This is certainly something I'd never thought to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFFlvrrh8xM

Very jarring for someone like me who has seen this episode a bazillion
times over the decades.

On Wednesday, November 8, 2023 at 8:29:29 PM UTC-7, Travoltron wrote:

> This is certainly something I'd never thought to see.

Oh, wow. I always had a feeling that the origial audio track, at least, still existed somewhere, but I never thought the full episode was produced. (It's likely the animation was created with the Ted Schwatz soundtrack in mind, and then when Dick Gautier was brought in, he essentially had to do some lip-synching to math the finished animation.)

I'll say, though, that I don't like this alternate Rodimus voice. Not just that I'm not accustomed to it, but it's way too high pitched. He sounds like a child. And also... really, there were no other attempts to match the sound of the movie cast. Jack Angel didn't sound like Robert Stack, John Stephenson didn't sound like Lionel Stander, and Frank Welker definitely didn't sound anything like Leonard Nimoy. There was a very slight learning curve when it came to the voice performers in "Five Faces of Darkness" part 1, but after that, you don't really worry about the movie voices any longer.. Season three did its own thing.

In fact, given how often the toy commercials for the movie characters were playing in early 1986, which already established the TV show cast as the voices for the characters, it's the movie that "really" got it wrong. (And, now that I think about it, that's probably Ted Schwartz going "watch my smoke!" in the toy commercial for Hot Rod/Kup/Blurr, isn't it?)

The same YouTube account also has some (somewhat) clean Ninja Turtles cartoon music, so that's a bonus treat!

Zob (I think my daughter might be an actual pterodactyl)

I'm kind of surprised this isn't a bigger deal in the fandom. I guess
maybe most people never even knew Ted was the original voice.

The audio track to an episode of The Young Astronauts appeared on
YouTube recently. This should be HUGE news in the Lost Media community,
but nobody seems to care much. That show is like one of my personal holy
grails.

> Jack Angel didn't sound like Robert Stack
I seem to remember an interview where Jack said that his Ultra Magnus
was based on Robert Stack. I can kind of hear it. Probably the closest
one to the movie voices.

I think maybe it was already dawning on the Hasbro/Sunbow guys that
maybe having a "young, hip with the kids" Poochie kind of Autobot leader
might be a bad idea. Gautier brought a maturity and authority to the
role. Even though I think Dick and Ted were actually the same age.

Oh, wow. Thanks for giving us the heads up on this, because this is amazing.. I always figured that if it hadn't turned up yet then it no longer existed.

It's so hard to be objective--especially on what, half a dozen lines of dialogue?--but I think Dick Gautier is just a better actor. I haven't actually gone through and compared the versions directly, so maybe I'm misremembering (or maybe it's even Wally Burr deciding he wanted a different take), but Gautier had a much better deadpan delivery for humour and also more emotional nuance. But it's still really fun to hear a *young* sounding Rodimus and to let poor Ted Schwartz finally get his due.

> I seem to remember an interview where Jack said that his Ultra Magnus
> was based on Robert Stack. I can kind of hear it. Probably the closest
> one to the movie voices.

I saw something where he said he thought he got the job because he sounded the most like Robert Stack. So maybe you're misremembering a version of that answer or maybe he said both? I dunno... I always prefer the season 3 voices anyway, because that's what I've heard the most.

Velvet Glove (I'd be OK recasting Gautier for Hot Rod though. Shame we don't have a long lost Schwartz dub of The Rebirth.)