Despite only lasting one 40-episode season, the late 90s animated series Extreme Ghostbusters, a follow-up to the widely popular The Real Ghostbusters, has gone on to garner a devoted following, not only prompting many fans to demand more adventures of Kylie, Eduardo, Roland, and Garrett but leaving some with unanswered questions surrounding the short-lived series.
Recently featuring a cosplay-centric Ghostbusters episode of The Ship-it Show podcast, co-host and voice of Kylie Griffin, Tara Strong, is back, leading an Extreme Ghostbusters reunion, being again joined by Greg Cipes and Miranda Parkin, but this time, welcoming special guests Jason Marsden, Billy West, Pat Musick, Maurice Lamarche, Rino Romano, and Dave Coulier.
While the entire near hour-long reunion is more than worth your time, with the podcast offering up an in-depth behind-the-scenes glimpse at the series, it was Marsden’s comments about the reasoning for the show’s cancellation that instantly caught our attention, with the actor saying:
“I was so jaded, thinking this is show friends, I keep forgetting that no, it’s show business. When I asked Audu Paden, our producer, “So, why’d you guys decide to do another Ghostbusters series?” He’s like, “To sell toys,” with Mardsen adding, “That’s all it was, and because the toys didn’t sell, despite all the amazing work everyone did, in front of the mic, and behind the mic, and the art department, and all the animators, it suffered.
Upon hearing the reason for cancellation, Strong, somewhat upset, responded:
“I never knew that was the reason it got canceled. Like, that’s so sad, and you know, they didn’t really put out a lot of toys, so what were they expecting? You know, usually, when you’re on a show that you know comes with a built-in fanbase, you do some dope-ass merch. There’s some kind of crappy toys, but there weren’t, like, amazing things, right?”
While on the topic of toys, Marsden spoke about his character, Garrett, who was one of the only leads not to receive an action figure, being told that it would be “insensitive to the children who were in wheelchairs.”
“And they were progressive with the show, having such diversity, and having Garrett in the wheelchair, but they wouldn’t make Garrett in a wheelchair as an action figure. What I was told, they thought it’d be insensitive to the children who were in wheelchairs. They went as far as to make, and I saw pictures of this, a prototype of Garrett with bionic legs. Talk about insensitive, that’s insensitive. And as a fan of the OG Real Ghostbusters, and who collected the toys, they didn’t really hold a candle to the original toys.”
If you happened to have missed the Ghostbusters cosplay-centric episode of The Ship-it Show, featuring special guests the S.O.S. Ghostbusters UK, the colander-wearing Jarrett Pressman, and Kylie Griffin cosplayer Emma Méligne, give it a watch below.
