ThundersCats Chibis

In early 1984, Tobin “Ted” Wolf pitched his idea about humanoid cat people to his friend Stan Weston, who was also President of Leisure Concepts Inc. (LCI). Weston took the pitch with him to a meeting he had with Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass and their team at the Rankin/Bass offices to discuss new project ideas. The producers liked the idea enough to decide to develop it into a full-scale animated television series.

With Lee Dannacher as the supervising producer, Leonard Starr was brought in as head writer to develop the concept, create a series bible and script the initial episodes as well. Peter Lawrence was appointed as script consultant. Mike Germakian of LCI was hired to the artwork and designs for the characters, vehicles and locations. He also designed the iconic ThunderCats logo. American composer Bernard Hoffer was approached to score the music for the show. Auditions were held for voice actors and out of the hundreds that applied, six were chosen. These six were Robert “Bob” McFadden, Earl Hammond, Larry Kenney, Lynne Lipton, Earle Hyman, and Peter Newman. (The characters whose voices they provided are credited below.)

As was the case with earlier Rankin/Bass animated shows, the animation was done in Japan. The task of animating the ThunderCats was assigned to the Japanese company Pacific Animation Corporation (PAC), headed by Masaki Iizuka.

The character voices and music for each episode were recorded in the United States, and the recordings, along with notes and directions were sent to Japan to be animated. The completed animation would then be sent back to the United States for editing before being broadcast.

The pilot episode, titled “Exodus,” was broadcast on January 23, 1985. It was very well received and highly praised by all. ThunderCats became an instant hit and the success led to another 65 episodes being commissioned. Work on developing the second season began mid-way through the run of the first one. With the increased workload, a number of new writers were brought in to help pen the scripts for the new episodes. Two additional voice actors, Gerrianne Raphael and Douglas “Doug” Preis, were also hired.

After becoming a huge success, the show finally came to an end with the last episode, titled “The Book Of Omens,” broadcast on September 29, 1989.