Goof Troop Review

It's really a wonder how many kinds of parents there are. There are responsible parents, nice parents, tough parents, abusive parents, neglectful parents, and even parents that are just plain delusional and ignorant to what truly needs to be done with their children. All of these have different effects on their children, which in the long run either prove to be insignificant with the right care and treatment or even greatly scarring enough to prevent the child or children from ever having a normal life. But then I smile in knowing that there's one sort of parent that may not be perfect, but he cares for his child and does his best to raise him on his own despite influence by others.

This one of a kind parent is none other than Goofy Goof of Disney fame.

Goofy the anthromorphic dog was created by Walt Disney in 1932. He's usually portrayed as the clumsy and less intelligent friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, though sometimes he's also portrayed as intelligent and creative in his own way. He even went through several names over the years, like Dippy Dawg, George Geef, G. G. Geef, James Boyd (probably the only unrelated name in the list) and Goofus D. Dawg. Over the years he's respectively been voiced by Pinto Colvig, George Johnson, and then to now by Bill Farmer. He's even the one guy who coined "gawrsh," "ahyuck," and even the popular—

Goofy: (randomly falling) Yaaaaaaa-hoo-hoo-hooey!!

That.

Aside from being with Mickey and Donald in their cartoons and having an important role in the popular Kingdom Hearts franchise, Goofy was more popular for his "How To…" shorts. Since Pinto left, Goofy was left without a voice and thus the "How To…" shorts were born. Usually these consisted of a narrator teaching one subject with Goofy demonstrating… and sometimes goofing off.

No pun intended.

After the "How To…" shorts, the 50s portrayed Goofy as the everyman dealing with everyday life's problems such as dieting, giving up smoking and even having to raise children. Here, Goofy was the least goofy and was portrayed as more intelligent.

No pun intended.

Then after appearing for several cameos since 1965, he finally got his own show in 1992. What's this show? The very thing you're about to see my opinion on: Goof Troop!

Goof Troop~!

Now since I gave you a bit of history on the Goof himself, here's a bit on the troop.

No pun intended.

The show was basically an animated series version of the 50s everyman shorts. However, instead of keeping with those shorts, they made Goofy his old gullible and clumsy self again while still keeping a heart of gold. The son actually has a name, Max Goof, and has a bit more personality than his older rambunctious child counterpart; he's also rather ambitious if not determined to get what he wants. Yet here, Max's origins are a bit of a mystery. Unlike the 50s shorts, we don't know who Max's mother is and we don't know what happened to cause Goofy to be a single parent. This is, of course, a question that many would want to ask, but not bother coming up with an answer. At least from what I've seen. I could be wrong.

I had a hypothesis for that, but I realized it wouldn't make sense.

So anyway we come to the first episode, which for some reason was aired as episode 33 but is chronologically the first episode, "Everything's Coming up Goofy." We begin with a nice little trailer out in the woods near a river lived in by Goofy, voiced by Bill Farmer, his son Max, voiced by the late Dana Hill, and their pet cat Waffles, voiced by Frank Welker. The two goofs have some fun with their lunch just as their mailman comes in to deliver a letter to Goofy. Goofy opens the letter and is overjoyed to find out that he got his advanced beginner's diploma and is awarded with the degree of WWD, Wigid Waffler Deluxe.

They have a degree for those?

In fact, Goofy is so overjoyed that he immediately starts packing up his things to move to Spoonerville, his old home town, where he says that he can finally get that job, whatever "that job" is. Max is a little upset that they're moving so suddenly, but Goofy reassures him that he'll make new friends, which we hear his old ones are trees (not as bad as Meg, fortunately), and he brightens up at the prospect of not having to fish in the sink anymore. And then Goofy continues to pack, mentioning that they'll even get to see his old school buddy, Pete.

Speaking of which, we then cut to Pete, this being Jim Cumming's premiere role as the character, playing with a model set of his dream home, complete with waterfall, beach, and resort.

Commercial Announcer: Get yours today!

After catching his pet dog Chainsaw, also voiced by Frank Welker, trying to get at his model set, he knocks the dog out and starts making plans with making his backyard into a live replica of his set, stretching as far as the house that's for sale next door, which he comments that it has to go for his dream resort to happen. But then his super-hot wife of a wife, Peg, voiced by April Winchell, catches him and asks if he's deluding himself again. Pete says that he needs his stuff to relax in before suffering from a high stress level, complete with super exaggerated movements and jitters. Peg, unimpressed, gives him a paper bag to breathe into.

I would bet with you that Pete's only trying to appeal to his wife, but later episodes make the invalidity of Pete's stress level breakdown debatable.

