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Crash Bandicoot

Crash Bandicoot
Image: Activision

Universal Cartoon Studios might’ve backed the wrong annelid with Earthworm Jim, but it wasn’t done with video games. At least, it didn’t want to be.

In 1994, Universal Interactive Studios contracted upstart developer Naughty Dog to make three video games for the company. The first title would be a 3-D platformer starring a plush-ready mascot poised to beat the major-league talents to the next generation of consoles. Universal’s cartoon division prepared fully-animated cutscenes for the release, shrewdly intended as a backdoor pilot for a TV show if the character proved successful.

Luckily for the developers, Sony Computer Entertainment wanted in. Less luckily for Universal Cartoon Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment didn’t want anything to distract players from the shiny, new 3-D.

Crash Bandicoot released on September 9th, 1996, and immediately became the Sony Playstation’s first grand slam. To this day, it remains the eighth best-selling title on the system and the earliest released of the top ten. Universal didn’t have a hit cartoon on their hands - they had something better.

By the time Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back landed in stockings the following Christmas, Crash was a regular at Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Hollywood.

Though he was the only video game star roaming the Orlando backlot after Jim’s fleeting tenure, the big orange bandicoot fit in nicely with the park’s anthropomorphic zoo. And unlike his 16-bit predecessor, Crash was here to stay. At least for a while.

The deal that made him a Playstation icon came to an end in 2001, when Sony bought Naughty Dog outright and Universal retained the rights to the character. The series would be handled by other developers and released on all systems including the Playstation 2.

Crash kept making appearances at Universal Studios Florida through the early millennium, until his popularity started to fade with the new generation of consoles. He enjoyed a much warmer reception at Universal Studios Hollywood, appearing regularly until 2013, when the division formerly known as Universal Interactive Studios was bought by Activision.

The Nutty Professor

The Nutty Professor
Image: Universal

In the late ‘90s, as Islands of Adventure and its embarrassment of characters inched ever closer, Universal Studios Florida made due. For every flash-in-the-pan like Earthworm Jim, there was a threadbare veteran like the sasquatch star of Harry and the Hendersons, still posing for pictures a full decade after his motion picture debut. It was as strange as the photo-op line-up ever got, made stranger by the see-what-sticks inclusion of the company’s latest successes.

When The Nutty Professor became the sixth highest-grossing movie of 1996, Universal brought Eddie Murphy’s character to the park. Professor Sherman Klump could often be found wandering outside the Horror Make-Up Show in sly reference to the film’s exhaustive make-up and prosthetic work that would soon after earn an Academy Award. Given the film’s PG-13 rating for “crude humor and sexual references,” Sherman may have the raunchiest source material of any Universal Studios Florida character, at least outside Halloween Horror Nights.

Perhaps for that reason, he didn’t last long. Even though the 2000 sequel did respectable numbers at the box office, the Nutty Professor never returned to Universal Studios Florida. He did stick around Universal Studios Hollywood a while longer.

Andy Panda

Andy Panda
Image: Universal

Disney has Mickey. Universal has Woody Woodpecker or, at least, had Woody Woodpecker. He’s still the de facto cartoon mascot of Universal Orlando, even if his presence has largely been relegated to the KidZone. When the park first opened, though, he was a bonafide star.

Gift shops stocked plush Woodys by the wall. He couldn’t cross the street without a knee-high entourage pleading for pictures. His beak graced everything from iron-on patches to pressed pennies.

It’s only fitting that his creator was the second animator in history to receive a special Academy Award for his work behind Walt Disney himself.

Walter Lantz got his first major job in animation at Universal, directing Disney’s toon-that-got-away, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. After a few years chafing under the studio system, Lantz founded his own independent operation. He still sold cartoons to Universal, but the characters now belonged to him. Though Woody would prove his most famous creation when introduced in 1940’s Knock Knock, Lantz had a full company of animated players to fall back on.

The brightest stars of the bunch became ancillary Universal Studios Florida ambassadors. Winnie Woodpecker and Chilly Willy got their own lines of merchandise. Andy Panda, Lantz’s oldest animal actor, was not so lucky.

He only appeared on souvenirs that called for the whole crew, as far away from center stage as possible. His walkaround character hung to the sides of early promotional photos. Not long after the park opened, he disappeared entirely.

Chilly Willy hasn’t strolled the Studios in a while, but his souvenirs still sell. Winnie, at least, returns for special occasions. It’s hard to say why Andy disappeared - might have something to do with the character’s early history of racist Black caricatures - but despite co-starring in Woody’s first cartoon and playing a part in the latest reimagining, he hasn’t been seen since.

Hercules & Xena

Hercules and Xena
Image: Universal

The first wave of changes to Universal Studios Florida’s cornerstone attractions came in 1996 with the closures of the Ghostbusters Spooktacular, Screen Test Home Video Adventure, and Murder, She Wrote Mystery Theatre. Time, as it tends to do, marched on. Seven years removed from its last movie and five from the cartoon, Ghostbusters was supplanted by the second-hottest ticket of 1996, Twister. The magic of blue screen technology wasn’t so magical anymore, losing its real estate to an elaborate preview for Islands of Adventure. With Murder, She Wrote airing its final episode that May, Universal wasted no time finding another small-screen replacement.

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its eclipsing spin-off Xena: Warrior Princess had already been on the air for two years when Hercules & Xena: Wizards of the Screen opened in 1997. It copied Mystery Theatre’s structure down to the Foley stage, breaking down the filmmaking process into easy and entertaining audience participation. It did get some upgrades in the transition, though - Angela Lansbury never had to act with a giant animatronic spider.

Most Universal visitors remember them for that show, but both characters had been dishing out autographs as early as 1996.

Wizards of the Screen was not long for the world. It closed in 2000, a year after Hercules ended and a year before Xena did the same. Some sources blame it on a lawsuit from stars Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lawless over unpaid syndication royalties, but that wasn’t filed until three years later. The real reason is likely more mundane.

As a Universal spokesman told the Orlando Sentinel in 1999, “It’s the kind of show you can change without the audience asking where it went.”

It’s a fitting eulogy not just to the show, but every other character on this list.

 
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Comments

I remember meeting Earthworm Jim - I was a HUGE fan of the game series and the cartoon as a kid and was surprised - but elated - to see him as a meet and greet back then!

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