Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown! In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I’m counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.
For day nine of the countdown I’ve got another trio of monster/ghosts that illustrates the level of cartoon-y-ness this series reaches. On the one hand there are a lot of very freaky monster designs (coming later this month), yet on the other it’s not strange to find a group like this one that feels a little more at home with the Muppets than in the netherworld…
Of course even with these three the spectrum of creepiness is sort of represented. While the big light purple guy up front looks like a mutant Kermit, the red on the right is pretty weird. Just look at those weird tube worm-looking deals on his head. Are those eyes at the end of those? Ew.
Personally, my favorite of the three is the unassuming light blue guy in the background. Turns out this was a series of cels, and you can get a bit of a clearer idea of what he looks like by removing the cel with the purple monster in the front. Unfortunately he’s still obscured a bit by the red guy as they’re on the same cel, but you get the basic gist of his design. I like his way-too-thin skeletal hips, and his humpbacked stance…
These guys hail from one of the later series episodes, #100, Something’s Going Round to be more precise. The red eye-tentacle/worm guy is Dr. McCatheter, a devious ghost who masqueraded as a health expert doctor trying to convince the Ghostbusters that they’re allergic to ghosts.
Though it’s kind of fun watching the guys morph into all sorts of old shapes and colors (even plaid), it definitely falls on the more cartoon-y side of the scale in terms of the tone of the series. The story isn’t very tight and it ends up feeling a lot like your basic 80s cartoons.
Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s. Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year’s Halloween blogging event…