Peg then admits that the house Pete wishes to wreck has been hard to sell so she then tells him that if she can't find a taker by 9pm, Pete's free to do what he wants. Pete then starts conniving. Meanwhile, back at the trailer, Goofy and Max are finishing up loading their stuff in the moving truck and then set to leave in their own truck… where we then find out the woods and lake were actually just part of a large tarp and they were really living in some industrial city…

Exactly how did they survive in that place?

Back again in Spoonerville, Peg is showing a couple around the house who say they'll take it if the upstairs is as good as the downstairs. Yet while Peg is off getting the paperwork, Pete then starts putting his plan into action by scaring the wife with a fake spider and getting the husband to call off the deal by convincing him that the house was on top of an earthquake vault. Of course, it was really just vibrating tape attached to the supports under the house, yet it succeeds in scaring the couple away. Back with the Goofs, they demonstrate Goofy's "marvelous" driving skills before they manage to find Spoonerville just down the hill. That's when Goofy decides to call Pete on a payphone. How does Pete react to Goofy calling him after such a long time?

Pete: (hearing the ahyuck) Oh shit.

Just imagine him thinking that with those puckered lips. It's fitting.

So of course, Pete isn't all that eager for Goofy to come down to Spoonerville, so he gives the goof the wrong directions knowing full well of his gullibility… just as their truck ends up sliding down the hill anyway. Goofy and Max then chase their truck down the narrow twists and turns of the road while losing most of their stuff only to end up falling into their truck again. They end up being carried along by a train, fall down a cliff, and conveniently manage to zip right into Spoonerville before Goofy realizes the wheel isn't even attached and manages to break the breaks just in time to save their lives… only to scratch a bit of Pete's luxurious boat. The noise ends up catching the attention of Peg, her and Pete's son PJ, voiced by Rob Paulson, and daughter Pistol, voiced by Nancy Cartwright, and the two families then meet. Now, is it just me or is Peg a little too excited about meeting Goofy ever since high school?

Anyway, Pete, unaware of his new guests, drives off to the house in the steamroller he ordered along with the sets for his actual dream backyard and is actually about to get to work… up until he notices the scratch on his boat and gets another mental breakdown, especially when he finds out who his guest is.

Honestly, I love it when Pete has those mental breakdowns. Easily the best part of the show.

This then leads to his accidental destruction of his own boat, the destruction of his materials, and him being flushed down the sewer. He ends up recovering back at the house only to suffer ANOTHER breakdown when Peg reveals that not only is Goofy staying with them for dinner, he's also staying with them until their furniture arrives because they JUST moved into the house right next door!

Pete: (singing into a microphone) Why me?
Why me?
Tell me what was my crime?
Why me?
Why me?
A simple answer would be fine!
Won't someone please send me a sign!?
What did I do to deserve this?
Honestly!
This goof of mine,
Is asinine,
Why me??

And to further embarrass Pete, Goofy then shows the kids a couple of high school photos with Goofy on the same cheerleading team as Peg while Pete the quarterback was going to catch the ball… only for the goof to sock him in the face with his foot by accident. Pete just sits there at the dinner table, steaming, and in his anger starts beating on the table with his steak. Then come night time and everybody's getting to bed, Max and PJ then start building their friendship as Max shows PJ how to have fun while finding a loophole in what Pete forbade PJ from doing to do so. Then all heck breaks loose with a tank and suction cups. It makes sense in context.

And so, everyone is now sleeping… well, except for Pete who ends up getting another mental breakdown thanks to Goofy and speeds off to where the moving truck is, where he somehow knew it would be, and takes the wheel himself and drives it back down to the house, gets the stuff into the house, gets Goofy and Max and Waffles into the house, runs back to his own house and nails down the front door and zips back to bed, all in under a minute. He manages to breathe with his back again before realizing that not only has he got them out of his house, he can make plans for tomorrow to get them out of their house and move away from him! With this in mind, he finally manages to get back to sleep… only for Goofy's construction work to wake him up.

He would try getting them out of their house for the next episode and the episode after that only to give up trying to kick them out for the rest of the series.

Ahyuck!

Need I really say what's good? I mean, for one, you got freakin' Goofy, the king of klutzes! This guy makes every sort of blunder that happens around him funny, and since you know it's Goofy we're talking about, everyone survives despite all the implausible injuries! No matter how lethal the injury should be, there's always a possibility that they end up recovering in the funniest of ways. Even when covered in body casts.

Goofy: making injuries funny since 1932.

