Inspector Gadget

Gadget's stupidity was super exaggerated in Gadgetinis, to the point where it went from funny to annoying and ended up making the people who disliked him in-universe look like heroes. It's kind of like what happened with Spongebob.

edited 5th Apr '15 1:20:03 AM by KnownUnknown

.... he just rips off a straightjacket like it was paper in the first season episode "School for Pickpockets".

What are some othe instances of him casually/absentmindedly exhibiting freakish cyborg strength/durability ?

@Napoleon De Cheese: Don't forget Robotnik's mom in Adventures of Sonic and King Koopa's in Mario Super Show.

Maybe it's because most villain parents tend to be comically abusive. It comes off more surreal and less unsettlingly relatable to have the Big Bad bullied and emotionally abused by a dainty old woman than a man.

edited 30th Jun '15 8:11:25 AM by Psi001

Actually if we're talking about evil parents, in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 Bowser/Koopa spent like half his time teaching his seven kids how to be evil.

There's also Ma Beagle in Duck Tales.

edited 30th Jun '15 10:50:46 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Curiously a lot of the time, that made Koopa a softer character than before (not that he wouldn't abuse them for acting like brats however). Most of his plans to please his kids were still pretty evil and high scale though, so it balanced out.

edited 30th Jun '15 12:14:51 PM by Psi001

I simply adore the chemistry Koopa has with his kids in that show. It made it so much more interesting to watch than the Super Show that preceded it. "King Koopa's" attitude is actually very close to how he appears in the games, especially the RPGs. He thinks he's the biggest baddest guy around but he mostly sticks to G-Rated evil like kidnapping the princess. (Although one time he did try to destroy the entire universe and re-make it in his image.) Like, Bowser would never kill anybody. Compare that to Ganon's lust for power that did lead to deaths, though most were offscreen; or Ridley, who immolated Samus' mother in front of her when she was 3. And he did it for shits and giggles.

Any examples of my earlier query?

I recall Gadget's neck extending and smashing his head through the floor on multiple occasions, but if you want to see Gadget flex his muscles you're going to want to look at "Health Spa" where Gadget spends some time in the gym and lifts weights.

Is it just me or is he shorter than most of the female MAD agents in the show?

Yeah, that's the special I randomly discovered recorded onto a random videotape once! I didn't know Penny wasn't supposed to speak like that.

They actually got Cree Summer to do that bit in the end!

Just like The Purge review when they got Ron Paulson and Maurice La Marche to voice Pinky and the Brain.

I wonder if the themes from the original series actually belong to Shuki Levy, or are tied up with the original (defunct) studio or something. It's very odd that, despite the main theme at least being fairly iconic, the only adaptation or continuation to ever use it and not The Theme Park Version (or whatever the music version of that trope is) is the Disney feature film version (people who, if there was a money issue there, could certainly pay for it).

Saban's music publishing business may have gotten tied up in some incredibly tangled legal situation after they were bought out by Disney. I have no idea if any of the other music they composed for their other shows have been used since the buyout.

But in any case, yes, the rights for the music did belong to Saban's music publishing company. Haim Saban was supposedly one of the first people to realize the value of a soundtrack, and how much you could make off of it - since the musical score is copyrighted separately from the cartoon. So needless to say, he figured this out and he became the biggest name in cartoon music of the 80s.

Shuki Levy has the original theme up on his website, along with most of the other shows his name is credited with providing music for...

edited 28th Nov '17 3:54:44 PM by Aldo930

Looking back on the conversation, I see that this is the third completely independent time I've asked that question. Curse my memory.

Either way, it's a shame. The score to Inspector Gadget is really underrated, and several of the character themes - Penny's especially - are among my favorite pieces of animated series music ever.

edited 28th Nov '17 4:35:34 PM by KnownUnknown

Not sure if anyone is still following this thread, but I just found out that the third season of the new CGI Gadget was released back in June 2017.

CGI gadget? Dare I ask how it was?

Man, this series just keeps going!

It's aggressively average.

It's can be fun and funny, and has some neat ideas, but it's also kind of meh. It doesn't really have those little bits of personality that takes a regular formula series into something rather charming. Though to be fair, it's also an 11 minute program trying to do the same thing as a franchise that has always been 22 minutes.

It's better than Gadgetinis, though. And if you like shipping, it introduces an Evil Counterpart Love Interest to Penny which is... eh... but apparently helped the series take off with the fandom.

edited 10th Jan '18 9:48:09 AM by KnownUnknown

First thing you need to know is that the episodes are all 15 minutes in length. 15 minutes would be enough for some shows, but every episode of this Inspector Gadget feels very rushed. Penny is older now and is training to an agent for HQ. HQ is the name of the organization that Gadget, Penny and Quimby work for. So Gadget's not an officer of the law like he used to be. Claw is way dumber than he was in the original series. Now he's more of a comic relief villain. He also has a nephew named Talon. A typical episode usually starts with Claw coming up with a stupid scheme, then arguing with Talon until he goes off to enact it. Penny and Gadget get called in to deal with the scheme and Gadget immediately misunderstands his orders and goes off doing something unrelated thinking he's doing his job. Then Talon and Penny get into a kung fu fight while throwing around tons of unresolved sexual tension. The original Inspector Gadget had a certain charm to it. This series has none.

And that's sad. It could have been something amazing, but it kind of ends up being average and bland, but a good kind of bland.

On paper, giving Claw a smarter Dragon has potential, since it evens out the usage of Gadget and Penny with both having Evil Counterparts.

Gadget bumbling his way through Claw or the Monster of the Week could be the focus but only working after Penny disposes of Talon to stop him playing Only Sane Man, compared to the original series where there were plenty of episodes Penny pretty much does everything against Claw or the one bumbling Dragon and Gadget is totally superfluous to the plot.

I remember the original pilot having something similar in dynamic, to the point they actually let Gadget be competent for most of it, solving most of the sillier more direct traps but with Penny secretly stepping in when it came to more shrewd traps from Claw. A shame the original series didn't keep more to this since it felt more balanced.

edited 10th Jan '18 2:22:14 PM by Psi001

I think the best way to solve problems in this show would be for BOTH Penny and Gadget to be necessary to accomplishing their objective. You know what else would be nice? They could have emphasized the fact that there are MAD agents everywhere and that literally anyone could be a MAD agent. There were so many times that Gadget picks a random person and immediately assumes they're a MAD agent. If they had given him a reason to be paranoid it would have helped a lot.