Includes Venger
May 25, 2019 9:25 AM   Subscribe

 
So, 30 years ago, in Prague, my friend and I caught an episode of the D&D cartoon in German. The only part that we understood was when anyone shouted, “Uuunnnniiiiiii!!”

So, watching this was a bit surreal is what I’m saying.
posted by greermahoney at 9:48 AM on May 25, 2019 [6 favorites]


Sad lack of white hare.
posted by taterpie at 10:07 AM on May 25, 2019


I saw this via the group chat for the DnD game I DM.

"If that was us car would have been incinerated..."
"By Us"
"MmHmmm"
"Obvious Trap"
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 10:26 AM on May 25, 2019 [5 favorites]


Uni exactly as useful in the ad as in the cartoon, I see.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:34 AM on May 25, 2019 [5 favorites]




[shutupandtakemymoney.gif]
posted by Pastor of Muppets at 10:42 AM on May 25, 2019


Generally I expect product placements in movies, not the other way around.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:48 AM on May 25, 2019 [5 favorites]


I'll say the same thing I said to my mates, someone somewhere in the creative process behind this genuinely loves the cartoon. There are so many great little touches in it too. Particularly liked Harry Potter Presto and Sheila becoming ephemeral not just invisible so they can fit more people in.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 11:37 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


So many questions!

FIRST: was/is D&D mainstream enough in Brazil that it can (a) be broadly used to effectively sell vehicles or (b) be specifically used to sell vehicles to former nerds who are more likely to have money (take that basement dweller stereotype!) or (c) be specifically used to sell a concept for making a D&D live action trailer to people funding commercial budgets under the ruse of selling cars?

2: did the cloak make Sheila not merely invisible but *insubstantial* so all 6 people plus Uni could fit in the vehicle? And if so, isn't that, like, a little more uncomfortable than sitting in somebody's lap? ("Don't squirm so much, you're sitting *in* me.").

3: All of these kids were supposed to be 13-15, where/how did Diana learn to drive? (OK, her DEX is probably through the roof, and she may have handle animal, maybe the DM let her make untrained skill checks against those).

4: If Presto could pull a freakin' portal home out of his hat why did they really need to do the rest of that? Lead with that next time, magic hat.


Also: Why does Venger have only one horn?
posted by wildblueyonder at 11:48 AM on May 25, 2019 [7 favorites]


Mark Evanier, who "had a lot to do with selling [the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show] to the network including writing the pilot and working out the format and characters" posted the video to his blog with this comment:
The show is still fondly remembered and is rerun a lot in some countries. It's popular enough in Brazil that the folks who sell Renault automobiles down there spent a lot of money to make this commercial with actors (and CGI) bringing the animated characters to life. It probably had a larger budget than was spent making one or more seasons of the cartoon show and it's very well done. In fact, its a better "ending" for the series than the fan-funded one…
posted by cheshyre at 12:28 PM on May 25, 2019 [12 favorites]


The effects were pleasantly retro and made me strangely nostalgic for Time Bandits.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 12:32 PM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm mean, I'll take it. The reboot, not the car.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 12:37 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


My friend while not a D&D gamer, did have a Renault, and he's plenty nerd in other ways. His wife does animation and comics (working with some pretty big names now and then), and I just HAD to share it due to the alignment of the interests & his old Renault.
posted by symbioid at 1:12 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I only ever saw this show while I was bottled in the windowless department store daycare at either the Bon Marché or Nordstroms in downtown Seattle. I remember always hearing D&D spoken about in conspiratorial tones, or in raw urban legends. Something something satanists, something something paganism, something something drugs.

But here was just an ordinary Saturday morning cartoon that made it no more terrifying or interesting than Ritchie Rich. It was just weird how obsessed they were with these token "weapons". I may have got a biased sample, but it seems like the episode I remember most was mainly about them losing them and trying to get them back.

My school had a 16mm print of The Hobbit, and I remembered thinking that this show never got past the scenes where they raided the Troll lair and found Old Cool Swords that all had Names and Stories behind them. I think this was the first time I understood the difference in quality between things, and it wasn't all just flashing shapes on the screen to kill time.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:26 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


If Presto could pull a freakin' portal home out of his hat why did they really need to do the rest of that?

He was ... unreliable, at best. The look of surprise on his face when he did open the portal was entirely in character.
posted by CaseyB at 1:27 PM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


He needed a GPS as a material component for the spell, and didn't have one before they got in the car. /handwave explanation
posted by fings at 1:50 PM on May 25, 2019 [15 favorites]


Maybe it was a Wish spell. His facial expression was due to the 1d10 necrotic damage per spell level coursing through his body.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:03 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


That's definitely the joy of it for me too 23skidoo, it's so compressed but you get a sense of all the characters you know. Even that whole "Wow, we're back in our real clothes!" reaction at the end. If it was a trailer for a real film I'd be be doing my fansome-duty and finding fault left, right and centre along with the praise, but as its own off the peg, labour of love, Promote Vehicle X thing it's amazing.

