As kids were getting older Disney decided to appeal more to their age by staying hip and creating a show that kids could identify with. So they decided to move away from ducks and instead move on to dogs with their show Goof Troop. Goof Troop really doesn’t have much story to it. It’s just the adventures and stories of Goofy and his son Max living in the suburbs with Pete and his family as their neighbors.
This was the first time that Disney tried to appeal to the audience by showing how cool and hip they were instead of trying to suck the audience it with it’s good stories, characters, dialog, and themes from their past shows. For example, Max is always embarrassed by his dad’s antics, he’s into extreme sports (why were they forcing that down our throats?), got the shades and dance moves, and if I’m not mistaken he and PJ had their own secret lingo.
Now despite the show not drawing me in as say Ducktales and Darkwing Duck I wouldn’t call the show bad. I remember watching this show quite a bit growing up and enjoying the antics of Goofy but that was the show’s only selling point. Well that and Pete’s family. Yeah, it took me a while but after hearing the thoughts of the Nostalgia Critic I figured out what really kept me watching this show. It was Pete and his family. They really were the driving force for this show. You got Pete the overbearing father always trying to make a quick buck, the sweet mom but threatening wife, PJ the boy whose confidence and independence is crushed by his father, and the little hyperactive sister Pistol. The show honestly would have been more interesting if it focused on Pete and his family and had Goofy and Max as side characters. The show never really explored the single parent aspect of Goofy. It doesn’t really seem to bother him or Max all that much. I mean not once do I recall Max asking about his mother or Goofy bringing her up (so what did Max just appear on his doorstep one day and Goofy took him in?). The stuff that they did with Goofy and Max could have easily been done with Pete and his family except for maybe one or two things. So was Goof Troops a bad show? No, it just focused on the wrong characters and tried to be hip in order to appeal to the audience when it didn’t really need to. The show was okay, it had funny moments, and you could see this as Disney trying something new but not entirely failing. If you want to see where Disney failed big time stick around we’re getting to that soon.