DuckTales Volume 3 1987 - 1988 Buena Vista   Buy It Now

It’s difficult to determine just what the most popular series from the Disney Afternoon lineup was the most popular, but just about anyone who remembers it, the first series they will mention is DuckTales. If you were to ask me, it would be the highly underrated, and for some reason forgotten, Darkwing Duck, but that’s a bird of a different feather, even though St. Canard is apparently close by Duckburg. The ultra rich Uncle Scrooge and his nephew are back again in the third volume of the series which is once again filled with plenty of treasure seeking adventure.

At this point in the release, it’s too late to try and follow the series in true broadcast order, so this release still sticks with the production order. Luckily anyone who wasn’t familiar with the story behind the series finally had the opportunity to see just why it was the Huey, Dewy, and Louie came to live with their rich Uncle Scrooge as well as what brought Scrooge to hire such a horrible pilot like Launchpad McQuack as well as his reasoning for hiring Ms. Beakley who came with her niece Webbigail Vanderquack in tow.

The third volume of the series begins with yet another diabolical plot on the part of Magica de Spell to steal Scrooge’s number one dime. Poor Scrooge is sent into the future to find a horrible outlook where the boys have become greedy and Magica controls everything, and it’s up to him to straighten things out. This won’t be the first, or the last, attempt on her part, and Gladstone Gander makes an appearance in the series in yet another of Magica’s plots. Dofus has always been a staple in the series, though he wasn’t a part of Carl Banks’ original vision and was created exclusively for the series, but technically the episode Nothing to Fear, which again features another plot on the part of Magica, would be his first appearance in the series.

The first meeting of Scrooge and Launchpad is also detailed, giving more background to the series and the characters. If you’ve ever been curious about just where that number one dime came from, Scrooge takes yet another trip back in time to tell the boys the story of how he came about owning it. Uncle Donald also appears a few times, first as a part of a horrible scheme and then later when he tries to conjure up some elaborate story about how heroic he is in an episode which features another forgotten Disney character; the Phantom Blot.

The third volume of DuckTales officially enters into the second season of the series and this brings two new characters into the mix. First, Scrooge and company accidentally end up time traveling back to the prehistoric era where they happen upon Bubba, a caveduck and this pet triceratops Tootsie. Bubba, quite taken by these visitors, ends up sneaking aboard the time machine and traveling to the present and instead of simply returning him to his time, Scrooge ends up adopting him. While Bubba and the nephews were apparently best friends, they later forgot about him when they hit their teen years as seen in the Quack Pack series.

The second new character would come as part the DuckTales movie, Super DuckTales which was later rebroadcast as a five part mini-series. Here we meet yet another new character in the series, Fenton Crackshell who ends up working as Scrooge’s accountant. Fenton accidentally finds a new suit that Gyro has made, a robotic suit of armor that is quite a bit like RoboCop, and attaches itself to the wearer by the utterance of the word “Blatherskite” which Gyro assumes no one will use, but it’s a part of Fenton’s vocabulary. So, Fenton, in the guise of GizmoDuck, becomes the hero of DuckBurg with his identity known only to a few, and he would later make a guest appearance with another costumed crime fighter, Darkwing Duck.

The third volume of DuckTales once again brings no bonus features into the series which is really quite a sham. I keep hoping that at some point, Disney will break into the vaults and find some material to add or at least work on some new interviews, but that sadly has no been the case at all with the release of any of the Disney Afternoon titles.

DuckTales still has the charm that it did back when it was originally broadcast, and while I was never huge on the series adding in a character like Bubba, GizmoDuck is a nice touch and really brings a lot into the series to freshen it up again. I guess really, we should be saying, “blathering blatherskite, you need to add this collection of DuckTales into your DVD library.”

-mike-