Nerding Day: The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang Battle Dracula🌭

The TV show Happy Days lasted for eleven seasons and was one of the most popular series of the late 1970s, so it makes perfect sense it would get a Saturday morning cartoon spinoff. What makes less sense is that the spinoff would be about three of the main characters from Happy Days traveling through time with a talking dog and fighting Dracula. The cover art for the complete animated series tells you almost everything you need to know about the show. It looks like a bootleg copy of Ukrainian Scooby-Doo.

If you’re wondering how Fonzie, Richie, and Ralph Malph ended up in a time machine, so am I. Keep wondering, chump. This show is never going to tell us. In episode one, we cut to the gang mid-time machine crash. How did they get on the time machine? How did they meet Cupcake, the time-traveling 25th-century chick who is also magic? When did Potsie get replaced with a talking dog named Mr. Cool? How did Anson Williams take the phone call telling him he would be replaced by a talking dog named Mr. Cool? Did they at least offer to let Anson Williams voice Mr. Cool? For some reason, none of these questions will be answered in the show.

The title of the show is probably The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang because at the time Fonzie was so insanely popular that the producers wanted to change the name of Happy Days to Fonzie’s Happy Days, but none of the actors on the show, including Henry Winkler, wanted that, so the name stayed the same. However, the studio wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to stick the solid gold name Fonzie on a cartoon that was definitely just a reskinned American Dr. Who.

Yes, the plot of this show is exactly Dr. Who. At some point, Richie Cunningham, Ralph Malph, Fonzie, and Fonzie’s dog, Mr. Cool, all got into a time machine, and ever since then, they’ve just been trying to get back home. Along the way, they detour to 1,000,000 BC, the moon, Blackbeard’s pirate ship , the year 3057, and Atlantis, and that’s all in season one. Yes, this show got two seasons. It even got some merch.

You may notice that the characters are so poorly drawn they sort of look like those weird Marvel cartoons where they didn’t want to pay Marvel actors for their likenesses, so Black Widow looks like Shmarlett Shmohansson. I’m going to assume they had permission to use the Happy Days actors’ likenesses, since all of the actors from Happy Days voiced their characters. That must have been a wild time for them, going to the studio during the week to record an episode where Richie learns an important lesson about lactose intolerance and then hitting the VO booth on the weekend to do the episode where the Viking Sorceress Grimhilde steals the gang’s time machine.

Every episode of this show sounds so profoundly made up. There’s an episode just called “KELP!” where the gang ends up in 3817 on the ocean floor in a battle between the kelp farmers of Aqua City and a greedy surface dweller who wants to destroy the city. So it’s Happy Days in a time machine, in the future, under the ocean. It’s like this was part of a scientific experiment to see how much you can Ship of Theseus a TV show.

I guess if I were to single out any one episode as the weirdest, it would be the one where Fonzie defeats Dracula, partly because it was so early in the series when they got to the Dracula fight. Most shows don’t bring in Dracula until deep in their tenure. Buffy The Vampire Slayer waited until season 5; Penny Dreadful at least made it to season 3; The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang was seven episodes in before they were like, “this show needs some Dracula.”

Like every other episode of the show, we begin in the time machine, where Cupcake is one thousand percent certain they are about to land safely in 1957 Milwaukee. “You rubes!” the children at home scream at the television, you will never return to 1957 Milwaukee. As everyone looks out the window, distracted and excited about finally ending their six-episode-long journey, Darcula appears in the control room and redirects the time machine. Cupcake gets a lot of shit for being a bad driver, but you try driving when Dracula is yanking the wheel.

They do end up landing in 1957, but instead of Milwaukee, they are in Transylvania at the castle of Count Wolfgang Von Wolfenstein, which, of course, logic dictates is the extremely werewolf-themed name of Dracula. As happens in almost every episode, the time machine mysteriously disappears, and the gang is suddenly stranded. Now here’s where I’m a little confused. If I were the Happy Days Gang, and I’d been to the Ming Dynasty and the Old West in search of 1957 Milwaukee, I would be psyched to be a mere plane ride away from Milwaukee. This show would be over. I would be immediately hitchhiking toward Milwaukee.

