History WesternAnimation / SuperTed

''[=SuperTed=]'' (1982-1986, 1989-1990) was a [[UsefulNotes/{{Wales}} Welsh]] animated series that is ''every bit'' as bonkers as the opening narration would have you believe. Every week, [=SuperTed=] (Derek Griffiths), with the Spotty Man (Creator/JonPertwee) as his sidekick, would save the world from [=SuperTed's=] arch nemesis, an evil cowboy named [[TheRustler Texas Pete]] (Victor Spinetti) who does rope tricks and nothing else, and his henchmen, [[FatIdiot a strong but moronic man]] named Bulk (Creator/RoyKinnear) and a talking [[WordOfGod gay]] skeleton named, um, [[DemBones Skeleton]] (Melvyn Hayes).

''[=SuperTed=]'' (1982-1986, 1989-1990) was a [[UsefulNotes/{{Wales}} Welsh]] animated series that is ''every bit'' as bonkers as the opening narration would have you believe. Every week, [=SuperTed=], with the Spotty Man (Creator/JonPertwee) as his sidekick, would save the world from [=SuperTed's=] arch nemesis, an evil cowboy named [[TheRustler Texas Pete]] who does rope tricks and nothing else, and his henchmen, [[FatIdiot a strong but moronic man]] named Bulk and a talking [[WordOfGod gay]] skeleton named, um, [[DemBones Skeleton]].

* AbsenteeActor: Texas Pete, Bulk and Skeleton do not appear in "[=SuperTed=] and the Pothole Rescue".

* ByThePowerOfGreyskull: Played with, as the viewer never hears the word itself, just Ted telling them he's going to use it. It is in fact wholly possible that "I'll just say my secret magic word" ''is'' the word. Bulk repeats those words in another episode and it actually works, temporarily giving him superpowers as well...at least until he entirely forgets what they are.

* UnusualEuphemism: Pulsating Prunes! Bubbling Blancmange!

* AmbiguousInnocence: Bulk. He generally acts quite docile and pleasant, and doesn't really seem to ''realize'' that what he and Texas Pete do is evil. On the other hand, he ''was'' in prison before he and Texas Pete met, and even if he didn't seem to realize that prison was a bad place to be in, he had to have done ''something'' to get put there. When one considers his implied SuperStrength, it can get kind of creepy thinking about how he did end up there...

* VillainExclusivityClause: Texas Pete as the BigBad in almost every episode.

* ClothesMakeTheSuperman: [=SuperTed=] only has powers when he's in his hero outfit. Little different in that it's not about putting his hero suit ''on'', it's about taking off his bearskin and revealing the hero suit on underneath it.

* ManChild: Spotty is a grown man who has a wife and daughter back on his home planet but he chose a teddy bear as a superhero partner and even takes baths while playing with toys in them.

So, to reiterate: A ''teddy bear'' is randomly brought to life by a ''space alien'' who goes to the ''spirit of nature'' to give him powers for some completely inexplicable reason, who then uses said powers to fight an evil cowboy, an idiot and a ''literal'' skeleton.

No, we don't know what kind of drugs went into making this thing either.

%% * TooDumbToLive: In a second series episode involving [=SuperTed=] and Spotty having to rescue a trapped potholer before the chamber she's caught in floods and she drowns, Spotty refuses to put on a helmet because the only one left has stripes. Naturally, he proceeds to take several painful blows to the head over the episode that he could have avoided if only he'd been wearing it.

* WidgetSeries: It's a weird Welsh thing--the main reason why ''[=SuperTed=]'' was made was because Mike Young's son had a phobia of the dark.
** To put this in perspective, in the American revival series, [=SuperTed=] visited a barbaring-obsessed Space Roman alien world. In the Welsh original series, he repeatedly matches wits with an evil cowboy, a childlike super-strong fat idiot, and a milquetoast skeleton.