Revisiting “The Incredible Crash Dummies” TV Special from 1993!

Taking a fond look back at a one-and-done Fox Kids offering that, for its time, had some of the most amazing CGI visuals ever seen on television. No, for real

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo_American

Some of the weirdest shit was popular in the early to mid-1990s, and no, even now, I can’t explain why. Like, there was a point in time where people actually, unironically bought fuckin’ Chant albums, and even with a billion years of hindsight I don’t think I would ever be able to fully grasp the reasons behind it. 

Then there are other slivers of ephemera from the 1990s that I do theoretically get, but have a hard time explaining to all of you Gen Z asswipes. While me and all my millennial cohorts all know Pop Qwiz popcorn and Yikes! pencils were unquestionably awesome, I’m sure their intrinsic, contemporary appeal is lost on you fuckos who grew up weaned on iPhones and iPads and Totally Spies and Facebook. All you need to know is that, before the proliferation of the internet, we had a reason to get excited about pastel-colored writing implements and microwaveable snacks whose hue was a total surprise until you ate it, and for that, I will be eternally thankful.

Which brings us to today’s homage to long-forgotten, hyper-obscure media from the Clinton years, The Incredible Crash Dummies TV special from 1993. This may take a while to set up, so bear with me, kids.

The Incredible Crash Dummies began life as live-action cartoon characters in a series of Ad Council PSAs for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the late 1980s. Basically, they’d get into all sorts of wacky, probably deadly hijinks to illustrate the importance of wearing a seatbelt. Now, despite the fact that one of them was voiced by the same guy who did Garfield, you’d kinda’ expect the creepy, Jason Voorhees-like visages of spokesdummies Vince and Larry to spook the ever loving shit outta’ kids, especially in spots where they get thrown through windshields and horrifically dismembered in all sorts of grotesque automotive mishaps. But no, the ads were SO popular with the ankle-biter set that eventually toy manufacturer Tyco said “Well, give me 17 reason why we SHOULDN’T mass manufacture exploding cars and babies whose heads fly off their shoulders when you hit this here button on the back,” and the rest, as they sometimes say, is goddamn history. 

But oh no, the characters weren’t just popular enough to inspire two-pack action figure sets jovially allowing children to recreate beloved pet roadkill. The spokesdummies also became the focus of their own multi-platform video game, which, yeah, was pretty bad, but that’s what you get for expecting decency out of an LJN joint, ain’t it?

Which, of course, begs that age-old question. If the Crash Dummies were popular enough for toys and video games, why not attempt to nail the crass child-marketing trifecta and push out a cartoon series while you’re at it?

How can something be so adorable and terrifying at the same time?

Well, this one-and-done Fox Kids special from ‘93 is about as far as that idea ever made it, regrettably. At the time, the big selling point of the program was its extremely advanced (for its time) computer generated animations, which even now is at least halfway respectable, so you can just imagine how impressive this shit looked when it first aired, especially sandwiched in-between reruns of Bobby’s World and that one Super Dave Osborne cartoon everybody seems to remember but can’t recall a single detail from any individual episode. I mean, there surely was an episode where he went to a theme park with rollercoasters and shit, right? Beyond that, though, I’ve got nothing logged up in my memory banks on that one, folks.

The problem with the one-and-done TV special, of course, is that what makes for a great 30-second P.S.A. doesn’t exactly translate into a great 21-minute cartoon. Give the writers some credit, because they definitely tried to make the most out of some VERY limited material here; alas, as hard as they mustered, the end result is a very muddied final product that’s short on character development, short on plot and, most regrettably, short on actual amusement — there might be a memorable line or two, but beyond that? This thing is just woefully dry, which is most certainly NOT the kind of thing you ever want to market to the Sega Genesis-weaned Adderall babies of the early 1990s. 

