Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers

Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is an American television series created by Tad Stones and Alan Zaslove. The series aired on The Disney Channel from March 4, 1989 to November 19, 1990.

Plot
Chip and Dale are two chipmunks who start a detective agency, Rescue Rangers, along with their friends Gadget, Monterey Jack and Zipper. The pint-sized detectives deal with crimes that are often "too small" for the police to handle, usually with other animals as their clients. The gang frequently find themselves going up against two particular arch-villains: Mafia-style tabby cat Fat Cat and mad scientist Norton Nimnul.

Heroes

 * Tress MacNeille as Chip / Gadget Hackwrench
 * Corey Burton as Dale / Zipper
 * Peter Cullen and Jim Cummings as Monterey Jack

Villains

 * Jim Cummings as Fat Cat / Wart / Professor Norton Nimnul
 * Corey Burton as Mole / Snout
 * Peter Cullen as Mepps
 * Tress MacNeille as The Siamese Twin Gang

Episodes
See Also: List of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers Episodes

Production
Rescue Rangers was originally conceived as the first of three new companion shows to Disney's popular DuckTales series, which had more than doubled the ratings among child audiences in its time slots after its debut in the fall of 1987. Disney had originally invested $20,000,000 in DuckTales and then invested $28,000,000 in Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers.

It, along with TaleSpin and a third series, Double-O Duck (which ultimately became Darkwing Duck), would round out a programming block later known as "The Disney Afternoon" along with the previously established Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears to capitalize on DuckTales' success.

When Tad Stones first came up with the idea for the Rescue Rangers series, Chip and Dale were not part of the show. He initially pitched doing a TV series based on The Rescuers, but Disney rejected that idea as a sequel to that film was already in production. He created a new concept with the working title of Metro Mice. In the original draft, the main character was an Indiana Jones-type mouse named Kit Colby who sported a fedora and a fluffy collared leather jacket, and the rest of the team included a chameleon, an earlier version of Gadget, and a character resembling Monterey Jack with a different name. When he proposed the show in a meeting with Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the idea was well received except for the character of Kit. At Eisner's suggestion, they replaced him with the chipmunk duo to give the show some established Disney characters to work with. By late 1987, two years before its television debut, the show was announced under its original proposed title of "Chip 'n Dale and the Rescue Rangers".

While Chip and Dale were established characters, in order to bring them into the series only their general appearance and basic personality traits were kept. Unlike their appearances in Disney shorts, in the Rescue Rangers the chipmunk duo are very verbal, with Chip voiced by Tress MacNeille and Dale voiced by Corey Burton. Audio processing was used to speed up the voice recordings and give the voices a higher pitch, particularly Chip's. The pair were given clothes, Chip the clothing of the original-concept Kit, while the goofier Dale was reminiscent of, but not specifically modeled after,Thomas Magnum from Magnum, P.I. with his Hawaiian shirt.

The series premiered in 1989 on The Disney Channel before moving into a regular slot in syndication the following fall. In 1990, the series premiered as part of the Disney Afternoon line up, where it aired until 1993. On October 2, 1995, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers began reruns on The Disney Channel as part of a two-hour programming block called "Block Party" which aired on weekdays in the late afternoon/early evening and which also included Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin and DuckTales.

The show's opening theme was written (listed in the end credits as words & music) by Mark Mueller, an ASCAP Award-winning pop music songwriter who also wrote the popular theme song for DuckTales and produced by Alf Clausen. The song performed over the title credits is sung by Jeff Pescetto (who also performed the DuckTales theme song). A full-length version of the theme song was later recorded by the pop group The Jets.

Reception
In January 2009, IGN named Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers as the 60th-best in the Top 100 Animated TV Shows. Hal Erickson, author of Television Cartoon Shows, An Illustrated Encyclopedia compared the show to DuckTales, stating that it was "consummately produced and written" and its animation "succeeded in putting most other overseas output to shame."

Comic Book
A monthly comic book based on the show was published by Disney Comics in 1990, that ran for 19 issues. Subsequent comic stories were printed in Disney Adventures from 1990 to 1995, as well as in the Disney Afternoon comic book published by Marvel Comics. They also had a series from Boom Studios that was published for 8 issues from December 2010 to June 2011.

Video Games

 * 1) Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
 * 2) Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
 * 3) Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers: The Adventures in Nimnul's Castle

Home Media
See Also: Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers Videography