A lot of websites are doing write-ups for the 30th anniversary of A Goofy Movie, but you won't find that here...because I already did that as part of my job. So instead, I want to focus on something that seems to be overlooked, the whole reason Goofy and Max got their own movie in the first place...Goof Troop, the TV series.

You can see this show on Disney+; in fact it probably popped up in your recommended list right after you watched A Goofy Movie, but there's a problem. There was a brief period of time when Disney started rescanning its TDA shows in HD, when it thought remastered cartoon shows direct to the digital market would be a thing. They only posted three on Amazon before abandoning the practice: Rescue Rangers, Timon and Pumbaa and Goof Troop. That remaster is what's on Disney+ right now, but they cropped the video to make it widescreen (the version on Amazon is fullscreen). Timon and Pumbaa has the opposite problem: the one on the Amazon market is cropped and the Disney+ version isn't. I have no idea why this is.

HOWEVER....a few years prior, Disney DID release the unremastered, un-cropped Goof Troop to DVD in limited quantities. Two sets covered about two-thirds of the run. As you can see, you had to be either a member of the "Disney Movie Club" or buy directly from somebody who was. I used Option #2, the same option I also had to use for Kim Possible Seasons 1 and 2, Gargoyles Volume 3 and Talespin Volume 3. I don't even want to know how much these cost today, but the point is I have them, which is good for today's article.

The show and the movie differ in several ways. Max is younger and you see more of Pete's family, like his wife Peg and his rambunctious gap-toothed daughter Pistol. The series is essentially an animated domestic sitcom, and episode plots tended to be rather grounded...though there were exceptions.

When we think of the shows we watched as kids, we all have that one SPECIFIC episode that comes to mind. For Goof Troop and me, it's "Close Encounters Of The Weird Mime," the ninth episode to air. In only a short amount of time Goof Troop had already established what kind of show it was, and that there would not be the kind of earthshaking events or stressful scenarios we would get on DuckTales or Talespin. And then they did this, one of the most chaotic things I'd ever seen. This episode goes places, folks, and it gets there fast.

PJ has put together the sorriest science fair project ever. He's glued ping pong balls onto a bent coat hanger and called it "Solar System"...and the cheap glue is coming off. Max can't bear to look at it. He tells PJ if he wants to get an A instead of a D minus, he needs to shoot for something bolder...."something now, something wow, like a VIDEO!"

"Hey yeah, a MOVIE!" PJ lights up. But then he goes dim again..."don't movies take a lot of time and work?" Max says "Just trust me...."

In A Goofy Movie Goofy and Pete are co-workers in a Sears-like portrait studio; on Goof Troop Pete is a used car salesman while Goofy's employment isn't really brought up and when it is, it's to do a "Goofy Gets A Wacky New Job" plot. In this episode, he's decided to become a street mime.

He's got this snooty instructor who's teaching him the fine art of mime-dom, only the guy pronounces it "meme," which wasn't a word yet. While rewatching this I was hoping for a line of dialogue like "Congratulations, Goofy, you're a MEME," but it didn't happen.

The instructor is also wearing a scarf where the end is suspended in midair behind him. You know, that kind of scarf. It's not flapping in the wind (they're indoors), there is no movement on the scarf, it's just raised up in most shots like he put too much starch in the washer. This feels like an oversight where the character designer gave the scarf a little flair and the animators took it literally.

As Max and PJ are building the set for their alien video, Goofy bursts through the door to show off his street mime costume: he's wrapped himself in tin foil. "Whelp, I'm off to perform downtown...I'll see if any talent agents are out there! Oops, forgot....I'm not supposed to talk." He does the "zip my lip" gesture, then waves the kids goodbye.

Until now neither Max nor PJ knew what kind of costumes would give them the appearance of aliens, but now they know: they'll cover themselves in foil too. That just leaves finding the camcorder as their last task.

Max locates it buried in the closet, but then his ears hang low: "I forgot this needs to be hooked up to a VCR, and ours is broken." Yes, this was true: the earliest camcorders did not take tapes on their own; they had to be attached to a recording device by cable, which limited where they could be used. By 1992 the newer models had battery packs and could take tapes, but this made them incredibly heavy. Eventually a mini-tape format would be invented to make the camcorders smaller, and then people stopped using tape, and then smartphone video came along, and...We're still in the early 90s though, and this is a problem the Spoonerville kids won't easily overcome.

