Beverly Hills Teens

This show follows the incredibly rich and popular gilded gang known as the Beverly Hills Teens. There's the beautiful blue-eyed blonde bombshell Larke, her preppy boyfriend Troy, jealous and crazy Bianca, super-smart Chester, uptight and arrogant Pierce, the human doormat Wilshire, gossip-hungry Switchboard, the friendly southern belle Tara, beautiful equestrian Blaze, surfer-dude Radley, fun-loving and overly-dramatic Nikki, punk-rockers Jett and Gig, and the smart and confident Shannelle. It's fun loving Amercian teenagers facing typical teenage concerns...or so the summary on the back of the video tapes say. The plots were really about hanging out at the Teen Club, shopping on Rodeo Drive, surfing the waves in Malibu, having fun with your friends, and passing exams at high school. The cartoon is superbly 80*s and fun and entertaining to watch.

I thought this was a really entertaining cartoon. The colorful characters and the outrageous (but not silly) plots really made this cartoon into a success. I especially liked how Bianca tried to get a date with Troy, every opportunity she got!

I was hooked on this episode from the beginning. All the girls were drawn like babes, especially Lark and Bianca. This was probably meant to be a pre-school Archies, but a lot of teenagers watched this just to see the characters get into adventures too wierd to be true. The stories and ideas were far-fetched and the stereotypes of the spoiled rich kids were stretched thin, but the characters were the best ! Lark and Troy were the top All-American characters. Troy was constantly pursued by snobbish Bianca Dupree, who looked like a little sister of Archie's Veronica, and Lark was pursued by Pierce Thorndyke, the ego-centric Reggie Mantle to Troy's Archie.

Lark's friends were the Southern Belle Tara Southington, cow girl Blaze Summers, honor student Shanell Spenser and the worldly Nikki Darling. The series was rounded out by the rockers, Gig and Jet, huckster Radley Crown, Pierce's little sister Jillian and the annoying gossip Switchboard. The humor was always tongue in cheek, but the series was a very popular ride while it lasted. In the late Eighties, I thought a prime-time live action series was made of the show called Beverly Hills premiered, but that show obviously couldn't live up to the original concept.

This if for all rabid BHT fans: www.petitionsonline.com has a petition to put the entire series on DVD, COMPLETE WITH COMMERICAL BREAKERS WITH SWITCHBOARD! You can sign it there or link to it from www.toonarific.com, www.retrojunk.com, or www.dvdtalk.com. It's high time Shout! Factory and DIC Entertainment gave us what we want! Only a few episodes were officially released on VHS. Among these are "My Fair Wilshire", "Double Surfing Double Cross", "Casting Call", "The Makeover", "The Dog Ate My Homework", "Camp Camping", "Snow Carnival", "Chase of a Lifetime", "Robot Romance", "Down And Out At The Teen Club", "Radley Wipes Out", "Rampage", "From Rad To Worse", "Roughing It", and a few other early ones (I'm not sure which ones were on Buy Buy Babies; this list is for the remaining volumes: Beverly Hills Teens Vol. 1, The Rich Kids On The Block, Funny Money Mischief, Roughing It, The Makeover, The Dog Ate My Homework, Rampage, and From Rad To Worse). This leaves other ones, such as "McTech, P.I." out and strongly to be desired. I rediscovered the show last October and have been searching for this episode ever since. I've just got to know why Lark got arrested and how everything turned out! I was five when this one aired, but it bugged me since she was the proverbial girl next door. I could see Bianca getting arrested, but not Lark! I have a feeling Bianca had something to do with it, since she's always trying to get Troy from her. Anyway, the only way we'll know is when we can all see this episode. No matter how much it costs, I'll be first in line when it hits the stores. They've already got eleven signatures so far, and I hope the rest of you fans will spread the word and give Beverly Hills Teens a chance to shine again, like so many other eighties cartoons have lately. And even if you do have the VHS versions, it'd be great to have backups plus superb quality. I've never gotten tired of my old favorites; they just get better every time I see them. Let's let Shout! Factory, and especially the mother company, DIC Entertainment, know what we want right now!

It always amuses me that IMDB has references to some of the most obscure things from my past. I was just a 10 year old kid when this cartoon was on, but I recall watching it religiously during the summer. I loved the glamorous characters, especially Larke Tanner, who I felt was the "perfect" teenager. :) It was an amusing cartoon!