Captain Planet and the Planeteers

Captain Planet and the Planeteers, commonly referred to as simply Captain Planet, is an American animated environmentalist superhero television series created by Barbara Pyle and Ted Turner and developed by Pyle, Nicholas Boxer, Thom Beers, Andy Heyward, Robby London, Bob Forward, and Cassandra Schafausen. The series was produced by Turner Program Services and DIC Enterprises and broadcast on TBS and in syndication from September 15, 1990, to December 5, 1992.
A sequel series, The New Adventures of Captain Planet, was produced by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc., distributed by Turner Program Services and broadcast from September 11, 1993, to May 11, 1996. The series was later rerun on Kids' WB!, Cartoon Network and Boomerang. It is currently on the MeTV Toons schedule. The series is a form of edutainment that advocates for environmentalism and is known for having several famous actors voice the villains. It spawned a franchise consisting of eco-friendly toys, comic books, video games, and a public charity to further promote its work.
Each episode is followed by at least one "Planeteer Alert" clip, often connected to the plot, which discusses environmental-political and social-political issues and how the viewer can contribute and be part of "the solution" rather than "the pollution".
Gaia (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg in seasons 1–3, Margot Kidder in seasons 4–6) is the spirit of Earth, whose physical manifestation is that of a dark-skinned woman. She sends five magic rings to five chosen youths from around the world. Four of the rings have the power to control an element of nature (earth, fire, wind, and water), and one controls the element of Heart. Gaia claims to have been asleep throughout the 20th century and to have awakened to a more polluted world than when she was last awake; however, this is contradicted by a flashback episode set in the 1920s in which people receive guidance from her.
In situations that the Planeteers cannot resolve alone, they can combine their planetary powers to summon the titular Captain Planet (voiced by David Coburn), who is Ma-Ti's magnified heart power in the form of a male superhero avatar with blue skin and green hair. He possesses the Planeteers' amplified powers, along with typical superhero powers such as flight and superhuman strength. Once his work is done, Captain Planet returns to the planet and leaves viewers with the message: "The power is yours!" While he usually manifests to deal with a crisis before leaving, some episodes explore him existing beyond this. For example, in the episode "Greenhouse Planet", he is summoned while Kwame and Ma-Ti are in space, preventing the energy from their rings from returning to its source and depowering him to a human level. Captain Planet's weaknesses are pollution and smog. When he comes in contact with pollution and smog, his powers are weakened and he has to return to the earth to recover.
The Planeteers are a group chosen by Gaia to protect the planet from environmental disasters and to educate humanity to prevent further disasters. Gaia uses her "Planet Vision" in the Crystal Chamber to discover where destruction is occurring, which is usually caused by the Eco-Villains, and sends the Planeteers to help solve the problem. The Planeteers use solar-powered transportation, usually the Geo-Cruiser, to avoid causing pollution themselves.
The Eco-Villains are a group of antagonists, each representing a particular way of thinking that can cause ecological problems. They endanger the planet through pollution, deforestation, poaching, and other activities that harm the environment in order to gain wealth, land, or power. While they usually work alone, they are willing to work together when it suits their plans. The only time they work as a team is in "Summit to Save Earth", where they are led by Zarm.
Captain Pollution (voiced by David Coburn) is an evil counterpart to Captain Planet who appears in the two-part episode "Mission to Save Earth". Dr. Blight steals the Planeteers' rings and creates polluting duplicates of them with the opposite power of the Planeteers, which she gives to most of the Eco-Villains.
Captain Pollution resembles Captain Planet, but has pale yellow skin covered with brown lesions and red hair and eyes, and wears a costume similar to his, except that the globe on his chest is torn in the middle. Captain Pollution is Captain Planet's polar opposite in personality, as he is arrogant and sees himself as a god and his creators as servants rather than partners, which Captain Planet says is his downfall. Captain Pollution is weakened by contact with pure elements, such as clean water or sunlight, and gains power from contact with pollutants, being able to absorb pollutants and emit radioactive rays. When he is summoned, he says "By your polluting powers combined, I am Captain Pollution!!", and when he disappears, he states "The polluting power is yours!"
In his first appearance, he is sent by the Eco-Villains to destroy the Planeteers, but is chased off by Commander Clash, and after a fight with Captain Planet, he returns to the evil rings, causing them to explode. In "A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste", he is brought back to life by the toxins of the five evil rings, which seep into the planet, but is defeated again and destroyed by Captain Planet.
