Product Review

Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers (1989) was the Disney Studio's second weekday afternoon syndicated-cartoon show. Like its predecessor, Ducktales (1987), the series began with a two-hour movie. Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers to the Rescue was recut into the first episodes, which are not included in this set. Chip and Dale were originally pantomime characters who bedeviled Donald Duck and Pluto in two dozen short cartoons. Rescue Rangers recasts them as adventurers who solve mysteries and right wrongs. In addition to a voice, Chip gets a leather jacket and Indiana Jones-style fedora; Dale talks and sports a Hawaiian shirt. They're joined in their escapades by Monterey Jack, a large mouse with a prognathous jaw and a bad Crocodile Dundee accent; Gadget Hackwrench, the inevitable spunky girl/mouse; and Zipper, a housefly. The Rangers' adventures play like a mixture of Disney's The Rescuers and The Great Mouse Detective, with elements of Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? stirred in. Chip, Dale, and the other Rangers outwit criminal cats, mad scientists, and crooked mice. All of the farfetched stories seem to feature the same slapstick chases, Rube Goldberg contraptions, and villains getting their rear ends chomped. Disney purists objected to turning the classic characters of Chip an' Dale into something they'd never been, but Gen-Y kids liked Rescue Rangers, which ran for 65 episodes. (Unrated, suitable for age 7 and older: cartoon violence) --Charles Solomon