cut down and adapted to three parts)

Produced scripts for

• The Age Of Magic Begins
• The Dark Hand Of Treachery
• Quest For The Dragon's Eye
• The Overthrow Of Merklynn
• Trail Of The Three Wizards
• Honor Among Thieves

Website update

Site maintenance update affecting the following pages:

MP 600 GI Joe part 1 

MP 600 GI Joe part 2

MP 700 The Transformers part 1

MP 700 The Transformers Part 2

MP 900 Defenders Of The Earth

For ease of navigation and page loading.  All episodes of the above shows that have been officially released on YouTube - by Hasbro and King Features Entertainment respectively - will be linked via central playlists for each season or miniseries.  Where possible, these playlists will be maintained in production order.

October 2021 update

 

Other companies

Another item found by Flint Dille during clearout of his storage last year and auctioned off.  Now permission has been granted to post by it's new owner.  His first script for animation: Mystery Of The Forbidden Monastery, an episode of the Mr.T animated series produced by Ruby-Spears in 1983.  Co-written with future Sunbow alumni Steve Gerber and Martin Pasko.

Housekeeping note 09/11/21

 As their contents are now duplicated on the show pages, linked on the left.  The original show blog posts will be checked and then deleted over the next week.

Please make sure to update your bookmarks.

September 2021 update

 

MP 700 The Transformers. part 1

Linked via the Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel.  All 65 episodes of The Transformers season 1  and 2 are now available to view in full, next to their respective scripts and other production material.

MP 5206 Inhumanoids

With thanks to Jim Sorenson and Nathan Stacy, full storyboard sets for The Evil Eye and Primal Passions are now available for viewing.

It should be noted that The Evil Eye contains some scenes that were not deleted by Marvel producers, but were removed from the finished episode in post-production.  These scenes were clearly deemed as going too far, even by the standards of Inhumanoids.

The episode was also one of many across multiple shows being produced in mid-1986 that had it's runtime cut to around 19 minutes.  We can now see that this decision was taken by Marvel in LA, before the episode was sent to Toei.

Story outline of Ron Friedman's The Transformers The Movie script

 For the 35th anniversary of The Transformers: The Movie.  I have analysed and typed up Ron Friedman's 179 page draft script.  As it was marked "completed" on April 27th, 1985, not including any duplicate or additional pages from the May 2nd revisions.

This is not the actual outline that existed before writing of the main script commenced, that is linked here:

Outline (Revised 29/03/85)

Rather, this condenses the actual story told within the script down to 20 pages.

Full Script (linked for reference)

Script Outline - 20 pages, compiled by Simon Letch