DuckTales
Walt Disney Television Animation began production on "DuckTales" in 1986, with the intention of having it ready for a premiere in 1987, and its episodes airing within a 4-6 p.m. placement, at a time when more children would be watching television, rather than within a morning timeslot. Seeking to create a cartoon with high quality animation, in comparison with other 1980s cartoons which had much lower budgets, the animation was handled by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, having previously been used on two other Disney cartoons in 1985 – "The Wuzzles" and "Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears" – both of which had demonstrated better quality cartoons on TV than in previous years. Although the Japanese provided them with more available artists for the cartoon, this also increased production costs, due to the currency exchange rates between the yen and the dollar, though Disney intended to invest heavily in its "DuckTales"s production, with plans to recuperate its money by having it syndicated via its syndication unit, Buena Vista Television, with a 2.5/3.5 syndicator/station ad split. While this was a concept that worked well with live-action TV reruns, it had only ever been used with inexpensive cartoon series in the past that either recycled theatrical shorts from decades past or only featured limited, low-budget animation, and thus had never been attempted with a high quality animated series, with the heavy investment considered a risky move.
Darkwing Duck
Though originally believed by some fans to be a spin-off of the 1987 "DuckTales" series, creator Tad Stones stated in a 2016 report that he believes the two shows exist in different universes, despite "DuckTales" supporting character Launchpad McQuack appearing on the series in a similar role to that the character plays in "DuckTales", and the fact that Scrooge McDuck, the main character of "DuckTales", is mentioned in "Darkwing Duck" episode "Tiff of the Titans". Additionally, the 2011 comic series "DuckTales" makes reference to Darkwing Duck and features various villains from the series. A crossover between the "Darkwing Duck" comic series and the "DuckTales" comic series occurs respectively in the seventeenth and eighteenth issues and the fifth and sixth issues of the series.