Taking over the War on Drugs from Reigning Queen Nancy Reagan, is no easy task. But Barbara and George H.W. Bush pulled out all of the stops for Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. In light of the recent death of Saturday Morning Cartoons, let this post be a requiem. A snarky, nostalgia riddled requiem for the wistful charm of a more innocent time.
Your favorite cartoons are alive and well, living secretly in your home. They are the only witnesses to your drug-addicted brother robbing your piggy bank. You see, poor teenage Michael is addicted to marijuana, so the cartoons set out to help him kick the habit, while Winnie-the-Pooh stays behind to comfort Michael’s little sister and her crushed piggy bank of dreams.
They follow Michael to a cool teen hang out where his friends offer him some white rocks, and he almost takes them because MARIJUANA IS A GATEWAY DRUG and OMG PEER PRESSURE. But the cops bust the place and Michael runs away only to be corned by Bugs Bunny with a time machine in the alley.
You see, it all started two years ago when Michael was seriously peer pressured at the park to the point that he had to do drugs with his friends. That’s when he started to be haunted by a creepy ghost-death-cartoon, who is the proverbial monkey on his back but if the monkey was some sort of evil genie.
One day, Michael’s friends pressure him into giving them money for crack rock. He hesitates because that is “hard stuff,” so his friend runs away with his wallet, and Michael falls into the Ninja Turtle’s open manhole while chasing her. Michelangelo is only there for like two seconds as the token Ninja Turtle and quickly hands Michael off to the Muppet Babies, so that they can show him what drugs do to his brain.
This is the trippiest shit I have ever seen—way trippier than most surrealist films. Also, now I’m just thinking about things and like if we are in cartoon world and the cartoon all-stars are the rescuers, then why are the people drawn as cartoons too? Who are the cartoons and who are not the cartoons? ARE WE ALL JUST CARTOONS??
Oh thank God, it’s Huey, Dewy, and Louie. And now everyone is singing about how to say no to drugs. Woah sensory overload…I cannot even tell what they are saying. Miss Piggy just ninja kicked the camera and shattered the glass. And it was all a dream? What? Michael wakes up from a dream?!? Ugh, I am SO sick of the dream sequence! Wait, no. It could not have been a dream because A.L.F. just pulled Michael into the inside of a mirror. Oh man, I am so confused. Am I on drugs? It’s hurting my brain!
Aw man, now Michael’s little sister is being pressured by the scary ghost to do the drugs that she found in Michael’s room. He throws Pooh across the room when he tries to stop her from doing drugs. Then she’s all like “Woah, what is this stuff??” NO, if a creepy ethereal creature without any lower half to his body throws your Winnie-the-Pooh across the room, then you should no longer listen to anything he has to say or take anything from him!
Meanwhile, Michael is bouncing around inside the mirror, which is some kind of Carnival from Hell. At one point he is in Baby Piggy’s soda cup and she spits him out of her mouth…what? Also, at the carnival, Daffy Duck shows Michael his future, in which he becomes a drug-addled zombie. This scares him straight just in time to stop his little sister from doing drugs too.
Very Special Lesson: This really freaked me out. I think he was on something really scary. What the heck just happened?
The Very Special Blog 
OMG! Sorry for blowing up your blog but I’m just catching up on my reading. I didn’t realize you wrote about this, but weirdly one of my favorite podcasts We Hate Movies did an episode covering this cartoon special recently. It sounds hilarious. I need to check it out soon.
We Hate Movies?!? What is this? It sounds wonderful.
It’s the best! Download now! Lots of action movies but a good dose of conedies and thrillers. And omg they just did The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.
I am totally going to download! I only have 3 episodes left until I’m current with Serial and then I don’t know how I will go back to normal commuting. I’m so glad for the Thanksgiving holiday, so I can regroup.
Yep, like “Reefer Madness”, “Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue” was intended as an anti-drug warning but gets everything wrong and basically makes drugs look fun. Not even the most merciful person on Earth could forgive this travesty. I saw the special when it first aired and only understood that cartoon characters were saying “drugs are bad” (had I been a little older I probably would’ve had the hots for Michael’s sister). Having recently rewatched it, I reviewed it on IMDb and spent the whole review rebutting it.
Speaking of George Bush, the very same month that this piece of garbage aired, he sent a delegation to Iraq to affirm to Saddam Hussein that Baghdad would always have Washington’s backing.
I wrote my own version of CASTTR. In my version, characters like Elvira, Spock (Star Trek), Ash (The Evil Dead), and the Crypt Keeper (Tales from the Crypt) convince the son of evangelical Christians to reject religion and listen to science.