Achille Talon

In the 1980s and 90s following the success of animated adaptations of Franco-Belgian comics such as The Smurfs and Tintin, there were several other attempts to adapt these comics which were virtually unknown outside of Europe for the American "Saturday morning and sugar cereal" crowd among them included Disney's Marsupilami, which was more or less the character in name only.

This show was adapted from a comic called "Achille Talon" created by Michel "Greg" Regnier and first published in "Pilote" (who also gave the world Asterix, among many others) which revolved around a Homer Simpson/Peter Griffin "anti-hero" character and his wacky misadventures in everyday life.

This animation adaptation takes the character and places him in the ultimate dream scenario of almost every preteen boy: "What if you had the chance to take the place of one of your favorite heroes for a day and save the day in their place, like say Luke Skywalker, Captain Kirk, Superman, James Bond, one of the Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers?"

"Hero for Hire" Melon's job was to do just that, occasionally with the help of his sidekick/assistant, Bitterbug.

The series had an interesting concept, but the animation and the writing was never that great and the jokes were not very funny.

The second season scrapped the idea of him taking the place of fictional characters and had him becoming historical figures like Christopher Columbus, Thomas Edison, Neil Armstrong instead in an attempt to be more "educational". The writing and animation, which was never really that great, just suffered. The Lewis and Clark episode is pretty cringe- worthy, especially how they portrayed Sacajawea and Seaman the dog.

Overall, interesting idea could have worked better, if they put more effort into it.