Interestly, the series was granted what in western countries would almost qualify as a “prime time” slot, airing at 6:00pm every Friday evening.įor its original broadcast in Taiwan, the entire ThunderCats series was dubbed into Chinese (Mandarin), where the title of the series translated into Pi-li-Mao – I’m told that “Pi-li” means “awesome, thunderbolt, unexpected”, and “Mao” means simply “cat”. The show then returned to China TV on 6th January 1989, running until 5th May of the same year, although it is unclear whether this was new episodes or re-runs. The first network to air ThunderCats in Taiwan was China TV, with the series apparently making its debut on 12th December 1986, running through to 25th December 1987. (Apparently in Taiwan there once existed a rumour that the ThunderCats concept was initially created by a pair of Taiwanese individuals, although this would go against what is already known of the series’ origins.)Īs well as owing some of its production to Taiwan, ThunderCats also enjoyed popularity when broadcast in the country. The concept and design of the series was actually devised and created in a collaborative effort between Japan and the US, and the majority of the series was animated in Japan by a studio known as Pacific Animation – however, it would appear that Pacific were aided in some form by a Taiwanese company called Wang Film, a studio that assisted many overseas animation companies back in the 1980s. In 2006, we were contacted by a Taiwanese gentleman named Azuma Windwalker, who very generously provided us with a great deal of information about ThunderCats and its connections to Taiwan.įoremost amongst these connections is the creation of ThunderCats itself. ThunderCats is so strongly assosciated with western parts of the world such as the US that it’s easy to forget that its roots are planted firmly in the east, and in particular in Taiwan.