It's weird how attached I am to the series. One thing I remember reading online in the early 2000s was that TSR proper were super underwhelmed with the fact of its existence when it came out. It speaks to a lack of personal introspection that I couldn't grok why.

As a budding small-s, small-f sci/fantasy fan in the '80s, one of my biggest pet peeves growing up was that so many of the stories in TV and film seemed to rely upon literally grounding everything on Earth. Someone somewhere had decreed that any story which didn't touch Terra Firma wasn't worthy of telling visually, yet I knew from my reading otherwise. I cherished any and all tales of what I think are now called Secondary Worlds; nothing annoyed me more than a fantastical tale brought back and made mundane. Both yes, but Dark Crystal over Labyrinth. Star Trek films were terrible about this too, worst The Voyage Home which compounded its Earth-grounding error twice over, first by being contemporary and second by being excellent.

I tend to think that, like music, kids entertainment has a very narrow window though which it is viewed, catalogued and enthusiastically consumed. Maybe I was just a year off in the wrong direction to imprint on He-Man which by rights should have suited my prejudices better. Yet I loved Ulysses 31 from that era too. Maybe I was just a bit more open-minded than I am now and more inclined to appreciate something on its merits rather than my preconceptions then. I wasn't a teenager yet, so that makes sense (sorry, Teenage Me).

I am seriously rambling. Eject, eject! Why not take a trip to me? Eric is best. THERE. ARE. FIVE. HEADS. Ask not for whom Frank Welker baas, he baas for thee!

tl; dr - I love this series and I love this heartfelt nod to it
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 6:50 PM on May 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


TMI, but I just had a wee and attempted to usefully employ that time to map every D&D series character to one of the Heroes Of The Lance and per my first efforts there are no right answers (why would there be?) but oh! there are so many implausible/bad/funny ones!

Exercise is left for the reader.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:09 PM on May 25, 2019


This is crazy that this exists. Wow.

I'm always feeling, Blue: "One thing I remember reading online in the early 2000s was that TSR proper were super underwhelmed with the fact of its existence when it came out."

Maybe because Gygax was in Hollywood trying to sell a D&D movie? A Saturday morning cartoon was a lot smaller potatoes.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:26 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


and the Dungeons And Dragons movie we did get was execrable.
posted by Pastor of Muppets at 7:57 PM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Sure, but that was much much later in the "Behind The Music"-style rise/fall/recovery of D&D.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:05 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I was surprised and very impressed to find out that this isn't just a tribute to the D&D cartoon, but really a finale- or at least season ending leaving open the possibility of more adventures.

Arguably it was 100x better than the actual D&D cartoon.

Which makes it 10,000x better than the live-action D&D movie.
posted by happyroach at 9:41 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


3: All of these kids were supposed to be 13-15, where/how did Diana learn to drive?

I've a relative whose dad worked on a farm and they were driving tractors/land rovers off-road in their early teens.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:42 AM on May 26, 2019


In the same vein, this amazing ad featuring Wacky Races.
posted by BiggerJ at 5:46 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


HAH. I love that this was posted a little before the thread about ads in Fortnite. The ads are in the games and the games are in the ads and the chocolate shall never be free of the peanut butter.
posted by es_de_bah at 7:46 AM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


It's not the first time that someone's tried to springboard off of the show's open ending. In the 90s, just before the WotC buyout, TSR had put out a limited edition comic book called Forgotten Realms: The Grand Tour as a bit of advertising for both the campaign setting and their other comic books. (It was made available for free with any purchase of $15 or more of D&D product). While mostly just an exposition dump on Faerûn, there is a framing premise of the kids from the show, having now grown up, wanting to pawn Presto off onto Eleminster to be his new apprentice.

One of the DVD releases of the series included a pamphlet of D&D 3.5 compatible stats for the characters.
posted by radwolf76 at 1:49 PM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


Everyone's reading Kieron Gillen's DIE, right?
posted by Hogshead at 8:31 AM on May 27, 2019


Diana was old enough that her greatest fear was that she was aging out of being able to be a professional gymnast, so I can believe she'd at least had preliminary driver's ed.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:00 AM on May 28, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm always feeling, Blue: I have to agree with you about the Earth-centrism of popular fantastic fiction. I often wonder if that's one reason making films of Dune is so hard: it's set so far in the future that Earth is as pointless a petty detail as the specific acre in which Homo Sapiens first lived is to us. It's fascinating and important, but not something anyone ever bothers with in day-to-day tasks.

But without Earth, how do you get your audience analogue to insert?

I often think about the interviews Richard Feynman gave where he explained the problem he had with religion: given the vastness of the universe, why would any deities bother with Earth of all places? It just seemed "out of proportion" to him, and I think that's the problem I have with this phenomenon.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:27 AM on May 29, 2019


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