As if in a fever dream – many 90’s kids will remember their favorite cartoon heroes from the multiverse coming together to fight the power of drugs with the power to “Just Say No”. A line up that would fuel action figure battles for years to come – The Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles (or Hero Turtles if you are from the UK), Garfield, the Smurfs and more. The Ghostbusters make an appearance and even the Looney Tunes show their face.

This wasn’t the first time kids were treated to a mash up of properties that seemed impossible. Amblin Entertainment – the powerhouse entertainment company founded by then world famous Steven Spielberg and now very famous Kathleen Kennedy – were able to take a book about a Rabbit from the funny pages and turn it into a blockbuster box office hit.

For a kid with a VHS player – the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) was a zany and scary look into the world that exists on the other side of the TV. This was a world where cartoons live REAL lives and Bugs Bunny could hang out with Mickey Mouse any day of the week. Better yet – They did so on screen! In the creation of this mash up of creative IP’s – there were rules for the development and animation of characters. The Warner Bros Rabbit and the Walt Disney Rat were required to share a scene and have equal screen time. To accomplish this feat, the characters enter and exit the scene at the same time. These details would set the tone for inter-property mashups in the future.

There aren’t many examples of these kinds of properties – owned in whole or part by different companies – but they follow similar rules to attempt at maintaining the heart of the characters. In the production of Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Nintendo and Sega both argued back and forth with Disney about the respective sizes of Bowser and Doctor Robotnik (or Eggman). In another Amblin joint, Ready Player One (2018) got us Halo’s singular hero Master Chief as an army of faceless Chads (I mean Gunters…) as well as the Iron Giant being used as gun.

Not all mash-ups are created equal. The quality of multiverse cross-overs between properties can vary wildly. Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was one of the first – but certainly not one of the best.

Created as part of the DARE program, a 1980’s program designed to keep kids away from Drugs and Alcohol into adulthood. No one who remembers the existence of the infamous “Do Drugs” pencils will remember the efforts of DARE being effective at making drugs look uncool. Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue is little exception.

Having avoided watching the special again since my youth, I can tell you that I don’t remember the messaging well enough for it to be effective. While I remember an “old” couple at the start of the program, my young brain didn’t register the then US President – George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbra. I don’t remember the banging musical numbers. I just remember the Ninja Turtles chilling with the Looney Tunes and Garfield while hanging around drugs.

So, Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue may have missed the mark a little. It’s push against drugs is lost in the colorful imagery that pushes the narrative forward.