RoboCop

When it was released back in 1987, Robocop became a box office success, as not only did it tell a good tale about a cop who is rebuilt into a robot by a megacorporation after he is killed in the line of duty, and ends up hunting down the criminal gang who killed him, but it was also ultraviolent (so ultraviolent, that Orion Pictures had to edit the film to tone down the violence for the R rating, as it got an X rating 11 times). Somehow, this got Orion to team up with Marvel Productions (the company responsible for hit shows like the original Muppet Babies cartoon, The Transformers, and the first G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon) to take this ultraviolent film and make it into a TV show aimed at kids (and this was two years after Ruby-Spears treaded such waters with Rambo: The Forces of Freedom, which was based on First Blood and its sequel, Rambo: First Blood Part II, which lasted only one season with 65 episodes).

Set after the events of the film, RoboCop is an animated series that shows the further adventures of Alex Murphey, a.k.a. RoboCop, and his partner, Ann Lewis, as they uphold the law of Old Detroit while making sure the cyborg policeman is still reliable in the eyes of OCP, as a new villain, Dr. McNamara, an OCP scientist who has mechanical arms and always wears sunglasses, funds the villains of the episodes to take down Robo, all because the Robocop program takes away funding from his ED-260 project. To make sure the world of RoboCop is more kid-friendly, Robocop's origin is changed to remove death, as in the intro, Alex is mortally wounded in the line of duty, causing OCP to outfit him with the gear that makes him RoboCop). Also, the series derails from the movie it's based on by being more science fiction. Firearms are now replaced with laser weapons (with Robocop wielding a laser pistol that's set to stun at all times), as well as having some episode themed around a problem in real life (like racism in The Brotherhood, where the title villains are a group who want to destroy all robots and cyborgs in Old Detroit, while another episode, A Robot's Revenge, is themed around Middle Eastern Peace Project and terrorism, as Robocop and Lewis must protect two Middle Eastern leaders from terrorists who plot to assassinate them).

As this is an animated series, the cast have voice actors that are different from the movie. Robocop is voiced here by Dab Hennessey (who 80's would know as the voice actor for Genghis Rex, the main antagonist of Dinosaucers, as well as Chief Quimby in Inspector Gadget). Lewis is voiced by Susan Roman (who voiced Melissa Raccoon in The Raccoons), and Dr. McNamara is voiced by Robert Bockstael, an actor who before this, did voice work for The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin and Dennis The Menace. The animation is good, and the acting is well done. Sadly, this only lasted twelve episodes, with a thirteenth episode being passed in favor to create Pryde Of The X-Men, the failed pilot that would lead to an X-Men cartoon (but would inspire an arcade beat-em-up from Konami). However, this is a good cartoon that tries to take a R-rated film and make it kid-friendly.