According to Barbara Pyle, the inspiration for the five Planeteers came from real people that she met during the show's pre-production in 1989. Gi was inspired by Malaysian environmental activist Chee Yoke Ling of Sahabat Alam Malaysia, while Ma-Ti was inspired by Paulinho Paiakan. She also stated that Wheeler was based on her father, and made him to be environmentally unaware based on the view she had of the attitudes displayed by the United States at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Kwame was inspired by the survivors of the Rhodesian Bush War. In a September 2012 interview with Barbara Pyle and co-developer Nicholas Boxer, it was stated that Hope Island was located near the Bahamas.
The original series, produced by TBS Productions and DiC, was the second longest running US-cartoon of the 1990s, with three seasons and 113 episodes under the name Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
The show's theme song was composed by Tom Worrall, with lyrics written by show producer Nick Boxer, and performed by Murray McFadden and Timothy Mulhollan.
In 1993, the show saw a production company switch, changing the title to The New Adventures of Captain Planet (produced by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, which was acquired by Turner in 1991). During this time, it aired as part of TBS' Sunday Morning in Front Of The TV block, alongside fellow H-B toons SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron and 2 Stupid Dogs. This series revealed more of the past of each of the characters and expanded on it dramatically. The tone of these episodes was more mature than the initial series. The animation style was altered, being of considerably higher quality than the DiC seasons.
The DiC seasons' synth-rock soundtrack was replaced by a large number of orchestral pieces, and while the end credits theme was retained, the ending sequence now showcased footage from the Hanna-Barbera episodes. Full-time voice actors replaced most of the major celebrities that had voiced Gaia and the Eco-Villains during the DiC seasons. The opening narration was spoken by David Coburn (Captain Planet) rather than LeVar Burton (Kwame) and, in the final season, was replaced by a rap by Fred Schneider of The B-52's.
The Captain Planet Foundation (CPF) was founded in 1991, when series producer Barbara Pyle negotiated a percentage of the show's merchandising revenue to empower young people. The concept allowed schools and organizations around the world to present their environmental projects to the Foundation and receive seed money to grow their ideas. In 2001, Time Warner decided to shut down the CPF due to a challenging merger with AOL. Laura Seydel and her husband Rutherford Seydel worked with Time Warner to orchestrate the transition of the corporate foundation to a public charity – the Captain Planet Foundation. In 2007, CPF acquired the rights to exhibit previous episodes of Captain Planet and the Planeteers online and on-air, thus "allowing this valuable resource to reach out and educate the children of today!" As of 2017, the organization's board is chaired by Laura Turner Seydel, daughter of Ted Turner; the board includes Barbara Pyle.
In 1990, The Los Angeles Times described the show as having "not much originality", although also saying that "there's a passion behind this series, which adapts a conventional super-hero formula to an unconventional theme", also stating that the celebrities voicing the series "also sets the series apart". The newspaper also described the show as being part of "the increased awareness of Earth as endangered". L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist, accused the show of "seeking to scare children into political activism", along with accusing the show of having "leftist slants"; Barbara Pyle responded, saying "I don't think 'Captain Planet' is scary ... it shows kids that every action counts ... I consider [environmental issues] bipartisan."
Diane Holloway from Austin American-Statesman wrote, "The animation is crude and jerky, but the messages are important and clear enough for a 4-year old to understand", while Rebecca Coudret from Evansville Courier & Press said she "wondered if [children] were simply responding to the basic good vs. evil clash." In 1993, the episode "Dream Machine" won an award at the Environmental Media Awards, and in 1994, the episode "Gorillas Will Be Missed" likewise did. Reviewing season one in 2012, IGN gave the show a rating of 5 out of 10, describing the animation as "pretty weak" and the stories as "too hokey".
Various episodes were constructed to touch on relevant themes to a modern audience:
The episode titled "Mind Pollution" (1991) was notable for dealing with the issue of drug abuse. This was explained by the fact that the characters thought of drug addiction as "pollution of the mind". The episode revolved around an epidemic of a designer drug known as "Bliss" created by Verminous Skumm. It included a scene of Linka's cousin Boris jumping through a window and dying from a drug overdose.
"Population Bomb" (1991) continued the trend of tackling controversial subject matter atypical for a children's cartoon, in this instance the problem with overpopulation. Using mice as substitutes for humans, the episode sets Wheeler on a Gulliver's Travels style adventure where he encounters a tribe of sentient mice who are destroyed by overpopulation and irresponsible leadership. It turns out that the ordeal is something that Wheeler dreamed up, though it serves as a warning for the audience about sustainability and over-consumption.
The episode titled "A Formula for Hate" (1992) was also unusual for the series in that it was the first episode in an American children's animated series to directly deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In the episode, Skumm and one of his rat henchmen brainwashes a local community into thinking the virus can be spread through casual contact and thus causing people to hate and fear a young man, infected with HIV, named Todd Andrews (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, with his mother voiced by Elizabeth Taylor). Captain Planet tells the truth about AIDS to the entire basketball team with help from Todd's coach. Then Captain Planet catches Skumm and his rat henchman and handed them over to the police.
