On this week’s episode of Saturday Morning Cartoons, come with us and reminisce about the early 1980s, a time when we got cartoons about just about anything and everything, when Around the World in 80 Days, Tom Sawyer, and a few others were turned into dogs (and sometimes cats) stories. The focus of today is on one particular instance of this that spawned a few reboots and films: Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. Based on the book by Alexandre Dumas, Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), something that has also been adapted by Disney with Mickey in the lead. Here, D’Artagnan is our lead, as usual, and he is now known as Dogtanian, because why not!
So, what happened with this show? Well, it aired in 1981 and 1982, was translated around the world, and spawned a few reboots/films/passions. It’s a beloved cartoon to some and absolutely unknown to others. The most recent incarnation of this brave dogboy happened in 2021 when Apolo Films released a CGI feature film about him and his friends. Unfortunately, a lot of the charm was lost in the switch from hand-drawn cartoon to CGI, but that’s a common complaint.
While this was fairly popular in the US and around the world, it didn’t seem to catch on like some of our previous entries here (Scooby-Doo comes to mind), so only a limited number of episodes were made by BRB Internacional studios in collaboration with Nippon Animation. The look of the cartoon was definitely on the adorable side and the adventures were simplified enough for kids to follow, charming enough for parents to be able to watch without pulling their hair out, and each episode more or less ended on the solution to the day’s adventures. It was simple and cute which explained why it worked. It was easy to come in, watch a bit, and walk away. Knowledge of the source material not needed, but it would definitely lead to more than one kid looking for the book or more from the characters.
The original series had a total of 26 episodes, won some fairly prominent awards at the time, but it was not enough to keep it going beyond those 26 episodes. Thankfully, nostalgia has caught just about everyone during the pandemic and it’s seeing a bit of a resurgence with its feature film mentioned above. There is a bit of merchandise out there, some of it looking vintage and going for a solid price that indicates it had been kept in someone’s attic for decades. The newer bits of merch come from fan creatives on many online sites. There is definitely still a love for Dogtanian out there. The complete adventures of Dogtanian in an official release are currently in stock on disc in many spots online as well.