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"The Cartoon to rule them all: Arthur and the knights of Justice"

I don't expect most of you to remember this especially as it was on quite a long time ago in fact i only really expect the hard core cartoon lovers like mystique and co who liked transformers, mysterious cities of gold and pirates of the dark water and the liketo remember this.

It was called Arthur and the knights of justice. It has taken me about 2 mnths to remember what it was called and so i did a quick google and found this on the subject which saves me from having to explain the basic plot:

Once upon a time, there was a Saturday morning cartoon called King Arthur and the Knights of Justice. The plot was as follows: in the kingdom of Camelot, long ago, the evil sorceress Morgana sealed King Arthur and the knights of the round table away in a cave. The wizard Merlin, apparently getting senile, decided that the best solution to the problem was to travel forward in time and recruit an American high school teenager named Arthur King, and his football team, to fight against Morgana in the real Arthur's stead. Arthur King, being a heroic, handsome young man with Adventurous Spirit and Pluck (tm) took up the task without complaint.


Anyway This program consisted of cool kind of futuristic battles in a kind of medieval setting and various amusing and interesting quest, while all the time trying to liberate the real arthur but never quite suceeding. Althoough it sounds a bit cheesy (and probably was) this was a top notch cartoon of which i can only remember good things. I seem to remember after an a team style talking intro it had quite a cool theme tune and then went into the action which followed the usual action cartoon story lines were there was always an attack by the same evil henchman which was just stopped at the last second by some ingenious or suicidally brave plan. Anyway i think they never suceeded in rescuing arthur unless i missed/forgot the end of the serious, but it was a top programme anyway.

Anyone else remember this TV masterpiece?

You know faaar too much about this sort of thing.

froots wrote:
> Action Man used to be called G.I Joe. True Story.

Wasn't Action man called G.I. Joe in the states?

The G.I. Joe dolls released over here were initally Star Wars figure size, and not until the eighties (Action man being about at least since the seventies?)...

Then they re-released action man in the UK as G.I. Joe, before releaseing him again under the original Brit name of Action man, with possibly another re-release of action man?

MoJoJoJo wrote:
> Did you know He-Man was originally an action figure for Conan?
>
> So the cartoon came from the toy, not the other way around.

I tihnk He-Man was the first cartoon made to sell a toy (the 20minute ad I think they called it)...

The cartoon was created specifically to sell the toy, it was because of the sucess of He-Ma they we have had so many since then... Think of the money made from tie-in products alone...

Action Man used to be called G.I Joe. True Story.

Yea, there were quite a few of those Japanese-French-Spanish series. Belle & Sebastian, Willy Fogg, Cities or Gold, Ulysses 31, Dogtantian and probably loads more. Strange.

It was French-Japanese. It was in a very similar style to anime actually.

Did you know He-Man was originally an action figure for Conan?

So the cartoon came from the toy, not the other way around.

That's probably because Cities of Gold wasn't as "mainstream" as a few of the other cartoons of the era. Although toons like Transformers, G.I. Joe, MASK, He-Man were great, they were engineered to sell merchandise to a mass audience (She-Ra was a highly cynical ploy to sell He-Man to girls). Not that I'm bothered, merchandise is cool.

There wasn't any commercial stuff attached to MCoG.

Bah!... Any and all kids cartoons made from the mid-eighties onwards (From He-Man+) have all been crap...

They are just extended-commercials for toys and games, which is why they seem they always seem so souless and empty of return viewing :)