When Casper first came on the TV screens in 1950 in Casper the Friendly Ghost, he was quite the scream; a good, happy scream, to be sure.  He was popular with the kids, so it’s easy to see the appeal of releasing a new series for the children of the kids that originally enjoyed Casper the Friendly Ghost.  Of course audiences, as young as they might be, were sophisticated.  They enjoyed things like space, and crime fighting.  Oh, that’s not to say that earlier generations didn’t enjoy those things, but the 70s were the proving ground of children’s programming that would combine multiple themes into one, super, fantastic show.  Except, Casper and the Angels really was just so-so.  Even we’re not so sure why a ghost would be required to hunt down criminals of the future.

Set in the future, Casper and the Angels featured Casper along with two girls, Mini and Maxie, working to capture intergalactic criminals as a part of the Space Police in 2179.  In this Charlie’s Angels take-off, Casper wasn’t the star, the Angels were.  Assisted by the ghost, Harry Scary, who sounded a bit more like The Wizard of Oz’s Cowardly lion, they received instructions from the Commander on their next moves.  Together, the ‘angels’ and their friendly ghost pals upheld the law in two fifteen-minute segments a week.

After bouncing time slots, the show was cancelled just shy of 8 months from when it started.  It seemed the heyday of Casper might have been over for good.  Well, that was until the 1995 theatrical release of Casper, a live-action/computer animation version of the 50s classic, which brought about Casper’s triumphant return to Saturday morning programming in 1996.