What do you get if you combine the worlds most famous secret agent with a generous dose of Saved By The Bell? One reaction might be to suggest TeenAgent, or any of a number of dubious efforts to present teenage spies, but what if it was a cartoon?

Well, what you get is a series that at one fills half-an-hour of a child’s time and provides some harmless entertainment for any tolerant adult. James Bond Jr. offered us the adventures of the famous 007's teenage nephew and gave children the chance to view action and gadgets without worrying about any restrictive film rating.

Premise

James Bond Jr., nephew to the notorious secret agent, attends a private school - Warfield Prep School - in the heart of England. The school is attended by a number of other vaguely familiar characters - like I.Q., grandson of Q, the Bond gadget-master, and Gordo Leiter, surfer-dude son of Bond's occasional CIA contact Felix - padded out with standard stereotypes like a crotchety, but occasionally reasonable, headmaster and a spoilt rich-kid called Trevor Noseworthy IV.

Warfield Prep was originally a Counter Intelligence Training Base that was abandoned and converted to a school. There are still remnants of its former existence in the shape of secret passages and a helicopter-landing pad. The stock pictures, seen from beyond the perimeter wall and gates, makes the building look like a cross between a fortress and a beached Naval frigate.

James is consistently interrupted from his studies by the minions of S.C.U.M.¹  , who number amongst them familiar villains, like Goldfinger and a slightly extreme version of Jaws, and many new ones, like Dr DeRange, a barmy psychopathic French scientist turned villain. The organisation is run by the S.C.U.M.Lord, an imposing man in a fedora, face-scarf and purple suit, who rules from afar most of the time and pets his loyal companion Scuzball, a white, snarling Pitbull Terrier.

The story telling is basic at best, targeted firmly at the under-10’s, and the animation is adequate at best. Stock images, like Warfield Prep, and car chases that lack excitement or energy are common, robbing the series of any chance to impress or excite. The plots are hammered into potential stories by way of school outings, sports trophies and exchange trips, like a poorly plotted fantasy novel relies on kick starting proceedings with a stranger in an inn or a princess-kidnapping dragon. The series also lacks any of the sparkling wit and innuendo of the Bond movies, whether because of the target age group or because the writers genuinely lacked the talent or time to come up with anything better.

The characters are, in many instances, connected to, or converted from, the original Bond concept, with a plentiful sprinkling of individuals who tended to represent a fringe of characters more suited to battling superheroes than secret agents. This may be down to marketing executives believing that adding cybernetic limbs and lasers to anything will make it sell to the kids. Dr. No, for example, has become a gaunt, green-skinned character with cybernetic claws for hands, while Jaws has had his entire jaw replaced with a metal mantrap of a mouth and sports a desperate blue suit, red shirt and yellow flower combination.

Characters

The characters are painful stereotypes filling out a school that doesn’t appear to educate many vocal teenagers. The stories continuously centre around a small group with various villains popping up to cause trouble.

The main, ongoing characters are:

• James Bond Jr. - Action hero and star of the show, James is a capable driver and spy with a dark brown quiff and an eye for the ladies. He is frequently rescued by gadgets and good fortune rather than actual skill. Corey Burton, who provided James Bond Jr.'s voice, also, bizarrely, supplied the voices of the Critters from the movie of the same name.
• Horace Boothroyd - Educated to the point of explosion and grounded firmly in the lore of his grandfather, Q, Horace – better known as I.Q. – is the thinker and inventor of the group. He is constantly coming up with gadgets and is the character most likely to be left behind at the school out of the thick of the action. Jeff Bennett, who also provides the Elvisesque tones of Johnny Bravo, provided I.Q.’s voice.
• Tracy Millbanks - The daughter of the headmaster, Tracy is bright, daring and willing to take the lead, presenting a reasonable sparring partner to James and an unrequited target for his affections.
• Gordo Leiter - A California surfer-dude with long blond hair and a tan. Commonsense consistently fails him, while appearance and having a good time are paramount.
• Pheobe Farragut - The average Scooby-Doo Thelma-clone, she’s short, bespectacled, intelligent and infatuated by members of the opposite sex who don’t seem to realise she exists, like James.
• Trevor Noseworthy IV - Haughty, jealous and pathetic, Trevor constantly seeks attention with doubtful talents or looks to undermine the reputations of others, especially James.
• Mr. Millbanks - A firm and uneven tempered gentleman with grey hair and a moustache, who looks like an ex-British Airforce Officer.
• Mr. Mitchell - The physical education teacher, who is an ex-FBI agent. He has worked with James Bond himself and serves as something of a mission officer for James Bond Jr.
• Dr. DeRange - Appropriately deranged French scientific genius and criminal mastermind. The most commonly encountered villain throughout the run of the series.

