Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa is a 1992 American animated television series created by comic book artist Ryan Brown, known for his work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It aired as part of ABC's Saturday morning lineup. It was produced by Greengrass Productions in association with King World Productions, and was animated by Gunther-Wahl Productions for its first season and Ruby-Spears Enterprises for its second. At the time of launch, it was the second animated series involving King World Productions to be broadcast (the other was the animated spin-off of The Little Rascals, which aired on ABC from 1982 to 1984). First broadcast on September 12, 1992, the show ran for two seasons of thirteen episodes each.

Plot

Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa dealt with a mutation of some kind; an irradiated comet struck the late 19th century Western plains creating a miles high mesa shrouded in clouds. Everything trapped on top of the mesa was "cow-metized" by the light from the "cow-met" and "evolved" into a "bovipomorphic" state. Inspired by old tales of the Wild West, this new bovine community developed to the point where they emulated that era's way of life, including the requisite ruffians and corrupt sheriffs. However, their knowledge of Wild West living was limited, and as such, many things about their culture had to be improvised to 'fill in the blanks'. The concepts of steampunk and Weird West were utilized throughout its run. The series focuses on trying to keep justice in the frontier territory. The lawbreakers were too much for the corrupt regulators of Cowtown (namely Mayor Oscar Bulloney and Sheriff Terrorbull) to handle by themselves. Helping them out, whether they wanted it or not, were a group of peacekeepers known as C.O.W.-Boys (the C.O.W. part is short for "Code of the West") led by Marshal Moo Montana and joined by the Dakota Dude and the Cowlorado Kid. Marshal Moo Montana and his deputies had their hands full with several ruffians and outlaw gangs that plagued the otherwise peaceful town.

Characters

C.O.W.-Boys

Supporting

Antagonists

Episode guide

Several of these episodes or episode titles are parodies of popular Western films or books.

Season 1 (1992)

Season 2 (1993)

Cast

Additional voices

Crew

Theme song

The theme song was sung by country artist Billy Dean, who co-wrote it with Verlon Thompson.

Toys

A toy line was released by Hasbro with designs reminiscent of Playmates Toys Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures.

Reboot

On August 11, 2023, it was announced that The Nacelle Company had purchased the rights to the original series and would reboot the property with a brand-new animated series and a new line of action figures and other merchandise.

In other media

Video game

A four-player arcade game was also released by Konami in North America and Europe on November 19, 1992. Ryan Brown worked closely with Konami on the game's development. The game is a side-scrolling run-and-gun similar to Konami's previous game, Sunset Riders.

Comic book

Between December 1992 and February 1993, Archie Comics published a three-issue limited series titled The Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa, which was written by Brown's long-time collaborator Doug Brammer. This was followed by a regular series which ran for three issues, March–July 1993.

Videocassette

Twelve VHS cassettes containing episodes were released: