Season:  1

Number of Episodes:  13

On Air:  September 13th 1986 - December 13th, 1986

I remember there was a Ghostbusters cartoon on TV when I was a kid and I know I my brother and I watched it.  We had a lot of action figures from the series along with  ghost poppers which we used to shoot at each other with.  But as an adult I really don't remember anything from the series.  After just watching Ghostbusters Afterlife and re watching Ghostbusters 1 and 2, I was feeling nostalgic and I decided to watch a few episodes from the series.  I ended up watching the whole first season and I had a lot of fun with it.

The Real Ghostbusters takes place sometime after the events of the first movie.  The cartoon has the four Ghostbusters  along with there secretary Janine and there live-in ghost Slimer.  The Ghostbusters each retained their character traits from the movie, Peter has the smart remark jokes, Egon is the nerdy science guy, Ray is the adult child and Winston is the everyday guy.  Slimer retained his love of food from the movie and is given the personality of a little kid (in the first movie, Slimer didn't have a name and was the first ghost the Ghostbusters captured.  The only real change to the characters from the movies besides their voices was they gave Egon blond hair in the cartoon.

Each episode of the thirteen episode season is a monster of the week story.  There is no big overall story and every episode can be watched in any order you like.  Most episodes deal with random monsters but some do tackle more traditional monsters like Samhain and the Sandman among others.   Some episodes also put more focus on some characters like Egon and Ray and gives a small glimpse into their backstories.  There is even an episode where the Ghostbusters go to Hollywood to help consult on a movie being made about themselves (which at the very end they show a two second intro clip from the first movie).  Overall, I didn't find any of these episodes horrible and I enjoyed most of them.

My favorite episode of the season was episode 11 "Citizen Ghost".  This episode recounts what happened immediately following the end of the first movie.  It shows the firehouse getting rebuilt, how the Ghostbusters got new uniforms and how Slimer got his name and why the Ghostbusters kept him along.  The episode also had a pretty good moster of the week so I thought the episode was really well done.  I also liked episode 13 "Xmas Marks The Spot".  This was a Christmas episode that has the Ghostbusters capturing the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future and in the process destroying Christmas.   They spend the rest of the episode trying to fix their mistake.

This is a kids cartoon from the mid eighties and as someone who was a kid in the eighties, I know how the animation was and I have no problem with it.  There are a few mistakes here and their as far as characters on screen that don't match the voice of the character talking, but overall I didn't think it was bad.  The voice actors all did a good job with the characters and I felt how they portrayed these characters was pretty close to their movie counterparts.  The sound effects where all good and the music thrown in some episodes didn't feel out of place.  Plus you have the intro which I completely forgot about but is still great to hear every time I watch it.  Overall this is a show designed for kids and most kids are looking to be entertained, not for a graphic masterpiece.

This show did one thing, continued telling Ghostbuster stories to kids.  It had the Ghostbusters, proton packs, ghost traps, Ecto-1, the firehouse and of course ghosts.  The addition of Slimer I felt was a really good move and he is one of characters I enjoyed most seeing onscreen.  The first season kept me interested and while everything in the episodes is geared towards kids, I still enjoyed watching these episodes.  After watching the first season, I look forward to starting the second season soon.