Trivia / Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series

• Follow the Leader: A combined effort on Disney's part to both strike gold a third time with an update of their "Disney's Ducks" characters and capitalize on the then-popular trend of Totally Radical anthropmorphic crimefighters, going so far as to hire David Wise, the story editor from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987).
• Franchise Killer: Though not the final show produced for The Disney Afternoon, it was the latest in a string of poorly-received programs which resulted in it being last original one (the final three being an interquel series to Hercules, a Sequel Series to the live-action 101 Dalmatians remake and the retool of Doug, all but the first of which were the blocks only shows to be produced in collaboration with an outside studio [Jumbo Pictures] and, as a result, were considerably off-brand in both appearance and tone). This, combined with a perfect storm of company politics (Disney was branching out further into television, starting with the purchase of ABC and Disney Channel switching from premium to basic cable), changing television standards (the FCC began requiring a certain amount of educational content on children's television, resulting in the creation of One Saturday Morning) and impracticality (Disney Channel had enough original programming to make up a 2 hour block without having to regularly bump one show from the block at the end of each season) dealt the block a fatal blow, and it ended unceremoniously two years later, with the other three shows being absorbed into OSM.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: One VHS tape containing three episodes was released, and that was about it as far as official home media. A DVD set has popped up on shop sites but it's a bootleg. As of now, it's on Disney+, but only in some territories.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's released a set of four hockey pucks in 1997. These consisted of Wildwing, Duke L'Orange, Mallory, and Hardwing.
• Out of Order: Five more episodes aired after the finale "The Final Face Off".
• Reality Subtext: Much of the Ducks was derived from real Mighty Ducks of Anaheim NHL franchise at the time. The team plays in Anaheim, in an arena nicknamed "The Pond" (the official name at the time was " Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim;" now it's Honda Center), with white and green uniforms with a duck goalie mask emblem◊, and Wildwing takes his name from the team mascot (which even has a statue outside the arena).
• Recycled Script: The plot of the episode "Zap Attack" had previously been used in various forms by writer David Wise for both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) and The Transformers.
• Shrug of God: Fans were in contact with the story editor, the late David Wise, and while he did give out the last names of the team, most of his other answers are this.
• What Could Have Been
  • Originally, Mallory was going to be the blonde member of the group.
  • Presumably, if One Saturday Morning hadn't been brought in to help fulfill E/I requirements for ABC stations, we could've gotten a second season.

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