Wednesday, November 16, 2016

The Great Space Coaster


Does anybody remember The Great Space Coaster? It was a syndicated kid's show that ran from 1981 to 1986.  I used to watch it all the time before school when I was in middle school. Although I think the show was really aimed at kids younger than I was at the time, I found it so enjoyable that I couldn't resist. There were other kids my age who also indulged in the Coaster.


The show had the most wonderfully memorable opening.  (Above, courtesy of Retrojunk.com.)  I just love it.


The show focused on three young people (Francine, Danny, and Roy), who took a spceship to this funky asteroid populated by a bunch of fantastic characters. Probably the most prominent of these characters is a shy clown named Baxter, who also had the ability to become invisible.  See Baxter, above. (Frankly, at the time, I wasn't exactly sure what Baxter was.  He was just Baxter.)


  The Wikipedia article describes the show further:
The asteroid is populated by strange-looking, wise-cracking puppet characters such as Goriddle Gorilla, Knock-Knock the Woodpecker, Edison the Elephant, and Gary Gnu (host of newscast The Gary Gnu Show). Baxter is forever on the run from M.T. Promises, a nefarious ringmaster who plans to re-capture Baxter and return him to the circus he worked at before he escaped. Each episode ends with a different life lesson, and various celebrity guest stars (such as Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame and composer Marvin Hamlisch) occasionally dropped by.
Above is a clip featuring Gary Gnu (the gnewscaster with the only gnews show guaranteed to contain no gnews whatsoever!) interviewing another character, Goriddle Gorilla.  (Thanks to TGSCoaster on Youtube.)

Heres the Great Space Coaster fan site: Click Here.

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