Mission: Magic

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Mission: Magic was an animated cartoon starring pop singer and musician Rick Springfield. It was produced by Filmation, and was a spin off of the television show, The Brady Kids. Although only 13 episodes ever produced, it aired on the US television network ABC weekly on the Saturday morning lineup from from 1973 through 1975. It was also shown on Australian television.

Springfield, at that time, still spoke and sang with an Australian accent. He portrays an animated version of himself on the show, and on each show he always wore white with a letter "r" in the middle of his pullover sweater. He is joined by a cast of animated fictitious characters: Miss Tickle, a mild-mannered teacher, and six teenaged students. They were involved in an after-school group called “The Adventurer’s Club.” The names of the teens were: Vinnie, Socks, Harvey, Franklin, Carol and Kim. They were accompanied on their adventures by Miss Tickle’s familiar; a cat named Tut Tut, and Springfield’s pet owl, Tolamy. Although there were never any overt indications of a romantic relationship between the cartoon's primary adult characters, it should be noted that the choice of pets are an allusion to the 19th Century nonsense children’s poem, The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear. Many of the shows episodes had tie in with various works of classic children's literature, and often included famous quotations from characters in history.

Although Mission:Magic was primarily intended to be a vehicle to promote Springfield's career as a teen idol, the cartoon itself also shares some characteristics similar to a popular PBS 1990s children's television series, The Magic School Bus. Both shows featured teachers who were redheads and who possessed magical powers, and each set of students came from a diversity of ethnic backgrounds. The themes of both shows were two fold: entertainment and educational. On each weekly episode, the group would go off on a variety of adventures, transcending both time and space, by use of magical means.

In Mission Magic, each adventure began by way of a magic door drawn by Miss Tickle on a chalkboard. Miss Tickle would then pick up a ceramic cat, point it to the blackboard and sing the incantation "O Tut Tut cat of ancient lore, 'tis time to draw the magic door." Once on the other side of the chalkboard, the teacher and students would meet up with Springfield, Tut Tut and Tolamy, and then go on to travel to mythical lands and throughout various centuries to solve a variety of issues encountered on those adventures. At the end of each show, there would be a song performed by Springfield, the theme usually tied into the moral of the story. Springfield had written and performed all of the songs on the program. A album with all of the songs entitled “Mission Magic” was released in 1974. A CD version was released in 2004.