Bonkers "Fall Apart Bomb Squad" (found episode of Disney Channel animated series; 1993)

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Bonkers title card.jpg

The show's title card.

Status: Found

Date found: 12 Nov 2019

Found by: Disney+

Bonkers was a syndicated animated TV series that was originally part of the Disney Afternoon lineup of shows, based on an earlier series of shorts from Raw Toonage. The show originally ran from 1993 to 1994, with reruns on Toon Disney into the 2000s. The main focus of it was on a toon cop who had fallen from his past stardom. Depending on which set of episodes you were watching, he would have one of two partners -- Lucky Piquel or Miranda Wright -- and they would work together to solve crimes. The show ended up having two production runs, as the Miranda episodes were produced first, but the Lucky episodes were shown before them, and the two sets are drastically different from each other.

Two episodes of the show fell victim to undesirable circumstances: "New Partners on the Block" and "Fall Apart Bomb Squad". Both of these episodes were part of the Lucky Piquel production run, but the former is notable in the fact that it was made to bridge the gap between the two-episode sets, as it's the one where Miranda replaces Lucky as Bonkers' partner. These episodes both featured bomb terrorist villains ("New Partners on the Block" for example, features a scene where Lucky tries to sneak into the building where the villain is hiding, only for him to be presumed dead after an explosion takes out the building and him with it), which led to Disney pulling them from reruns following the 1995 Oklahoma bombing. Even though this occurred prior to their stricter censorship policies after 9/11, the episodes were never put back in the rotation even during this six-year gap.

Availability

"New Partners on the Block" was already found back in 2010 when YouTuber "EloquentQuill" had reported he had the episode still recorded on one of his old tapes. He subsequently sent it to another user for uploading, and numerous re-uploads can also be found of it (including versions that have the audio matched with a higher-quality video sourced from the show's Russian dub, though it was later taken down by Disney). However, "Fall Apart Bomb Squad" has yet to resurface, at least in English. Numerous high-quality uploads of the episode's Russian dub can be found, but the original English version of the episode has yet to see the light of day again in any form, and Disney has expressed little interest in releasing the show on DVD. Most of the show's run can be found in some form due to Toon Disney reruns giving many the chance to tape the show years after it was cancelled. Otherwise, little has come of this particular episode due to only being run in syndication for two years.

On November 12th, 2019, The Walt Disney Company officially released "Fall Apart Bomb Squad" along with the whole series of Bonkers as part of their Disney+ streaming service.[1][2]

See Also

Disney Channel

Playhouse Disney

Disney Junior

Toon Disney

Disney XD

Other

References