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.
Duckman
The series consists of 70 episodes that aired on Saturday nights from 1994 to 1997 on the USA Network. In the United Kingdom it aired on Sky 1 and in Canada it is a former program on MTV2 and Teletoon. The initial showrunners were Peck, Reno and Osborn, and the show was produced in association with Paramount Network Television. The animation was produced by Klasky Csupo, and was the studio's second television series produced. In later years, the show running duties went to David Misch and Michael Markowitz. At the time the series was produced, Klasky Csupo also produced another animated series in 1994: "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" on Nickelodeon. Creator and executive producer Everett Peck was with the show for its entire run. Producer Gene Laufenberg was with the show for most of its run. Scott Wilk and Todd Yvega created original music for the series, including the theme. The first season also featured excerpts from Frank Zappa's published catalog.