Your Daily Dracula – Count Fangula (Joe Hackett), Big Bad Beetleborgs/Beetleborgs Metallix (1996-98)
An unholy mish-mash of Japanese toy commercial and American monster kid sit-com, doled out in two seasons with different formats (and villains). In Season One, three brats in the American town of Charterville hang out with versions of the Universal monsters – Count Fangula, Mums, Frankenbeans and Wolfie Smith (no relation to the UK sit-com Citizen Smith) – and Flabber (Billy Forester), who is an unholy fusion of Beetle Juice amd Elvis. The kids hang out in a comic book store, have mild adventures, and barely register as characters – but have spells as Beetleborgs, armoured Power Rangers-type superheroes in footage from the Japanese series Juukou B-Fighter, fighting baddies called Magnavores. Season Two changes the powers and looks of the kids’ alter egos, because the footage is now from B-Fighter Kabuto and giant Transformer robots are involved. It’s weird splicing two basically different series together inot raucous, hectic episodes which tend to cram together a sit-com kid/monster plot and an ongoing alien/robot/giant threat punch-up. Produced by Saban, who shifted a ton of toys. Count Fangula is whiny, gaudily-outfitted and prone to feeble ‘fang floss’ jokes. And he’s got more character than the other monsters.
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