The cartoon features the most desperate accents any viewer is ever likely to suffer. All of the teenagers are supposed to have English accents except Gordo, who’s equipped with a California dude tone and a lack of commonsense to match. The English accents vary from the strained efforts that most English actors appear to adopt when appearing in American films to outright caricatures of high-class backgrounds – in Trevor Noseworthy IV – and high-class education – in I.Q. The accents only get worse when the villains arrive, from unconvincing Scandinavian and Germanic accents, that sound more like a clip from an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, to desperate Oriental efforts. The worst recurring accent is definitely for the villain Dr. DeRange, who sounds like a poor impression of John Cleese as the French Taunter in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Episode Guide

All sixty-five episodes of the series are listed below in the order they were shown. Only slightly over a quarter of these episodes are available on video, though the whole series has been shown many times across the globe on various cartoon or children’s channels, generally during the early morning slot.

A common factor amongst many of the episodes is the desperate attempts at puns in the titles, which have to be read to be believed. Some of the titles are very dubious indeed, such as Dutch Treat, which sounds more like some form of exotic contraceptive or marital aid.

1. The Beginning
2. Earth Cracker
3. The Chameleon
4. Shifting Sands
5. Plunder Down Under
6. A Chilling Affair
7. Nothing to Play With
8. Location Danger
9. The Eiffel Missile
10. A Worm in the Apple
11. Valley of the Hungry Dunes
12. Pompeii and Circumstance
13. Never Give a Villain a Fair Shake
14. City of Gold
15. Never Lose Hope
16. No Such Loch
17. Appointment in Macau
18. Lamp of Darkness
19. Hostile Takeover
20. Cruise to Oblivion
21. A Race Against Disaster
22. The Inhuman Race
23. Live and Let's Dance
24. The Sword of Power
25. It's All in the Timing
26. Dance of the Toreadors
27. Fountain of Terror
28. The Emerald Key
29. Ship of Terror
30. Deadly Recall
31. Red Star One
32. Scottish Mist
33. The Art of Evil
34. The Heartbreak Caper
35. Mindfield
36. Leonardo da Vinci's Vault
37. Far Out West
38. Avalanche Run
39. Queen's Ransom
40. Barbella's Big Attraction
41. There for Ms. Fortune
42. Invaders from S.C.U.M.
43. Going for the Gold
44. A Derange Mind
45. Catching the Wave
46. Last of the Tooboos
47. S.C.U.M. on the Water
48. Goldie's Gold Scam
49. Canine Caper
50. Weather or Not
51. Ol' Man River
52. Between a Rock and a Hard Place
53. Sherlock IQ
54. Killer Asteroid
55. Danger Train
56. Quantum Diamonds
57. Rubies Aren't Forever
58. Garden of Evil
59. The Thing in the Ice
60. Goldie Finger at the End of the Rainbow
61. Dutch Treat
62. No Time to Lose
63. Monument to S.C.U.M.
64. Northern Lights
65. Thor's Thunder

The videos that have been released contain a random selection of episodes rather than attempting to follow the course of the series. For example, The Beginning was released on a tape along with Appointment in Macau and A Race with Disaster.

Merchandising

Without doubt the biggest opportunity for the James Bond Jr. phenomenon was riding the wave of popularity in the parent character and giving children the chance to enjoy spies and adventure as well. Action figures and vehicles, picture and storybooks, clothes and bedding, videos and computer games rapidly followed release of the cartoon. Every chance was taken to bleed the licence for ever cent it was worth and, for a time, playgrounds across the world we adrift with James Bond Jr. merchandise. However, like every fad before and since, interest died and the baton was passed to the next big thing, leaving Bond to dwindle into obscurity and his toys and videos drifting into the bargain bucket.