Danger Rangers


Danger Rangers is an American animated television series that aired on PBS Kids from September 5, 2005 to December 26, 2006 for 16 episodes.

Premise

The Danger Rangers are a team of anthropomorphic animal heroes who protect the youth of the world and teach the children a thing or two about safety through example in the process, such as environmental hazards and unsafe places. Together, they operate out of their base located inside Mount Rushmore, ready to save the day whenever they're needed.
Episodes usually involve either children getting themselves in jeopardizing danger from their own mistakes, necessitating the Rangers saving them and teaching them about making smart choices in the future, or the actions of misguided antagonists intentionally putting as many children at serious risk of danger and harm at possible, requiring the Rangers stopping them. Each episode contains a music video or two featuring the characters themed to whatever safety topic said episode is discussing. At the end of each episode, a mini-segment plays that recaps the lessons learned from the events of that particular episode.

Characters

  • Sully is a blue sea lion. He is the leader and spokesanimal of the Danger Rangers. He has a mild ego and cares a lot about his appearance, but also takes his duties as leader seriously and competently.
  • Kitty is a pink cat. She is the intelligent, cool and adventurous second-in-command of the group. She is also helpful and resourceful, and strongly believes in playing fair.
  • Burble is a large polar bear. He is the strong and humorous recreational safety expert. He is also the group's "gentle giant" and prefers to play both fair and safe.
  • Squeeky is a navy blue mouse. He is a snarky, wisecracking smart-mouth, and small, yet very valuable to the Danger Rangers. With his size, he can fix any problem which otherwise proves to be too small for the others to handle.
  • Burt is a green turtle and the brains of the group. He is the team's creative personal safety expert. As the team's inventor, Burt always comes up with inventions, including Fallbot, that help the Danger Rangers in their missions.
  • Gabriella "GB" is a red hummingbird. She is the operations chief and head safety trainer. While the other members go out on the field during a mission, she usually acts as mission control, staying back at headquarters as a supervisor.
  • Fallbot is a blue-and-yellow robot who was invented by Burt and wants to learn about safety. He is very clumsy, goofy and accident-prone, but an ally of the Danger Rangers nonetheless.
  • SAVO is the supercomputer and artificial intelligence of the Danger Rangers' base who alerts them of any troubling safety disturbances. He also has somewhat of a flair for the dramatic. His name is an acronym for "Safety Alert Vectometer".
  • Junior Danger Rangers are various children who help and work along with the Danger Rangers.

    Cast

Main

Books

  • Street Smarts
  • Poison Patrol
  • Blazin' Hot
  • Cool by the Pool
  • Free Wheelin'
  • Danger Alert
  • Attack of the Achoos
  • Camping Caper
  • ''Adventure Island''

    Production

Douglas Smith and Michael Moore hired ProMedia of Knoxville, TN to develop a low-fidelity prototype that was used to conceptualize the aspirational goal of the animation. Chris West, an employee of ProMedia, was a valued contributing member of their team and was instrumental in developing the original prototype. After raising the necessary capital to produce the pilot episode, "Mission 547: Safety Rules", Smith and Moore traveled to Los Angeles where Jerry Houser, Larry Huber, Ginny McSwain, Howard Kazanjian and Ilie Agopian brought the pilot to life.
The first episode was completed in 2003. The show was created for the cause of children's safety and was the first show to successfully put Disney-quality productions into a quality curriculum. Danger Rangers was the most successfully distributed independent show on PBS affiliates.

Broadcast

The series originally aired on PBS Kids under the American Public Television brand from 2005 to 2006. Reruns were distributed by Cookie Jar Entertainment and aired on CBS as part of Cookie Jar TV from September 2011 to September 2012, however, they were edited for commercial television purposes, which included having the epilogues of the episodes cut, resulting in showing 14 out of the 16 episodes only on that network.

Business dealings and lawsuit

Educational Adventures built distribution through grassroots efforts and deals with Virgin Atlantic and Safe Kids Worldwide. The assets of the company were eventually lost in a lawsuit after the liquidation of the company. This left Mike D. Moore to seek to regain control and restart the show.