Second, there's Max. He's that one kid you often see in the 90s: loves to skateboard, comes up with schemes that could end up being potentially dangerous to his friend, when something bad happens he'll think of ways to avoid getting in trouble instead of telling his father; the whole 90s boy cliché. However, what differentiates Max from other 90s boys is the fact that he isn't "suffering" under the thumb of a father that he believes doesn't understand him. His father is Goofy Goof! He never truly thinks of rebellion, doesn't do anything against his father out of spite, he even sees his father as a cool guy sometimes. The most that he does that could be considered being against his father associating with him would be so he could avoid getting embarrassed. Don't get him wrong, he loves his dad, but like most kids his age in the 90s, self-image is a big thing in school and friends.

Pete just strikes it rich as the main antagonist. Even with the limits they put on him, going from just the villain that would antagonize the hero with schemes to the neighbor that would scheme in order to get his annoying neighbors to move away, they still manage to make Pete a really entertaining character. Whenever Pete has one of his stress attacks or even just loses his mind in the process is very hilarious, like at the end of the episode when Goofy finally finds his mortgage money after it was being moved from hiding place to hiding place by several people unintentionally. However, I also think Pete is a stronger character by not being a straight up villain. Sure, he does place his own needs and desires in front of his family's priorities at times and even covers them up with lies to save face, but when it's the prospect of losing them coming to his mind, he shows that he truly loves his family and will do anything for their sake; he was practically on a high speed chase throughout Spoonerville to help PJ because he thought his boy was incredibly sick! Pete can be a jerk, but he does show that he can be a caring father and husband... no matter how rare those moments are. Those REALLY rare moments.

For some reason fanfics portray Pete as an abusive spawn of Satan. Dunno why, I mean, Peg keeps him in line most of the time. Guess some just don't like the fact he's married to a hot babe.

Speaking of said hot babe, there's Peg. She's nice, she's capable, she knows what she's doing, she's hilarious, she's endowed in more ways than one, she and Goofy get along great… and yet she married Pete. And she had his kids. And she's now the one who has to keep him in line. And she has a job as a real estate agent… Well, at least the job worked in her favor.

Seriously though, they do explain how she and Pete managed to fall in love. It's pretty touching as she recounts that Pete went all out in getting things to impress her while risking his own life to get them and it again shows that this Pete isn't necessarily a bad man, it just takes a lot for him to realize/remember what he already has. Yet one wonders what happened to their relationship after the show ended. Maybe they got a divorce and Peg took Pistol with her when she left.

The world may never know.

And to wrap up the cast, there's P.J., or Pete Junior if you want to get technical. Due to his not-so-grand relationship with his father, P.J. is a tad timid, not as assertive, and is a pretty nice guy in general. But thanks to Max becoming his friend, he shows that he's more outgoing, more self-reliant, and more sociable than what he thinks. He even manages to snag a one-time gal during an admittedly predictable school dance episode. Last I remember seeing him actually getting a girl was in An Extremely Goofy Movie and he was in college!

Other than our six main characters, the rest are basically just one-shot characters, like Max's cousin Debbie, or they don't appear often, like another antagonist called Leech. The only people I do remember appearing more than the others were two bumbling crooks that are apparently on the top of the most wanted list, Spud and Wally. I suppose you could call them the main villains, but then you'd really have to say they are and… they're more or less just an obstacle to overcome in a few episodes. They appear out of nowhere or due to sheer convenience, and go out of their way to antagonize our main leads or actually trick one of them, Pete, into letting them do what they want despite the obvious things they're doing.

I suppose what really redeems some of these episode-only characters are their own interactions with the goof himself.

No pun intended.

Seriously though, when it comes to them together with Goofy, it's so funny. I mean really, in one episode, Goofy was applying for a job as a janitor but a mix-up with Goofy's application and Max's science homework ends up getting Goofy a job in NASA as a fellow rocket scientist. However, Goofy STILL thinks that he got the job as a janitor and NONE of the people there ever realize that Goofy is thinking like a janitor and they interpret ALL his actions, from wiping a board clean of all their plans made on it, cleaning up a large construction room, and taking care of a test monkey as starting everything over, firing all the employees in said room, and teaching the monkey how to be a space pilot. Really now, it's like these people are even more gullible than the goof! Probably even more goofy!

N-- …Actually yeah, pun totally intended. Everyone's a goof in this show!

Pete: (screaming) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

Yeah, even him.

Anyway, moving on from characters, the animation on this show was indeed very good, much like other Disney animated series during the early 90s, although I'm pretty certain the budget changed in certain episodes. Although one thing that I would've wanted to see in the animation is… well, how to describe it. It has to do with Peg. I found it on TVTropes. The particular trope was named after an anime studio… Yeah.

Moving on.

Gawrsh…

Now, moving on to what's not so good about the show, you're probably wondering why I didn't include Pistol with the characters in the good section. Well, when it comes down to it, and people may still ask why, I didn't see Pistol as interesting. In fact, she was rather bland from what I saw. She was energetic, she often jumped about, and she talked very fast, but there was also that moment when she was able to fly a plane. Even then, she was more… typical when it came to the rest of the characters. Even with that one extraordinary talent, she didn't have that special a role except in one Goofy History episode.

