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Celebrity Toons

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Celebrity Toons (trope)

Sometimes a celebrity is offered their own cartoon— not just as The Cameo or even as a regular starring role but with the entire series based specifically around their own persona. They are made mostly to showcase the celebrity, and nothing more. The celebrity will usually be Adam Westing, or at very least The Danza, playing a Flanderized self-caricature. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Usually features the celebrity themselves as an Ink-Suit Actor. If they don't bother showing up to do the voices — which is quite often the case — it becomes Not Quite Starring.

For the Internet-age, fanmade equivalent, see Real-Person Fic. See also Band Toon.

Contrast No Celebrities Were Harmed.


Examples (sorted alphabetically by last name):

  • I am the Greatest! The Adventures of Muhammad Ali, with Muhammad Ali.
  • Little Rosey with Roseanne Barr.
    • She didn't voice the title character (although had the show been renewed she would have); but Roseanne was the executive producer, and she did voice Rosey in the TV special The Rosey & Buddy Show, which also featured her then-husband Tom Arnold as Buddy.
  • Even stranger than it sounds; in his autobiography A Cast of Friends, William Hanna (yes, this was a Hanna-Barbera Production) wrote that the Mexican animators had drawn Andy (Gary Coleman's character, a rare instance in animation where the star of a self-titled show doesn't play him/herself) as WHITE!
  • Comedian Bill Dana (of Jose Jimenez fame) voiced himself as a cartoon twice, first in a mid-60s Paramount cartoon and then in 1966 in Hanna-Barbera's take on Alice In Wonderland (which he also scripted).
  • Brazilian singer Larissa de Macedo (better known as Anitta) got her own Animesque animated series Clube da Anittinha, starring a Super-Deformed version of herself.
  • Enhanced by the fact that the title character's CG persona when talking to his employers was a pretty obvious Bruce Willis look-alike.
  • The Governator, co-created by Arnold Schwarzenegger and starring him as a crime-fighting superhero. However, it was cancelled before the first episode premiered due to a scandal around Arnold occurring at the same time, though a trailer and a comic series were produced.
  • My Dad the Rock Star. Though Gene Simmons didn't voice Rock Zilla, he was the series' creator and executive producer while Rock Zilla shared a number of his signature traits.
  • However, Haim Saban was once in talks with Gene Simmons for a KISS cartoon in the 90s. Then Saban made the big mistake in insulting Gene in Hebrew... and Gene replied back in the same tongue.
  • There was an upcoming KISS Hello Kitty cartoon, but it was cancelled very quickly.
  • French Big Fun singer Yvan-Chrysostome Dolto, better known as "Carlos", had a series called Les Aventures de Carlos in 1992, which was broadcast in the Club Dorothée show. The cartoon was localized for a Western audience by Saban Entertainment and broadcast in the USA in first-run syndication in the early 1990s as part of Bohbot Entertainment's "Amazin' Adventures" package under the name Around the World in Eighty Dreams.

Group Examples (sorted alphabetically by title)

  • The Abbott and Costello animated series starred Bud Abbott doing his own voice, but had Stan Irwin as the voice of Lou Costello (the real Lou Costello being, unfortunately, deceased by this time).
  • Incidentially, Siegfried and Roy had their own straight to video animated special, Siegfried and Roy: Masters of the Impossible, which was produced by DiC Entertainment and released in 1996.
  • The Harlem Globetrotters (later Go-Go Globetrotters, an Animated Anthology with CB Bears, The Herculoids and Space Ghost) applied the same to, well, the Harlem Globetrotters (an "entertainment" basketball team). They later became the Super Globetrotters.(their powers were suspiciously similar to those of The Impossibles!)
    • These cartoon versions of these spacebound Globetrotters characters later appeared in the Futurama universe where there's an entire Planet Globetrotter.
  • Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi is a more recent example, based on Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi. It stars two characters who barely resemble their real-life counterparts (the characters' manager apparently resembles their real-life manager more than the two leads resemble the singers) and who may or may not be a lesbian couple. The real singers appear in interstitials.
  • Two 1970's sibling singing groups, The Jackson 5 and The Osmonds, had their own animated shows at the heights of their fame. Unusually, they did their own voices.
  • Rap stars Kid (Christopher Reid) and Play (Christopher Martin) voiced themselves in the NBC Saturday morning cartoon, Kid N' Play, or at least their alter egos did.
  • In-universe example: Limozeen: But They're in Space! in the Homestar Runner universe.
  • New Kids on the Block had an animated series which also suffered this fate, and is mocked so much that it can almost be taken as a Stealth Parody of Band Toons. One member of the group said, "California guys couldn't do Boston accents!"
    • Their manager, Dick Scott, claimed the group couldn't voice their animated alter egos because "it's too complicated." (Ironically, Donnie Wahlberg is now making quite a good living as an actor.)
  • Pretty Rhythm: Dear My Future is this for the Idol Singer groups Prizmmy and Puretty. In an odd case of this trope, the former has both their singing and speaking voices provided by different people despite being based on a real group, while the latter uses the idol group they are based off as their singing voices.
  • ProStars, where Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, and Wayne Gretzky use sports-themed gadgets to fight evil. No, seriously.
  • Top of the Pops Saturday, a children's spin-off of music show Top of the Pops, often featured short animated skits under the name of Pop School. The premise concerned a school where both teachers and students happened to be musicians who were popular in the United Kingdom at the time, such as Busted, Girls Aloud, and even Ozzy Osbourne. Although it mostly parodied the celebrities, it could also be considered a showcase for certain topics and artists who were (or aimed to be) popular among teenagers. Especially when it came to the students (Older musicians popular with the demographic's parents were typically cast as teachers).
  • There were plans in 2003 for a t.A.T.u. anime film, but it seems to have been shelved.
  • The New Adventures of Gilligan and Gilligan's Planet. The Gilligan's Island stars all voiced themselves, save Tina Louise, who was off pouting somewhere, and Dawn Wells, who was unavailable at the time; Ginger and Mary-Anne were played by Filmation staple Jane Webb. Wells kindly returned, as well as doing serious double-duty in Louise's old role, on Planet.
  • Messi and the Giants. A 12 year old boy based off Association Football player Lionel Messi is transported to a world ruled by tyrannical Giants and must fight them.

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Hulk Hogan's Rock n Wrestling

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