On Saturday mornings in 1986, The Real Ghostbusters cartoon aired on ABC to the delight of an entire generation across the country.
What resulted over the next 7 years was one of the finest pieces of animated children’s media to come out of the 80’s. This high quality program was hugely creative, thoroughly entertaining and massively expansive to the Ghostbusters mythos. The variety of wild creatures and situations this iteration of the Ghostbusters went up against was singular, and the animation that brought them to life was top notch.
Like any good cartoon of the era, The Real Ghostbusters acted as 30 minute commercial for all manner of useless shit your parents didn’t want to buy you. The difference here was that this commercial was impeccably crafted and could stand on its own outside of any merchandise. It never felt like the product informed the art, like say with Transformers. The other difference? Real Ghostbusters shit is awesome, specifically the action figures and the wearable toys. If you don’t remember these things, never had any or are too young to fall into either category, do yourself a favor and Google that awesome shit.
One other piece of very rare merchandise attached to this show is the album presented here today, The Real Ghostbusters Soundtrack. Released in 1986, it features the in-show pop music from specific episodes from the show’s first season run. They’re all performed by two young girls Tonya Townsend and Tyren Perry, a duo known as Tahiti. Unfortunatley (for me at least) this appears to be the only thing Tahiti released. Tyren released a solo album in ’89, but Tonya didn’t
But none of that matters, because for one shinning moment, these two girls were the literal sound of a weird occult children’s cartoon based on a strange supernatural comedy about ghost fighting scientists in New York City and the whole damn thing is too goddamn 80’s to bear. I love every second.
A huge thank you and shout out is due to Paul Rudoff at Spook Central. I’m not sure if he’s the sole responsible party for this rare piece of media existing in the digital domain, but he’s been running Spook Central since 1996, and he’s certainly the reason I know about this album. So, my credit and my thanks land on him directly. I mean no ill will posting the playlist here, nor am I interested in diverting traffic away from his site. You can listen to all of this on Spook Central, or on several different YouTube accounts. It just seemed again like the kind of thing people should be able to listen to here, so now they can.
If you love The Real Ghostbusters and always wished there were full versions of these songs, I’ve got good news. If you just love the most 80’s of 80’s synth pop syngery, I’ve also got some good news.
Here it is, in all it’s glory, from straight heaters like Don’t Play Her Game, to the epic 80’s beauty of Hometown Hero, to Shindig Halloween solid gold like Midnight Action…it’s all here. Enjoy.
