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Spaulding: That’s a good question and something we wrestle with. Have you guys ever discussed how Snarf, a cat who walks on four legs, could be so different than Lion-O, a cat who walks on two? It’s like the age-old Pluto vs. From what I hear, girls really respond to him. Every time, the camera cuts to him for a close-up, it’s pretty cute. Jelenic: I think the result of what we’ve done is that he doesn’t overpower this show in the same way as he did in the other one. Even though he doesn’t speak English to Lion-O straight out like he did in the original, he’ll speak in his cat-like sounds and everyone understands him, you know? It’s kind of like R2D2 or Chewbacca. Spaulding: It’s the same role the old Snarf is there in the visuals and in spirit. So, is he more like the ThunderCats’ pet? Your version deploys him mostly for cutesy comic effect. We changed the eyes a little bit to make him more cat-like and, I guess you could say, a little bit cuter. We were like, “Yeah, let’s keep that because it’s totally weird.” So he still has that. If you remember the Rankin/Bass “Hobbit” cartoon, the dragon Smaug had a lot of those design elements.
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He’s a cat, but he also has scales on his stomach and claw-like, fleshy hands. There’s a cool aspect where he looks like he’s part dragon. Spaulding: We wanted to keep as much as possible because there were some really cool aspects to him in the original. In the back of my head, I said we can probably keep him. But at the same time, there’s a way to make him cool, you know? Because he had a cool-looking design. Once Ethan came on board, the possibility of making an old school Snarf became more of a possibility.Įthan, were you surprised by the Snarf plan after signing on?Įthan Spaulding: I understood why they wanted to cut him out, really. Up to that point, it was either Snarf is going to be bad-ass or he isn’t going to be in it. He had to be in there.īut before Ethan Spaulding, there was another producer who was going to be working on the project and he wanted things to be more serious and realistic.
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So it was like, okay, if they’re asking that in the room, they’re going to be asking everywhere else. Jelenic: During the course of development, the first thing anybody would ask about when we were pitching it was, “What are you guys doing with Snarf?” Because he wasn’t really included in the pitch one way or the other. What ultimately made you to decide to put him back in? Like, Murdoch was my favorite character on “The A-Team,” and Screech on “Saved by the Bell.” So I think the compromise was, “Let’s keep him in the show and let him be comic relief as he was always intended, but let’s, you know, keep him from talking.” In the 1980s, my favorite characters always tended to be the annoying ones that everyone hated. I was always an advocate for keeping him in because out of all the characters from the original show, I remembered Snarf. So, after that, it went back to, “Let’s cut him out.” But at the same time, that isn’t really true to what his appeal was. Like, a Doberman pinscher version of Snarf - but a cat. And then he was reimagined as a sort of tough battle cat. Snarf came very close to getting the axe. Early on, there were a lot of people who did not want Snarf to appear. Michael Jelenic: Our Snarf strategy actually shifted a couple of times during the course of development. Curious about what prompted the show’s producers to alter a character that fans love to hate, we phoned up showrunner Michael Jelenic and visuals producer Ethan Spaulding to explain themselves.Ĭan you walk us through your Snarf strategy? When he does utter his dubious catchphrase, it’s not nearly as intrusive as you’d expect, and he otherwise uses no verbal language.
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Interestingly, in Cartoon Network’s faithful adaptation of “ThunderCats,” Snarf is more often seen than heard. “Snarf!” he would say, all too frequently. In stark contrast to his young charge, Lion-O, the unflappable and bipedal alpha ThunderCat, this vexing nursemaid sidekick was merely a whiny fur-blob who padded around on all fours and dished out no end of shout-outs to himself.
#The year thundercats cartoon came out update
On Friday night, Cartoon Network fires up “ThunderCats,” its satisfying update of the 1985-’90 animated classic about feline humanoids fighting to survive on a desolate planet against incredible odds – and against an aggressively hammy performance by the evil sorcerer Mumm-Ra.Īs beloved as the original’s awesomely implausible plot and iconic Rankin/Bass animation were, the show may be most remembered for birthing one of the most ridiculous and irritating cartoon characters television has ever known: Snarf.