In the late '80s, there was a crop of new shows that took classic characters and dumbed them down for a younger audience. "The New Archies," "The Flintstone Kids" and "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" were all moderately successful, so creators decided to take the popular Slimer character out of his element and create a new show for the kiddies with the ghost as star. That in itself wasn't the problem with this series -- if it had been a syndicated weekday morning show aimed at a preschool audience, it has the potential to have been quite successful. The problem is it was paired with episodes of "The Real Ghostbusters" once a week on Saturday mornings as an hourlong series titled "Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters." The audience watching the cleverly-written series when it began two years later were growing up, and it was a very disconcerting thing to suddenly see their favorite characters drastically dumbed down.
In the 12 1/2 episodes of "Slimer," Janine and the Ghostbusters are secondary background characters in Slimer's adventures. Everyone's character design is drastically different and there's a 1940s cartoony American animation feel to them, as opposed to the more popular "Real Ghostbusters" show, which was very Anime in design. Good reason for that too, it was cheaply and quickly animated in the USA.
The show introduced other people Slimer interacted with while the Ghostbusters were off on missions -- most of whom were villains. Professor Dweeb was a bespectacled mad scientist who stalked Slimer along with his pink poodle sidekick Elizabeth. Manx the cat (who had a long tail) and Bruiser the dog were constant comic foils. Gargoyle-looking, mobster demons Goolem and Ziggy were always on the hunt for Slimer, whom they felt had wronged them. Slimer sometimes hung out at The Hotel Sedgewick, run by crotchety, dignified manager Grout; and Bud was a stoner, surfer-dude type who worked as a bellboy at the hotel. Fred was a little Scottie dog who sometimes accompanied Slimer on adventures; and Chilly was a sweet black lady who drove an ice cream truck. The Junior Ghostbusters, who originated in the earlier series, also made a few appearances.
The gags were juvenile in nature, hearkening back to Bugs Bunny and the early days of Hanna-Barnera, when stories/jokes were simple and characters could be blown up or flattened and bounce back to their normal shape a moment later. Unfortunately, network meddling is obvious, as all of the jokes are insipidly tame. 33 segments were produced, ranging from 7 to 14 minutes in length, and the final half hour was rounded out with a retitled segment from an earlier episode.
The episodes are separated on the final two discs of "The Real Ghostbusters" complete DVD set. It hasn't aged as well as episodes of the other series, either in content or visuals. The prints are very scratchy and some are dubbed from a slightly worn video source. As for the content, the show is very cutesy, simple and it just doesn't have enough weight or non-visual humor to it to hold the attention of older viewers. It's fairly mindless entertainment, and the crew wasn't allowed to push the envelope as much as on "Tiny Toon Adventures," which many crew members subsequently worked on. "Slimer" quickly vanished into oblivion, though Professor Dweeb made a few additional appearances on "The Real Ghostbusters" and NOW Comics released 20 issues of a tie-in comic book series before the company filed for bankruptcy in 1990.
