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Hanna Barbera were always shameless when it came to recycling elements and attempting to inject life into tired ideas. Often this would encompass adding a cutesy animal sidekick ... or in this instance ... setting the character into outer space.

Casper the Frindly Ghost was one of the flagship characters for Paramount's HarveyToons in the 1940s along with Baby Huey, Herman the Mouse and Lil Lotta. Long after the demise of Paramount's theatrical cartoon department, Hanna Barbera was leased the rights to the Casper character from Harvey Comics and they came out with this strange hybrid of various Saturday Morning elements.

Like many Hanna Barbera and Filmation cartoons of the 1970s, Casper and the Angels takes place in the future, and in outer space. The Jetsons, Frankenstein Jr, and Space Ghost featured original characters but by the seventies this notion had given way to existing characters being sent spaceward. Classic examples of this of course are Josie & the Pussycats in Outer Space, Gilligan's Planet, Partridge Family 2200 AD, and this, the last of the bunch: Casper and the Angels.

Casper the Friendly Ghost works for the "Space Police" and is teamed up with Harry the Ghost who is a giant ghost covered in fur who wears a bow-tie. They are paired with a pair of female agents (human) who both sport futuristic outfits and have cameltoe. The two women are loose caricatures of Laverne & Shirley (although the Laverne type character resembles Barbara Streisand more). Together they fight "space criminals" and eat "space food" fill up their cars with "space gas" all in twelve minute episodic incidents. Like several of the cheap cartoons from the era, the show has a disembodied sounding laugh track, but not even the laugh track sounds very amused, as it goes long stretches without laughing.

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Friendly spook Casper & two bumbling women fight crime in outer space.

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Casper and the Angels

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