{"id":3631,"date":"2017-08-17T13:46:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T17:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bandsiusetalike.com\/biul\/?p=3631"},"modified":"2017-08-23T15:49:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T19:49:32","slug":"mad-doctors-of-the-late-20th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bandsiusetalike.com\/biul\/mad-doctors-of-the-late-20th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad Doctors of the Late 20th Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mad medicine was everywhere in the 80s and 90s. There were toys and playsets endorsed by mad doctors, for use by kids. Every time you watched cartoons, you saw a skinny dude with crazy hair in a white lab coat, maniacally mixing chemicals and potions for some nefarious purpose. Under the influence of this, I created my own mad medicine man; Dr. Kill-Everybody.<\/p>\n

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Dr. K (no hair), with Fronkin Steen and Psuto Moto.<\/p><\/div>\n

Either the trope became shopworn around 2001, or something happened that discouraged children from playing with chemicals. You don’t see mad doctors and scientists like you used to. Maybe this is a good thing; maybe the concept was subconsciously driving impressionable kids away from lucrative STEM-field careers. I don’t know.<\/p>\n

What I do know is this. Mad doctors once flourished in our society, even though they were annoying, and generally sucked.<\/p>\n

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DR. SCARAB (BIONIC SIX<\/em>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr. Scarab has the unfortunate honor of being the villain of a mediocre yet well-animated cartoon from 1987. The concept of “bionics” was already long in the tooth as far as TV was concerned, as was die-cast metal, the accompanying toyline’s gimmick. The action figures of the heroes (a bionically-enhanced family) and the badguys (your typical late-80s sci-fi weirdos) had cores of solid metal, with PVC appendages and heads. For the athletic Bennett family (and their trendy adopted black and Japanese sons, “IQ” and “Karate-1”), this wasn’t an issue as far as action figure weight and balance. But Dr. Scarab was very fat. Very, very fat.<\/p>\n

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I had this little monster. You can see in the above photo that the good doctor’s torso is painted metal. It was like a nugget of iron. You could seriously skull someone with this figure. Plus, whatever they made his extremities out of is insanely durable. He can barely stand up, but nothing breaks off in a fall. Not even his head, or that weird amulet over his stethoscope.<\/p>\n

…Why would he have a stethoscope? For appearances? As an indicator of his profession? Since his complexion is a sickly green, he probably has to telegraph his practice.<\/p>\n

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DR. ARKEVILLE (TRANSFORMERS<\/em>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a kid, I was convinced that this doctor’s surname was a phonetic pronunciation of “arch-evil”. I was surprised when I eventually saw the name in writing, much later; it looks Lovecraftian. Whatever the spelling, Dr. A made a deal with Starscream that ended about as well as they ever do, with Arkeville sporting new and immobile metal legs. Dr. Arkeville ranted in anger, sounding much like famed disc jockey Casey Kasem, before exiting the show more or less for good.<\/p>\n

You see, another villain emerged on\u00a0The Transformers<\/em>, by the name of Abdul Fakkadi. He was a sheik, and not a nice one, from the obviously not made-up Middle Eastern nation of “Carbombya”.<\/p>\n

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Listen, we had a\u00a0Rambo<\/em> cartoon around the same time.<\/p><\/div>\n

Casey Kasem enjoyed a long period of cartoon acting, wherein he voiced Shaggy from\u00a0Scooby-Doo<\/em>, and many roles in toy shows like\u00a0Transformers<\/em>, including Cliffjumper and Dr. Arkeville. He was also Druze Lebanese, and when he caught wind of the Carbombya material, he quit, depriving Cliff and the Doc of their speech for good.<\/p>\n

The circumstances regarding Mr. Kasem’s death, and the subsequent adventures of his mortal remains, would definitely have pleased Dr. Arkeville. Casey’s meltdown over a radio dedication is an enduring classic, and makes you wonder about his reaction when he first heard Abdul Fakkadi say “a thousand fleas on your mother’s camels”.<\/p>\n