The Collector (Richie Rich cartoon)

The Collector is a Zillion Dollar Adventures segment from the third season of the Richie Rich cartoon series. It first aired 25 September 1982 during the debut installment of The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show. The segment was rebroadcast as part of the seventh episode of The Monchhichis/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show 22 October 1983.
== Summary ==
Richie and Gloria are about to eat breakfast at the Rich mansion, just before his baseball practice. One of Richie's friends named Manuel calls him by videophone, saying he cannot come to practice as his father, a pro baseball player named "Fastball Fernandez", is nowhere to be found. Richie then turns on the news, and a news anchor says that Fastball Fernandez is believed to have been kidnapped with no trace in a string of kidnappings of prominent people. The newscast is interrupted as the newsman is then abducted right on the air!
Richie and Gloria prepare to hunt the villain. They fall out of the helicopter, and are about to land in water, but a giant hawk captures Gloria, and brings her to a castle where the villain is hiding. Richie falls in the water, but thanks to propellers attached to the soles of his shoes, he flies to the castle.
Meanwhile, Gloria has been reduced to six inches tall and held in a drinking glass. When she asks who this man is and what he wants, he introduces himself as the Collector. He was originally a wealthy recluse who originally had habits of rich men: collecting antiquities such as butterflies, coins, stamps, et cetera. However, when he collected all he could, he invented a shrink ray and realized he could collect something no else could boast of, people! Gloria sees Fastball Fernandez also under a glass labeled "World's Greatest Baseball Player" along with other notable people who have been kidnapped. The Collector then places Gloria under a glass labeled "World's Prettiest Little Girl". Richie arrives at the castle, but the Collector catches him sneaking around. The Collector beats Richie to the punch by shrinking him and Dollar, adding them to his "collection" respectively as "World's Richest Boy" and "World's Only Surviving Dollar-mation". Richie is placed under a glass on a shelf alongside the other kidnap victims. Fortunately, an opera singer is one of the victims, and she shatters the glasses with her voice. The Collector shrinks Richie's parents, but the already-shrunken victims travel back to the Rich mansion as quickly as possible so that they would catch the villain in the act. When the villain discovers Richie and the gang on a serving platter underneath a golden cover, the Collector threatens to shrink them down to non-existence, but Fastball Fernandez grabs an olive from the serving tray to hurl it at the Collector, diverting the ray's trajectory. The villain makes one more attempt, Richie raises the platter up to deflect the ray into the path of the villain, which causes him to shrink. The dome of the serving tray then covers the Collector, where Mr. Rich remarks he will be imprisoned until the authorities arrive. Richie adds, "Now the only thing he will collect is a prison sentence."
After the rescue, Manuel is at Professor Keenbean's lab holding the The Collector's ray. Professor Keenbean says the instructions to restore everyone to normal are simple, simply reverse the ray's setting. Manuel fires on the shrunken victims, causing everyone to be restored to their proper size. However, Mr. Rich is still small, and says the ray missed him. Mrs. Rich asks for one moment to hold him, remarking to Richie, "I have always wanted to have your father in the palm of my hand."
== Trivia ==
* This story is loosely based on the comic book story of the same name, published in Richie Rich Fortunes #61, released in late 1981. There was an earlier story of the same title republished around Spring 1982 in a Richie Rich digest, but centered on a tax collector.
* Manuel, one of Richie's teammates, would appear again in the Gems segment, "Ball Room", aired the week after this episode aired during the third season.
* Although the news anchor was abducted and shrunk by the Collector, he was not seen in Rich Laboratories when most of the shrunken victims were back to normal size.
* The Collector would appear in two more episodes in Season 4: "Rich No More" and "Irona Story", the latter without a shrinking plot.
* Shrinking plots were also used in the Zillion Dollar Adventures segments "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Bug?" and "The Day the Estate Stood Still" in Seasons 1 and 2 respectively, and the Treasure Chest segment "Rich Mice" in Season 2.
* This is one of two repeat episodes in the fourth season that was paired with a previously aired Little Rascals segment (in this case, "Class Act"). The other previously aired Richie Rich segment that was paired with a repeat of The Little Rascals was "The Maltese Monkey", which was paired with the Rascals segment, "Cap'n Spanky's Showboat", on 26 November 1983.
== Voice Cast ==
* William Callaway as Professor Keenbean
* Nancy Cartwright as Gloria Glad
* Joan Gerber as Regina Rich
* Stanley Jones as Richard Rich, Sr.
* Sparky Marcus as Richie Rich
* Robert Ridgely as The Collector
* Frank Welker as Dollar the Dog
Category:Richie Rich
Category:Richie Rich episodes
Category:TV Episodes
Category:Richie Rich Zillion Dollar Adventures segments
Category:The Funtastic Index