Pyle and Boxer demanded that the series' merchandise be made sustainably; because of this, several of the companies producing Captain Planet-themed merchandise had to completely overhaul their means of production to manufacture recycled and recyclable products.
As with many popular cartoons, Captain Planet had a line of action figures and vehicles. Released by Tiger Toys in 1990, the line ran for several years, long enough to tie into the New Adventures series. The toys were repackaged and sold by Grand Toys in Canada and Kenner throughout Europe. The toys were of average poseability, with the common five points – neck, shoulders, and hips.
Finding a comprehensive list of what was released is difficult, since not all toys shown in the initial retailer catalog were even released. The collector's market is small, the toys being somewhat rare on eBay. The Captain Planet Foundation still sells a small number of them online, however. There may have also been further foreign variations of certain toys which may be even more difficult to catalog. Various toys from the New Adventures waves are not as likely to be well known.
The five Planeteers, five Eco-Villains, Commander Clash, and several versions of Captain Planet, each with a different gimmick or paint scheme, were released, along with several vehicles. A toy ring with lights and sound and interchangeable lenses for the five elements was also released. Four small vehicles were also sold through a Burger King promotion.
A video game based on the series was developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Mindscape called Captain Planet. The game, which involved a good deal of shooting, received negative reviews from game critics and thus a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) version of the game was cancelled. A separate side-scrolling game was developed by Novalogic for the Mega Drive/Genesis, but only saw release in Europe and Australia.
David Perry and Nick Bruty developed a ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC game using the license, a 3-level shoot 'em up. A game was also released in 1990 for the Amiga and Atari ST, written by Tony Crowther. This was a platform game and was briefly bundled with the Amiga 500 "Cartoon Classics" pack released in 1991. A Commodore 64 game was in development but never released. Tiger Toys, owners of the action figure license, also created an LCD hand-held game.
Captain Planet appears as a playable character in the fighting game Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion for Nintendo 3DS, Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.
Turner Home Entertainment originally released VHS tapes of the series, which contained a single episode on each. DIC's main home video distributor Buena Vista Home Video would also release single-episode VHS releases as well.
A DVD with four episodes and bonus features exists but was only available as part of a "Planeteer Pack" purchased from the Captain Planet Foundation. This promotional DVD contained the episodes "A River Ran Through It", "A Perfect World", "Gorillas Will Be Missed", and "The Big Clam Up". A short clip titled "Planeteers in Action", which is about the Captain Planet Foundation, is also included. The "Planeteer Pack" special is no longer available.
Shout! Factory under license from Turner and Warner Home Video released a DVD set of the complete first season in the U.S. on April 19, 2011. The DVD packaging is made of 100% recycled paper.
Madman Entertainment released the first season on July 6, 2016 and the complete collection on October 25, 2017 in Australia.
As of March 25, 2017, it is available on iTunes for purchase. The whole series was made available on Amazon Instant Video.
On October 15, 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment (through Studio Distribution Services) has released the complete series on a DVD box set, featuring all 113 episodes from both the DIC and Hanna-Barbera seasons. Not only does this reissue the first season, but this marks the first time that the remaining five seasons are released to DVD in the United States.
On March 28, 2025, Warner Bros announced the series would be released on Blu-Ray, scheduled for April 22.
Multiple attempts have been made to create a film adaptation of the series. The first occurred in 1996 when Boxer and Pyle wrote a film adaptation of Captain Planet originally titled Planet. Five years later, Michael Reaves revised the concept as Dark Planet or Planet. The storyline was darker than the series, and set in a post-apocalyptic time period. However, the script was lost when Turner and Warner Bros. merged in 1996. The film reached the design stage before it was abandoned.
Other attempts at a film version were made in 2007, 2011, and 2013, but none of these versions came to pass. In October 2016 Paramount Pictures and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way were attempting to develop a new movie and is in negotiations with Jono Matt and Glen Powell to write the script, with Powell to star as the titular character. The status of the project is unclear since there were no further news of film adaptation. In early 2023, Powell claimed that hurdles at Warner Bros. Discovery would need to be cleared before moving forward.
Marvel Comics published a comic series titled Captain Planet and the Planeteers. The series ran twelve issues, cover dated October 1991 through October 1992. There will be a new comic series by Dynamite and will be released on Earth Day.
In 2017, Captain Planet appeared in a special crossover episode of the Cartoon Network series OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, with David Coburn reprising his role as Captain Planet and LeVar Burton reprising his role as Kwame. The heroes battled Dr. Blight (accompanied by a silent MAL). The episode "The Power Is Yours" aired on October 9, 2017, as part of the first season.