The Halloween Gang

The Halloween Gang is a TV series that aired from 1986 to 1992 before getting relaunched in 1996 and ending in 2000. The show aired on both ABC and in syndication, with the first two seasons airing on ABC and a syndication package airing in-tandem.

Plot
According to Blessard:

The Halloween Gang is dedicated to preserving the good will of their city. They fight against monsters with the intent of tearing down good values while contending with their own problems. It focuses on Jack, a boy who finds help with various "Halloween themed" heroes and tackles issues like bullying and other important situations.

The first two seasons often poked fun at cliches and plots displayed in other shows airing at the time, and featured an emphasis on character development.

Production and Broadcast
After the release of a pilot television film in 1985 and the first season through 1986, ABC with the Q5 Corp. had sought to improve the former network's ratings. As a result, the network's animated line-up had been heavily altered to better appeal to kids. Strange and Blessard, parting on bitter circumstances, agreed to split and handle the show based on their own ideals. Strange had agreed to let ABC alter the show on the condition he can manage the show his way for a greenlit syndication package, Strange would still receive credit on the second as a story editor and occasional producer. The ABC seasons and the package were both produced by Donald Kushner and Peter Locke. The package was distributed through LBS Communications in association with Coca-Cola Telecommunications.

The syndicated episodes aired in tandem with the second season. The second season on the ABC run had received dwindling ratings and they refused to pick the show up for another. As a result, Blessard moved the show to low-profile stations for a syndicated run, with a new crop of episodes being produced by Graz Entertainment, but this was short-lived. Blessard, upon securing the license to the series full time, relaunched it in 1996.

The show is notable for its quality shifts, starting off standard in the first three seasons before taking on erratic changes. The third season featured a style akin to Street Fighter: The Animated Series, also produced through Graz. The details would become less apparent on each character as the series went on. The fourth through fifth seasons featured a mix between 2D and 3D animation. The latter was prominently used, with 2D artifacts animated over digital layouts. Some fight scenes would be made entirely in CGI. Supposedly, following an anonymous critique of the show, Blessard lashed out and abandoned it. The final season was produced in the form of a comic book, featuring stills of characters in dynamic poses.

By the fifth season, many of the original cast left the show, accusing Blessard of not paying royalties as well as poor conduct. The animation shift may've also been owed to animators leaving in protest due to long crunch periods and a lack of payment. Merchandise was released from Malibu Comics (through Rouge 90 Publishing after Blessard acquired the license to the graphic novels), Konami and Playmates toys, with Blessard intending to use the proceeds to pay his staff, but it failed.

Due to losing funding entirely, the show came to a close, with Blessard selling broadcasting rights to PAX to make some quick money.

Reception and Legacy
Initially the show went unknown due to its appearance on more low-profile stations. It wasn't until PAX's airings along with an appearance on another adaptation that the show became better known. From there, the show received generally negative reviews, and is often considered to be one of the worst cartoons of all time. The show was compared unfavorably to G.I. Joe and Street Fighter: The Animated Series, mainly in terms of their style and means of teaching morals. Its educational shift was also criticized for its abrupt inclusion and often destructive execution.

Blessard had also been criticized for his ruthless approach, firing Strange due to him standing up for his own ideas as well as his inability to take constructive criticism.

The first two seasons had been considered the show's high-points.

The Halloween Gang: New Generation
Blessard would return again at the start of 2018 with an animated fan-film based on The Halloween Gang. Blessard had made promises regarding its quality and made a Kickstarter campaign to fund it. After nearly a year, no info on it had surfaced. Blessard had been accused of scamming backers, evident by a trailer that didn't show much of the project. Blessard accused Strange of getting the accusations going just to spite him, but Strange claimed he didn't know about it until well after it got started.

Blessard announced that the project was revived and had released new footage, but had received even more negative coverage because of it. The film would include a diverse cast and touch upon new social issues, leading to accusations of forced diversity. In addition, the footage was criticized for its low quality animation. Strange was producing Ivory Byrd, another Halloween Gang fan-film based on his own show. It's suggested that The Halloween Gang: New Generation got released early to beat out Ivory Byrd, but this only led to more negative coverage.

Blessard resorted to flagging negative reviews and coverage of the film, along with uploads to YouTube and Vimeo. When called on it, Blessard left the internet entirely.

In Popular Culture
Strange produced The Halloween Kids in 2000, it being a loose follow-up to the books focused primarily on characters he created. One episode, Unusual Suspects, covered two later season episodes which were framed as the creation of a mentally disturbed boy, In Honor of The King and Gale Says. Both of the episodes are infamous in their own way, the former on a critical and sociopolitical basis and the latter being hated by fans of the books and either show.

In Honor of the King was criticized for its heavy-handed approach to talking about racism, how an African American bully was let off because of race alone and Jack took the fall for the bully's bad deeds, along with a stereotypical depiction of a Southerner as the main antagonist, though the characters criticized him over predictability and for trying to go forward with revitalization. Other aspects criticized include questionable animation toward the end and dialog conflicting with it (Jack seemingly shrugs off the punishment, but sheds tears almost immediately after), along with an ugly drawing of Martin Luther King Jr. with a dedication, which was considered to be of poor taste.

Gale Says was a repurposing of an arc present in the second half of the first season of the show. Gale was a character who caused Marcus, a character with supernatural abilities to get afflicted in the first place and became infamous due to her stand-offish demeanor and apathy for where she went wrong. The second season was meant to focus on her wrongdoings, where upon Marcus's family learning about his powers, leads to him getting sent out of state for experimentation and Gale gets ostracized from the group.

When trying to reconcile with Marcus before he is sent off, it leads to an argument with Gale wishing the two had never met. The antagonist for the episode, a wizard, winds up granting that wish, nullifying Marcus' affliction. She attempts to get him his powers back, recreating the accident that lead to it, but he catches on and refuses, causing a physical fight and her to give up on him. Toward the end of the season, she goes back in time to stop her from causing the accident originally in the hopes of swaying him to get afflicted, but she catches Marcus interacting with her past self and seeing the layer of toxicity expressed, realizes that Marcus would be better off without her. Gale winds up killing her past self before the accident would occur, leading to a paradox that eliminates all that had happened afterwards and erases her from the timeline. She is reborn into the Belton family, having been stolen from them by the Bishops early on (which fit with the first season indicating the heroes were the true antagonists) and would remain sheltered.

The episode would nullify all that occurred previously and cause Marcus to become more dependent on Gale and forgiving her for what she has done. It got criticized for its promotion of co-dependency and abusive relationships as along with Marcus settling for Gale, it marked a character becoming evil by falling for a bad boy. The episode was derided on the show's forums and it led to the writer lashing out at his critics. Since Strange wrote the original arc and because that episode became so hated by fans, it was what led to it being featured on Strange's show.