Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors was a product-driven cartoon that aired in 1985-1987, when I was a little too old to fall victim to every action cartoon that came along, but still found this one head and shoulders above the rest. Jayce had some pretty decent stories. It looks like some toy company gave these writers and animators specs for their line of new toys, then gave the writers leeway to stretch the hell out of it with focus on the characters. Okay, a little robot knight trying to do comic relief, they could have skipped that. And there are a lot of Star Wars archetypes or rip-offs: the powerful young hero, the cynical older buddy like Han Solo, the white-haired wizard. But within the parameters that you'd expect for this kind of show, I think Jayce pushed the envelope a little tiny bit.

[If you'd like to prove that my memory is faulty and that it's much worse than I remember, feel free to buy me some of the dvds. They're available on amazon. I haven't actually watched the show in...holy shit, nineteen years? Have I been alive and conscious that long?]

Turns out some of the episodes were written by J. Michael Straczynski (creator of that Babylon 5 that everyone says you should have watched) and author Barbara Hambly. Straczynski was also involved with He-Man, Real Ghostbusters, and wrote episodes of Twilight Zone; Murder, She Wrote; Jake and the Fatman, and Walker, Texas Ranger.