TV Show Info
Show Name: Garfield’s Halloween Adventure
Studio: CBS
Genre(s): Animated/Seasonal
Release Date(s): October 30, 1985
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
“Jon…I hate you with every fiber of my soul”
It is Halloween and Garfield is celebrating. With Odie helping him trick-or-treat, Garfield sets out to get the most candy he can. When Garfield and Odie accidentally drift away on a raft while trying to reach another neighborhood, they find a haunted house and face ghost pirates seeking their treasure.
Directed by Phil Roman, Garfield’s Halloween Adventure is a family animated Halloween special. The show originally aired on CBS on October 30, 1985. It was based on an original story by Jim Davis, and an adaptation expanded the story in the cartoon. Also called Garfield in Disguise, it won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program.
We’re gonna get the good stuff
Garfield meant everything to me when I was nine (especially being from Indiana where the cartoon strip originated) when this special first aired. I read the comic strip and I read the collections. My friends and I all loved Garfield…and the holidays were always ripe with new cartoons and “special presentations” to see that meant the season was in full swing.
This special was one of those specials that aired regularly for years. Along with It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, it was one of the few Halloween specials that you could watch as a kid and it was fun to mix it up with the horror movies that peppered the seasonal landscape.
Garfield was relatively “new” at the time and this also predates the perennial A Garfield Christmas (which came out on December 21, 1987). While Garfield was still a few years away from hitting his full stride with sticky-Garfields donning the windows of cars and a Saturday morning cartoon, he was still popular and similar to his contemporaries like Charlie Brown. You could watch Garfield’s Halloween Adventure and read Garfield in the paper the next Sunday…it was exciting to see something like this.
Johnny Depp…are you here?
The story is very unbalanced. The first half revolves around Garfield’s quest for candy and the second half has a ghost story that is solved by simply running away. The ghost pirates just kind of randomly show up (and they do actually appear rather terrifying). They don’t really add anything to the plot other than make it more “Halloween-y”.
Garfield’s Halloween Adventure is a classic for kids from the ’80s and still is enjoyable for younger kids. It doesn’t hold up as well as some of the other cartoons, but if you are a fan of Garfield and looking for something to check out when Halloween rolls around (or seeking nostalgia), it is usually easily found on online. It is sad however that things like this do not pop up around the holiday season as much…and it is a reminder of simpler times when entertainment could be found by flipping through the TV Guide pre-internet.
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