Unfortunately, The Happy Days gang chooses to split up with Fonzi, Mr. Cool, and Cupcake opting to spend the night in Dracula’s castle, and Richie and Ralph opting to find a place in the nearby town because silly Ralph is afraid of the nice Dracula for some reason. Of course, they are immediately chased by a wolf, which is another weird, recurring thing that happens in this cartoon a lot. Were wolves really funny in the ’80s? I guess the idea of Richie Cunningham specifically being chased by a wolf is kind of funny. It feels like the cartoonists who worked on the show only knew how to draw certain things, and one of them was wolf. It definitely seems like drawing a wolf was a more important qualification to the studio than drawing consistent human faces.

Back at the castle, Dracula immediately announces to Cupcake that he wants to marry her and make her his queen. Cupcake responds with her catchphrase, which is “cosmic calamities.” She says this like nine times an episode, and it can mean anything. This time, I don’t think it means yes, I will marry you, Dracula, let’s settle down and have vampiric babies. It seems like Dracula wants to marry Cupcake because she has magic powers, but her magic powers almost never work, which he quickly learns when he hypnotizes Cupcake to attack Fonzie, and she instead turns him and Mr. Cool into circus clowns. I think they were trying to cram in as many horror movie concepts as possible in twenty minutes and hadn’t hit clown yet.

Meanwhile, Ralph and Richie are chased down a trap door in the basement where, of course, there’s a gross little guy doing weird experiments. Every Dracula house comes with one. For some reason, this gross little guy is doing some sort of The Fly-style experiment and ends up fusing Ralph and the wolf that was chasing them, which causes Ralph to become a werewolf. Cartoon science is beautiful.

Richie is now on the run from Werewolf Ralph inside the castle, where he runs into Cupcake and Fonzie. This is the conversation that ensues:

​

Richie: “I’ve got bad news, Fonz, and I’m not sure how to break this to you.”

​

Fonzie: “Yeah, we know, Rich, the count is a vampire.”

​

Richie: “Worse, Fonz, Ralph is a werewolf!”

​

Cupcake: “Cosmic calamities!”

Now, Cupcake, Mr. Cool, Fonzie, and Richie are all running from Dracula, Igor, and Werewolf Ralph. A lot of this show is running and sliding through trap doors. They end up back in the lab, where we finally get the Fonzie Vs. Dracula showdown we’ve all been waiting for. Fonzie says, “It’s just you and me,” to Dracula, who turns into his smallest, weakest form, a bat, and swoops at Fonzie.

The show’s biggest problem is that Fonzie’s superpower is being able to do absolutely anything because he is so cool. That makes any conflict difficult, so they sort of have to keep Fonzie distracted by a girl, or trying to observe good manners for a long time, until finally he decides to solve whatever the episode’s problem is with his magic cool powers. In this case, bat Dracula accidentally activates the controls to turn Ralph back when trying to attack Fonzie. That’s how cool Fonzie is!

At this point, the Dracula fight has been going on all night, and Fonzie realizes this, directing Mr. Cool to pull a lever that opens a trap door in the ceiling. The sunlight turns Dracula into a tornado, which reveals the time machine under an extremely time machine-shaped tarp in the lab. The Dracula tornado sends Mr. Cool tumbling through the air, but Fonzie catches him and they both go “AAAAYYYYYYY!” Because this show needs more catchphrases.

They all get back on the time machine to attempt to fly to Milwaukee. Spoiler alert, in the next episode, they land in the Salem witch trials, and Cupcake almost gets burned at the stake. The most shocking thing about this show is that it was renewed for a second season, and even after it was canceled, Fonzie and Mr. Cool both lived on after a transfer to Laverne & Shirley In The Army. They even changed the name of the show to Laverne & Shirley With Special Guest Star The Fonz. I guess that was the only way to sell a show back then. I wonder if it would still work today. All I’m saying is that there’s nothing preventing us from changing this website’s name to 1900HotdogWithSpecialGuestStarTheFonz.com.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mr. Bob Gray, who has also been replaced by Mr. Cool. Sorry Bob, the fans want what they want.