Original "Kit Colby and the Rescue Rangers" Drawing Revealed

[Peter Paltridge]

From Amy Mebberson's Tumblr, and courtesy of Tad Stones:

For a bit of info on who the extra characters are:
My Junk Drawer

 

[Dudley]

Neat.
I expect a similar story behind Tailspin. Why else would they make Balloo from the Jungle Book a pilot?

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I just love looking at early concept art. I like seeing how much changes before the final product comes out.

 

[PeppeRaskell1]

I could see losing the Chinese cricket, but why couldn't they have left well enough alone? Why did they have to replace Kit Colby with Chip and Dale?

 

[Martin Juneau]

I just love the artwork and the characters with it! The colors and characters look quite different and varied to what we use to seen in the final Chip 'n' Dale series.

 

[King_of_doom]

I could see losing the Chinese cricket, but why couldn't they have left well enough alone? Why did they have to replace Kit Colby with Chip and Dale?

They wanted known Disney characters and went with Chip and Dale to replace Kit. I do feel that with the success of Ducktales while having known Disney characters, they wanted to have the same success with the other shows they where working or else if Ducktales hadn't started or wasn't made, the Kit Colby and the Rescue Rangers would have been made without changing anything in my opinion.

 

[Silverstar]

Some of those rejected characters turned up later in other Disney Afternoon shows, albeit in slightly different forms: Chirp Sing turned up as a nightingale in, ironically enough, a Rescue Rangers episode, "Song of the Night-an-Dale". A character named Camille, aka The Chameleon, popped up as a duck villainess in an episode of Darkwing Duck. Not to mention that the name Kit was later used for one of the main characters in TaleSpin.

Neat.
I expect a similar story behind Tailspin. Why else would they make Balloo from the Jungle Book a pilot?

I do know that TaleSpin started out as a show called B-Listers, a behind-the-scenes scenario centering on Disney cartoon star wannabes; it only became TaleSpin after several revisions. I'm guessing that there may have been some Frank Buck influence in there as well, just making the jungle animals the protagonists instead of the quarry.

 

[Mister Donut]

They wanted known Disney characters and went with Chip and Dale to replace Kit. I do feel that with the success of Ducktales while having known Disney characters, they wanted to have the same success with the other shows they where working or else if Ducktales hadn't started or wasn't made, the Kit Colby and the Rescue Rangers would have been made without changing anything in my opinion.

Arguably Ducktales kinda started that trend for Disney's TV dept. to incorporate existing characters into these shows as we have with both Rescue Rangers and TaleSpin.

 

[John Pannozzi]

I do know that TaleSpin started out as a show called B-Listers, a behind-the-scenes scenario centering on Disney cartoon star wannabes; it only became TaleSpin after several revisions. I'm guessing that there may have been some Frank Buck influence in there as well, just making the jungle animals the protagonists instead of the quarry.

They quickly cobbled the premise of TaleSpin together after B-Listers was nixed. Baloo would have been in B-Listers/Bit Player (which was actually about former Disney animated movie supporting stars and how they get by), and the idea of an air shipping delivery service was a leftover idea originally intended for Launchpad in DuckTales (and no, Launchpad was never considered to be in TaleSpin, that's a misconception).

 

[MDawg]

Is there any place I can look at the backstory for B-Listers? There's a lot of Disney projects that never happened that I'm aware of, but this one is completely new to me.

 

[dth1971]

Noticed the pic, Gadget looks white colored.