Karussell

I wonder if the background music was played on a calliope?

Karussell Musik und Video GmbH is a German recording company which belongs to Universal Music Family Entertainment, a division of Universal Music GmbH, these days. Among their many products were cassette tapes retelling the stories of various episodes of the Generation 1 cartoon. Each cassette retold two episodes selected from the first three seasons of the cartoon using dialogue recorded for the German dubs by Polyband. This was in fact a common practice in Germany at the time, also employed by labels such as Oh Ha (Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles), Europa (Knight Rider) and Polyband themselves (M.A.S.K.). While the cassettes proceed in generally chronological order, their episode selection appears somewhat random, but is in fact based on the (itself somewhat random) airing order of the first "season" when it first aired on German TV station RTL in 1989, skipping the first six episodes of the "season" (Nightmare Planet, The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 1 and Part 2 and The Rebirth, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, which were released on VHS by Polyband themselves). Cover art was even more random, consisting entirely of package art for the toys, with some characters appearing on the covers of tapes that do not feature them. Of particular note is the appearance of Wreck-Gar on the cover of tape #2 and Hubcap (!) appearing on the cover of tape #3; both tapes contain only Season 2 episodes. The background music for these episodes is replaced by stock background music from Karussell's own library. In addition, the cassette tapes featured a narrator: Achim Schülke.

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  Volume 1: Transport to Oblivion and Roll for It
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  Volume 2: Auto-Bop and The Autobot Run
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  Volume 3: The Girl Who Loved Powerglide and Hoist Goes Hollywood
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  Volume 4: Dark Awakening and Forever Is a Long Time Coming
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  Volume 5: Starscream's Ghost and Thief in the Night
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  Volume 6: Surprise Party and Madman's Paradise

External links

• Karussell's website