Because the only other option now is to borrow PJ's family VCR from his giant bear of a father (although he's technically a cat). Pete is in the backyard, building a barbecue, when he catches PJ out of the corner of his eye trying to discreetly waddle next door with a piece of his electronics.

"Oh, hi Dad! Ahehe, I need to borrow this for my science fair project."
"AN' WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PING PONG BALLS I GAVE YA?"
"Well, I thought I'd make a science fiction video instead...."

"Listen, son. A man's home is his castle, which makes me king. And the king says....PUT IT BACK."
"Yessir."

That left cel would look great on my wall.

Prior to this Peg approached Pete with some coffee to help him work. The stuff turns Pete's face into convulsions, and even burns through the cup. Pete asks where she found it, and she says it's "Tasmanian Tar Roast," new on the market and so cheap, she bought fifty pounds. I'm only mentioning this because it plays a minor role later.

PJ's dad only said they couldn't move the VCR, he said nothing about using it...so now Max has another idea. He'll hook up Pete's equipment so that his camcorder can feed into the VCR remotely. This involves a literal cable stretching all the way between the two homes, plus a bunch of extra wires criss-crossed all over Pete's home entertainment devices. PJ asks Max if he's sure he knows what he's doing. "Piece of cake!" he assures him. "Most folks are techno-wimps compared to me."

Back in Max's room, he uses a fire extinguisher to create a little fog to set the mood. Then he and PJ don their tin foil disguises, climb into their makeshift UFO and start recording.

"Hello Earthlings! This is Max-ell TDK."
"Yeah, and C3-PJ."
"We are Tinfoilians from the Planet Luminum."
"Yeah, Luminum."
"And we have come here with one mission...TO TAKE OVER EARTH!"

A lot of questions start coming up at this point, the first being....what does this project have to do with science? It's like Calvin's report on bats; it's just a bunch of stuff they made up. I don't think they're going to get the grade they desire. But that logic gap is small potatoes compared to this...

You see, Max's criss-crossed wires activates Pere's backyard satellite dish, which beams their video into space, which hits a satellite that beams the video back...all over the world.

The video hits NASA, where all the technicians immediately believe what they're seeing.

"A scout has been sent to communicate all our demands. That is right, Earth-noids, our scout has super alien powers! He can disintegrate a building with the wave of his hand! CE-PJ is calculating our attack strategy...we plan to steal all your planes! And...and food! And national monuments, and, and....."
"And cordless shavers! And pogo sticks! And toothpaste!"

"This could cause widespread panic if it gets out," frets an official. "We'd better hope the PUBLIC doesn't find out about this?"

But the public already knows, because they're seeing the same video. And as a crowd of shocked citizens stands around the window of an appliance store watching it all unfold, that's when Goofy approaches looking for an audience for his mime act. They immediataely assume he is the "scout" the aliens were talking about, and Goofy is promptly captured and taken to the authorities.

Goofy is placed in an observation cell. He assumed his abductors were talent scouts and that this is an audition, so he starts doing his mine act while his observers ooh and ahh at his alien behavior.

The only person this news hasn't reached yet is Pete, who's been busy building his barbecue, Just as he adds the final brick, Peg and Pistol come rushing toward him screaming abour aliens invading Spoonerville. Peg has meatballs for the barbecue wrapped in tinfoil (seems to be the episode's theme).

Pete refuses to believe it, so Peg yanks him by the ear to the family television. Max and PJ are still doing their space creature act.

"Observe!" Max-ell TDK states, holding up a picture of the meteor crater in Arizona. "THIS was Calamityville! Arr, arr, arr! And we LIKED Calamityville! YOU'RE NEXT!"

"Maa...maa...martians??" Pete whimpers.
Peg grabs Pistol by the shoulders and shakes. "You're got to hurry and pack your things because WE'VE GOT TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!!"

"NO WAY!" Pete insists, grabbing his bowling trophies. 'I worked HARD for this stuff, and no drooling moon man is going to lay a tentacle on it! I say we stay...and we FIGHT BACK."

If Pete's home is his castle, then he's going to need a moat, He pulls a bulldozer out of nowhere and drives a destructive circle around the entire property. "YOU'LL NEVER GRILL ON THIS EARTH MAN'S BARBECUE, YOU COSMIC CREEPOS!" Pete screams, while simultaneously running over and destroying said barbecue.