Alright, so the special begins with our dummies getting REAL excited about the president taking a cruise in one of the special-edition limos they have to run through a whole bunch’ tests, with like bombs and explosions and shit. Cue the obvious line about “a dummy in the White House,” which seems to imply that, in the canonical universe here, sentient dummies exist as an entirely different life form than regular people. Which, I ain’t gonna’ lie to you, sounds WAY more intriguing to me, premise-wise, than a show about a buncha’ dudes who keep getting their arms and legs knocked off by random slapstick catastrophes. 

So there’s a pretty big cast to work through here, beginning with our Ken and Ryu stand-ins Spin and Slick. They get into an argument over who gets to wear this Torso-9000 protective suit, and we get some backstory on a dummy with an evil head who went on a psychotic rampage (boy, I wonder if we’ll ever see that character re-enter the program?) then we get to watch a dummy named Ted ride this indoor roller-coaster death trap while reading A Farewell to Arms. Of course, he winds up getting exploded in a glorious fireworks display, with his colleagues literally falling into a pile of shattered limbs during a collision. Keep in mind, this is one of the FEW child-targeted cartoons to not only depict full body dismemberments, but use it as a goddamn selling point for the corresponding action figure line.

So this old dummy scientist starts to repair Ted, and then this stereotypical German janitor ACCIDENTALLY puts the evil robot head on the Torso-9000 contraption. Then the evil dummy uses a vacuum cleaner to suck up the German custodian, then he rummages through the spare parts room to turn himself into a super evil mega-dummy. Along the way, he finds a cat-dummy named Hubcap — and yes, that name should be VERY familiar to long-time TIIIA readers — and flies off into the mysterious nighttime sky. 

Well, it's already better than the ACTUAL Crash Dummies we got on the Game Boy, that's for sure.

So Spin, Slick and the scientist pull Ted’s head out of the refuse canister, while the evil dummy decides to build his headquarters atop a giant pile of trash. Naturally, he’s a brilliant evil genius by default, who uses his Frankenstein-ish trappings to lightning-animate these similarly evil robotic dummies called Junkbots. You know, because he’s a real creative-type, it seems.

Then the rest of the dummies have a meeting to try to figure out what to do with the evil dummy (who now has an official moniker, the greatly uninspired “Junkman”), who, naturally, sends his retarded cronies out into the wild to retrieve a compact disc with a lot of sensitive intel on it. 

Then Spin and Slick pilot these planes, but apparently Junkman hacked the software, complete with this GREAT parody of the Super Mario World title screen that is probably my favorite thing about the entire special. So Junkman gets the disc, as anticipated, but what do you know, the disc was a FAKE meant to throw Junkman off, that evil little prick. So the scientist gives Spin and Slick a pair of communication devices and sends them off to Junkman’s secret chambers. Then Junkman says he’s going to turn all his cronies into can openers if they don’t kill the dummies for good, then the dummies crash their Day-Glo jeep into Trash Mountain or whatever it’s called and then Slick and Spin get crushed into metal cubes in one of those compactor things. So, of course, five seconds later, they’re totally erect and undamaged, because anybody who goes into a cartoon from 1993 expecting either biological realism or even moderate continuity REALLY needs to get laid.

Then Junkman attacks the scientist, who downloaded all of the Torso-9000 data into his own skull. Yeah, you can probably guess where this is headed. So the dummies shoot themselves into the castle with a giant cannon, and the scientist is hooked up to some kind of abstruse torture device that LITERALLY sucks thoughts out of people’s heads with plungers. A little on the nose, don’t you think? Of course, all of the other dummies show up at the last second and there’s a big shootout with junk car parts and then one of the dummies throws Ted’s head at the bad guy and the scientist is rescued. Of course, Junkman escapes from justice in a helicopter (which promptly crashes), and then the scientist calls our heroes “Scotter and Eleanor,” because apparently the torture device made him retarded now.

So cue that funky jazzy cafe music and yep, that’s the episode folks. 

Now that's what I call ... using your head.

