Can Anyone Spare a Lucky Dime? Anybody?

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Perhaps you knew, perhaps not, but there’s a DuckTales reboot. The original series ran from 1987 to 1990 and was definitely a kid’s show (I can attest to that, as I was one). The new iteration takes a different approach but includes some of the original dialogue! (“I made my name by being tougher than the tough and smarter than the smart.”)

Watch the first episode of DuckTales here. [Edit: It seems unavailable in the UK. If you find it, please let us know in the comments]

Huey, Dewey, and Louie are noticeably older, more like teenagers, despite their similar appearance. And Launchpad is now more of a surfer dude-cum-stoner rather than just the hapless fool he was in the previous iteration. There’s a great moment when Louie (the green one) is going through Scrooge’s “Wing of Mysteries,” aka his garage, and putting post-it notes on everything. When asked what he’s doing, he implies Scrooge is “super old” and so he’s claiming stuff. Having recently gone through an estate division for my grandmother and seeing siblings do this exact thing, this is the kind of humor that you know is going right over the heads of any children in the audience. And I’d wager most of it does. Modernizing by adding female characters is one thing. Modernizing by adding female characters who tie up their male counterparts at knife-point (and have dolls with arrows through them in their room) is another. Well played, Disney XD, well played.

When Disney aimed their nostalgia at my generation, I assumed, and I suspect I’m not alone, that they meant to inspire the original audience to share the show with their children. Instead, it seems they’ve designed it like Rick and Morty for the original audience, not their children. But as a bonus, if parents want to buy merchandise (toys, blankets, beach towels, sippy cups, etc.) designed for their kids, that’s fine too. Win-win.

Either way, nostalgia is a powerful force, and it’s great to see DuckTales back on TV, even though Scrooge’s voice sounds strange to my ears (there’s no repeat of the Transformers where Peter Cullen reprised his animated voice for the live-action films, as Alan Young, the original DuckTales Scrooge, passed away last year at the age of 96. David Tennant takes his place. You may know him from Jessica Jones, Broadchurch, or Doctor Who. But by the end of the episodes, it was fitting. Fun fact: Scrooge seems to have a gold cell phone, but it’s an early 2000s flip phone. So funny.

Definitely recommend checking out this reboot, along with the original (albeit updated) theme song.