Then he needs something to fill it with, and that's when he realizes: the Tasmanian Tar Roast! He dumps the whole bag around the moat and sets it off with a flare gun. Here's where that little detail pays off, right? Not really...all it does is create a big puff of smoke, which compared to what it did earlier, is a letdown.

But there's an army chopper in the air circling Pete's home, and when it sees the smoke ring, the guys flying it assume it's meant as a signal for the alien landing site (a lot of assuming being done in this episode). They immediately order troops to surround the place.

If all of this wasn't unbelievable enough, consider that it all took place WITHIN the time Max and PJ started their video and the time they finished it, which is now. The boys step outside, planning to venture next door to watch the tape they just made, only to discover getting in there will be a little bit harder than they thought.

"What happened to my house?" PJ whines. It is now surrounded by Army jeeps, news vans and helicopters. And what happens next is the funniest scene in the entire series. I don't know where it came from, but I laughed my head off when I first saw it. Feels like something the animator slipped in, because I don't know how you could script such a thing:

BWAHAHAHA! We never see that guy again. Wow.

The episode just gets INSANE at this point. From his POV, Pete sees anyone outside of his house as an invader, so he starts firing his flare gun at the reporters, narrowly missing the lady in the glasses. One of the flares ricochets off his satellite dish and hits him in the back, and he believes it was a "death ray" and runs back inside. Peg and Pistol are dressed in makeshift armor made up of kitchen items, and look positively bizarre. They've rigged a rubber-band catapult system to shoot watermelons at people. They end up nailing Pete by accident, and when Peg asks her delirious husband to say something, Pete utters "Go get me a glass of water." "No thanks, I'm not thirsty," Pistol replies.

Max and PJ realize this is all their fault and they have to undo it...starting with rescuing Goofy. They sneak into NASA headquarters via the ventilation system and disguise themselves as professors.

"Greetings, colleagues! I am Doctor Maximillian, and this is Professor Peejfield. We're from the Federated League of Intergalactic Body Language."
"I've never heard of the--"
"OH NO, it's worse than we thought!"
"What is it?"
"The alien is communicating with us, and he says....he's got the Cosmic Chicken Pox. Symptoms include...first, uh, your teeth all change position, and then your earwax melts! This is followed by houseitosis, bloated liver and onions, and male pattern baldness! And it's VERY contagious."
The scientists, being as stupid as everyone else in this episode, all gasp and beat a path out of there.

Goofy doesn't want to leave because he still thinks he's performing for an audition, When Max tells him everyone left, Goofy's disappointed because he figures he blew his chance. "I must've been terrible! Now I'll never get on TV."

Max has a sudden idea. 'Oh YES you will!"

The only way for all this to stop is if everyone believes the alien threat is over. So Max tells his dad to perch on Pete's roof and perform.

Back in his professor disguise, Max stands in the middle of the battlefield and speaks up. "Excuse me, I have an announcement to make. The alien has escaped, and he has a message for us! Look!"

"There's an....alien....on my r-roof??" Pete panics.

"The alien says he's decided NOT to destroy the Earth after all! He's returning to the windy plains of Mars, right now!"

To truly sell it, Goofy has a fire extinguisher attached to his back, which he will use to rocket into the sky, because it's a cartoon. The canister seems to be not firing, rhough, and Max has a brief moment of panic -- only intensified when Pete climbs onto the roof to knock the "alien" out personally. "INVADE MY HOUSE, WILL YA??"

But as Pete prepares to bean Goofy, he loses his balance and topples off. He yanks the firing string as he descends, causing the canister to go off. Goofy YAAAA-HAHA-HOOEYs into the sky, easing everybody's nerves.

Well, almost everybody's. This means PJ has to stick with his lame ping pong ball model, because anything else is too dangerous, And Pete, who's always paranoid anyway, will take some time to recover. He's staring at the wrackage of his new barbecue, still refusing to believe it's his fault, when he sees Peg's tinfoil meatballs are still there. "ALIEN EGGS!!" he yells, and mashes the wreckage with a stick while hollering incoherently. Pistol. watching this behavior from her upstairs window, delivers the final line: "Oh, so THAT'S how Daddy makes mashed potatoes!"

I love how utterly anarchic this particular episode of Goof Troop is, and I'd always stop whatever I was doing to watch it whenever it repeated. On its first airing, Mom was in the living room and saw half of it (the more interesting half). The expression on her face when it all ended was not unlike this:

She didn't watch many of my cartoons with me. This was probably one reason why.

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