Additional Information about the TV Cartoon Bovin Caged

Rocket Robin Hood holds the distinction of being the first cartoon series based on the legendary English hero to appear on television.

In this series, a distant ancestor of Medieval England's Robin fought for justice in the year 3000 A.D. The younger Hood made his home on Sherwood Asteroid, had his own band of merry men (many with the same names as the old Robin's English cohorts) and continued the quest to rob from the rich and give to the poor.

Rocket Robin may have been a man of his technological age, jetting about in a custom rocket, but you wouldn't know it from his clothes. The new-fangled Robin kept the old-fangled Robin's retro sense of style, dressing in his trademarked green costume. He was even lucky enough to find a Maid Marian to impress with his swashbuckling skills, but also around was the dastardly Sheriff of N.O.T.T., who constantly tried to thwart Robin's do-gooder plans.

Paving the way for later animated adventures like Young Robin Hood and Robin Hoodnik, Rocket Robin Hood ran 52 original episodes in the late 60's, and it remains a popular syndicated draw in the cartoon's native Canada. Each show was made up of three five-minute segments.

Al Guest, an animator and former editor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Winnipeg, Manitoba, won the contract in 1966 to produce the Rocket Robin Hood series through his Toronto company, Trillium Productions. Guest worked in partnership with U.S.-based Krantz Films. When costs reached a "staggering" $18,000 per episode, Krantz sent famed American animator Ralph Bakshi to lead production in Toronto.

Bakshi decided to bring in Richard H. Thomas, then Warner Bros. top background illustrator, from Hollywood. However, Guest lacked sufficient funds to continue, so Rocket Robin Hood was filmed in New York. Backgrounds from Spider-Man, Krantz Films' major hit, were used to fill in episodes.

Paramount Pictures pulled its financial backing from producer-director James "Shamus" Culhane after this series was released.

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