Rutbreaker: The Curious Case of "Run With Us"

Take a look at this video. It's of a mid 80s song called "Run With Us" and it looks pretty straightforward for the time. The singer, Lisa Lougheed, has the big hair and all and it is full with synthesizers and guitar riffs.

What makes this song unique is it's origin. If you notice in the title, it has in parentheses (The Raccoons). Obviously the Raccoons was the band who originally sung the song and this is a cover right?

Wrong.

This is the Raccoons that are being mentioned:

It's a cartoon and "Run With Us" is its end credits theme. 

   

Now 80s cartoons had some rockin' music to go along with all the guns and aliens and great characters (all of which in no way could and would be exploited for the toy market; no siree). But even then, the main themes of these cartoons were the star. This was the end credits theme, a theme that usually is a remix or instrumental of the intro theme. For these creators to create not only an original song for the end credits but a song that is supercharged with more angst and worry perhaps than the usual 80s cartoon song is interesting and quite frankly commendable. If they are willing to put that much effort into a cartoon when they could have easily slapdashed it, then they were truly devoted to the project and to making it work.

"Run With Us" was made into a single and didn't do all that much on the Canadian charts. That's right, Canadian. Now some things make sense.

Anyway, it got me thinking, in my ADD way, to arguably the most successful song that could have ever come out of a cartoon. Two come to mind.

- The theme of Bob The Builder hit the top of the charts in the UK in 2000. It not only was a #1, it was the highest selling single OF THE YEAR in the UK. I'm not going to post it due to potentially scaring away people, but I think most people know it and it is on YouTube.

- A song that was just put in as an insert in the cartoon The Archies and it ended up becoming a classic. I speak of course of "Sugar Sugar"

The difference between the two is that while the BTB theme was a hit in the UK, it did not make a peep in the US. "Sugar Sugar" was a hit everywhere and still remains a classic song fondly remembered in that era.

What about you guys? What cartoon songs do you think could have made a blip musically. Please comment or get me on Facebook. Thanks.