Simply Six Minutes: Zorak…

These two happy chappies remind me of Zorak, who was a character on the old Saturday morning Space Ghost cartoon show. The cartoon was produced by Hanna-Barbera Studios, which over the years ended up in the hands of Atlanta’s very own Ted Turner, thanks to his purchase of MGM. When he discovered he had all these cartoons, he decided to set up a whole network for them, Cartoon Network.

Anyway, the folks at Cartoon Network decided to turn Space Ghost, your typical comic book superhero, into a talk show host, and Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast was born. Two of SG’s enemies, Zorak and Moltar, were adapted for the show, Moltar being made the engineer, Zorak the bandleader. George Lowe, a local voice actor, voiced Space Ghost, while C. Martin Croker, one of the animators, voiced Zorak and Moltar. The show featured "interviews" with celebrities (who appeared in a cartoon video monitor in which the live video was embedded) and various arguments and riposte between the animate characters. When Space Ghost had enough of Zorak’s insults, he’d use his power bands to blow Zorak up…

Here’s a video showing Zorak in some of his more diabolical moments…

Christine Bialczak hosts Simply 6 Minutes.