What do you get if you combine the world's most famous secret agent with a generous dose of Saved by the Bell¹? One reaction might be to suggest TeenAgent, or any number of dubious efforts to present teenage spies. But what if it was a cartoon?

Well, what you get is a series that 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 well-known 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 IQ, grandson of Q, the Bond gadget-master, and Gordo Leiter, surfer-dude son of Bond's occasional CIA contact Felix. The programmes are also 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, later abandoned and converted into 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 SCUM (Saboteurs and Criminals United in Mayhem), who number among 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 SCUM 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-10s, and the animation is adequate. 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, in the way 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 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 IQ – 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 school and out of the thick of the action. Jeff Bennett, who also provides the Elvisesque tones of Johnny Bravo, provided IQ'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. Common sense consistently fails him, while appearance and having a good time are paramount.

• Phoebe 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 is equipped with a California dude tone and a lack of common sense 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 IQ. 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 65 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 among 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.

• 'The Beginning'
• 'Earth Cracker'
• 'The Chameleon'
• 'Shifting Sands'
• 'Plunder Down Under'
• 'A Chilling Affair'
• 'Nothing to Play With'
• 'Location Danger'
• 'The Eiffel Missile'
• 'A Worm in the Apple'
• 'Valley of the Hungry Dunes'
• 'Pompeii and Circumstance'
• 'Never Give a Villain a Fair Shake'
• 'City of Gold'
• 'Never Lose Hope'
• 'No Such Loch'
• 'Appointment in Macau'
• 'Lamp of Darkness'
• 'Hostile Takeover'
• 'Cruise to Oblivion'
• 'A Race Against Disaster'
• 'The Inhuman Race'
• 'Live and Let's Dance'
• 'The Sword of Power'
• 'It's All in the Timing'
• 'Dance of the Toreadors'
• 'Fountain of Terror'
• 'The Emerald Key'
• 'Ship of Terror'
• 'Deadly Recall'
• 'Red Star One'
• 'Scottish Mist'
• 'The Art of Evil'
• 'The Heartbreak Caper'
• 'Mindfield'
• 'Leonardo da Vinci's Vault'
• 'Far Out West'
• 'Avalanche Run'
• 'Queen's Ransom'
• 'Barbella's Big Attraction'
• 'There for Ms Fortune'
• 'Invaders from SCUM'
• 'Going for the Gold'
• 'A Derange Mind'
• 'Catching the Wave'
• 'Last of the Tooboos'
• 'SCUM on the Water'
• 'Goldie's Gold Scam'
• 'Canine Caper'
• 'Weather or Not'
• 'Ol' Man River'
• 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place'
• 'Sherlock IQ'
• 'Killer Asteroid'
• 'Danger Train'
• 'Quantum Diamonds'
• 'Rubies Aren't Forever'
• 'Garden of Evil'
• 'The Thing in the Ice'
• 'Goldie Finger at the End of the Rainbow'
• 'Dutch Treat'
• 'No Time to Lose'
• 'Monument to SCUM'
• 'Northern Lights'
• '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 every cent it was worth and, for a time, playgrounds across the world were 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.