Speaking of which, these Goofy History episodes, while not bad, have this sort of theme that made me roll my eyes at how corny they were. They usually opened with Max raring to go outside and do something of his own interest while Goofy advises him about something important and Max doesn't listen at first, thus resulting in Goofy going for the old family album, which Max dreads for some reason. And throughout the episode, there would sometimes be cuts away from the story to show Goofy telling Max about it and then cutting back. It would also end with Goofy summing up his advice to Max, who most likely didn't listen, and Max would finally get to leave while assuring his dad he will be good. That's the formula for all five Goofy History episodes. Nothing more, nothing less. You think that Max would at least have gotten used to his father getting the family album or, for laughs, Goofy would end up getting Pete's family to listen to one of the stories too to liven it up a little.

Also, the line between fantasy and reality is a bit thin in this show and rather vague. Yes, yes, we've seen magic used as an element in Disney cartoons like Ducktales, Chip & Dale, Gummi Bears, and Darkwing Duck, but those had more adventure inserted in them. Goof Troop was more of a character driven show about two families and the fathers' relationships to their sons. That's by no means a bad thing, good gracious no, but there are times when these supernatural elements feel out of place in a show like this.

In the sixth episode, Max and P.J. watch a horror movie and end up paranoid that a killer is around, thus Pete, being the jerk he is in this show, decides to play with their fears and pretends to be the killer, scaring them at every turn up until Peg finally unmasks him in front of the two. That's understandable since there wasn't any killer from a horror flick come to life, it was just Pete in a costume. However, come episode 30, the actual Halloween episode, ghosts apparently do exist as they, the ghosts of three musicians, have been haunting a mansion, that Pete wishes to make into a hotel, because they died there before they could have an actual gig. So of course after Max and P.J. find out about this, they help the musicians pass on by having the ghosts do a gig for them and their families. Again a good episode, but it's just the first sign of the flaw that is the aforementioned line.

Later signs show in episode 33, as the main villain is actually an honest businessman that somehow got turned into a corrupt waste dumping company CEO that was completely made out of sludge, gunk, and filth; episode 37 shows that one of Goofy's ancestors is actually Frankengoof, a goof version of Dr. Frankenstein complete with monster that looks like Pete; episode 50 ends up having Goofy and Pete victims of a female Bigfoot; episode 52 has Pete become a fly after somehow being zapped into a computer and out again; episode 69 has Max hatch a baby dragon while Goofy ends up coming in later with the mama dragon, and episode 73 has Max using a magic hat to have him perform magic. Is any of this explained? Well, the businessman explains how he became a monster, but that's pretty vague too and it makes you wonder if it's a proper explanation or if it's just shoehorned in.

Is that how you spell "shoehorned?"

Besides the line, what this series suffers from is inconsistency. You may not exactly notice it at first, but then you'd also notice a few things. For one, like I said before, there are times when the animation looks like it had a change in budget and the characters would look and move different than they had before. Another thing is Pete's fear of heights; when up really high, both Pete and P.J. get really nervous when it comes to being too high in the air, which is apparently an inherited trait on Pete's side of the family, but there's one episode when Pete accidentally got a mechanical band that always plays a song that traumatized him in his youth and he attempts several times to get rid of them, one of those being dropping the instruments from a plane way up in the air, both sides are open, and Pete isn't the least bit scared, and another when Pete attempts to interfere with his wife's window cleaning job and accidentally pops a hot air balloon she was in also without fear up until they start falling. Not to mention, other than the football incident, we find out in another episode that Goofy and Pete were bad at baseball but apparently good at their first time at tennis in yet another episode. While I can probably excuse the sports plot hole since it wasn't explained in great detail, I can't think of anything that would excuse Pete's fear of heights being abandoned after they used it a few times before that instrument episode and used again after.

The only other small nitpick I can say is that the Goof Troop Christmas Special, or Have Yourself a Goofy Little Christmas, doesn't seem that much of a Christmas special and is just more of a gimmick to end the series. Other than that, that's all the bad stuff.

Aw, shucks~

So there you go. Goof Troop. With plot holes noticeable, inconsistencies abundant, and even a fragile line between fantasy and reality, this show was still great with its characters, its splendid animation, and laughs in every part of the episodes. This is definitely a classic cartoon that should be revisited sometime soon. You can find most of the series on Youtube!

…And yes, this review was mostly because I watched the Game Grumps Let's Play of the Goof Troop game.

Hey I'm Grump!
I'm not so Grump!
And we're the Game Grumps!

Happy Day of the Dead everybody.