According to the IMDB, one of the co-writers for the episode was “Savage” Steve Holland, the same guy who also wrote (and directed!) the mid-‘80s cult classics Better Off Dead and One Crazy Something, although he’s probably most famous for his work on Eek! The Cat, which may explain why the humor in the TV special seemed so hauntingly familiar (I mean, the part where the only dummy drops the line "But I need my body, it's got my arms and legs on it!" could pretty much be culled from any Eek episode, the more I think about it.) As it turns out, Holland was also the guy who wrote that TIIIA seasonal favorite The Last Halloween, as well as several episodes of Keenan and Kel, in addition to directing several episodes of that awesomely awful Pam Anderson syndicated show V.I.P. and at least one episode of my all-time favorite UPN series, Shasta McNasty (which is something I DEFINITELY need to find streaming online, somewhere, for those late nights when I just can’t take a nap in-between bouts of reading old Spider-Man comics and surreptitiously jerking it to fat goth girl porn.) 

The other writer for the special, Bill Kopp, just so happened to be the voice of Eek the Cat, which kinda brings things full-circle, I guess, kinda’-sorta’-but-not-really. By the way, he also wrote a ton of episodes of Taz-Mania and that one cartoon episode of Tales from the Crypt about the Three Little Pigs which pretty much told you point blank the show was getting canceled ASAP. Meanwhile, the director — Mark Mariutto — apparently did this one project and never directed anything ever again. Well, might as well go out on a high note, I suppose.

Alright, and just because we’re all autistic around these parts, I’ll very briefly go over the cast. Voicing the whackadoo scientist Dr. Zub was long-time V.A. staple John Stocker, who is probably most recognizable from his stint on The Care Bears as Mr. Beastly. Oh, and he also voiced Toad in not one, but TWO Super Mario Bros. cartoons, in addition to voicing Oogtar on the Super Mario World animated program. Oh, and he was in Monster Force, too, and Dog City and Avengers: United They Stand, where he voiced Ultron. Man, that guy has had quite a life, really. 

And if the voice of the villainous Junkman sounded oddly familiar, it’s because he was voiced by a guy named Dan Hennessey, who voiced ROBOCOP in that fuckin’ great cartoon from the late 1980s and provided the voice for Chief Quimby in the first run Inspector Gadget toon. And rounding out the cast, not like you even remotely care this much, we’ve got James Rankin — who also did some voice work on a couple of Super Mario cartoons — supplying Slick’s patois, while the voice for counterpart Spin was provided by Michael Caurana, who the IMDB tells me also played the pawnbroker in the 1990 Naked Lunch adaptation and also, a cop in the first Santa Clause flick. Which, yeah, is still way more than I’ve accomplished on my life, so who am I to judge here?

In hindsight, it’s pretty easy to see why the show never became a full-fledged series. Airing two years before Toy Story hit movieplexes, I can only imagine how much money and time it took to produce something so high-end for its time, and no, that’s not me being sarcastic for the first time ever in my whole life. For early ‘90s standards, the CGI here actually is pretty goddamn amazing, and the animators definitely deserve some mad props for their hard work on this one. Unfortunately, the brand to go along with the top-notch visuals really didn’t lend itself all that well to the episodic, animated medium — which is a shame, really, because the core concept at least had some potential, and with the guys behind Eek the Cat! calling the shots, a 12- or 13-episode run probably would’ve produced at least one legitimate gem. Oh well — it ended up better than the ill-fated Monster in My Pocket cartoon, in case the producers needed to hang their hat on something.

Oh, and one last thing. Don’t feel too bad for toy manufacturer Tyco, who certainly got as much mileage out of the show as they could, ultimately re-releasing it as a slightly extended VHS tape that came complementary with some of the action figure line’s later releases. Of course, you kinda’ have to wonder if marketing the “free” tape as a $10 value was kind of a backhanded compliment — I mean, if the shit REALLY was worth $10, how come they weren’t selling it for $10 in the electronics section, guys?