Because Eisner had put Scooby-Doo on the air during his tenure at ABC, there was a feeling he would nurture and support animation at Disney. © Warner Bros. All rights reserved.

JS: This was for ABC now?

TS: No, they called everybody at once, pretty much; they took meetings in the order they called back. NBC called first, then CBS, then ABC. The show they had to sell was The Wuzzles, because they had this deal with Hasbro who was already moving on with the toys.

They went to NBC, who said, “These are great — we're taking The Gummi Bears. “Uh-oh — they picked the one that we don't have to sell.” Then they met with CBS: “You only got one show? Okay, we'll take it.” They went to ABC: “Sorry, we don't have anything to pitch to you.”

Well, the two shows were put on the air across from each other, and everybody in the division said, “How can you do that, that's wrong!” I pointed out that in Hanna-Barbera's heyday, they were always across from each other — it was a mark of success. We should always be so lucky to be across from a show of our own because that means we've sold three shows.

JS: In Hanna-Barbera's case, it would've probably been impossible for them not to be across from themselves.

TS: They would've had to create a new network, or new hours of the day.

Television suited my temperament wonderfully. My Disney career for the most part up to that point was doing a different job every two years: I did inbetweening, I did story, then got a chance to work at WED, then came and worked on these documentaries, then did whatever I was doing advising live action, then back to these merchandising-related short subjects with the classic characters, and just enjoying the variety.

When I got to TV I stayed there for the next — well, from 1984 to last year, but my show changed every two years or so. I really enjoyed working with the same people, but doing new projects. Every show of course had a variety of episodes; it wasn't like doing one story line for four years. I got a storyline and we worked without a script, we did it visually. I still had my visual background of creating stories with pictures. That really helped to get scripts written, to say, “No, no, no, let's go the visual way.”

I started there in creative development; I think my title was manager of creative affairs.

JS: Sounds like a bean counter, almost.

TS: They really wanted me to take pitches from writers, do what a development executive does these days: not necessarily be a creative person myself, but recognize talent and garner them. The only problem was they wanted people to pitch them stuff for free. I was too much of an artist and writer on the creative side to be good on that side of the desk.

We had one of those famous gong shows coming up with Michael and Jeffrey where you just pitch one-line ideas, and they either like it or they don't and you move on. I think we pitched 23 shows at one time, and 18 of them were my ideas. These were very simple things, like “Let's do the Trojan Birds and the Legionnaire Mice, or the Legionnaire Cats... Troy is going to be up in the trees, those are going to be the birds, and the cats are constantly trying to get up into the trees, they're Greeks...' It was kind of Road Runner/Coyote-type stuff.

It was never developed very much. It was pretty much a title and what I just said to you. Some got interest and some didn't. I remember Michael Webster said, “We'd really like you to do less of your own and get more people doing it.” I said okay, but I knew I had to come up with all sorts of shows to pitch two weeks from then.

Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers

TS: Getting back to the third season of the Gummi Bears, the network wanted a creative change and they had me step in as story editor and co-producer with Alan Zaslove.

JS: You guys were put together by the studio?

TS: The studio asked us to step into Art Vitello's shoes.

When I was made a full producer I went over the storyboards and gave notes and did drawings and was there at the recording sessions. The difference between Alan Zaslove and I was that I did story as well and I dealt with management. I didn't realize how much I shielded him, and we finally went our separate ways. He had to face them alone, and he'd come back and say, “I can't believe what they're doing!” “Welcome to my world.”