D-4: The Trojan Dog

D-4, the title character in this entry from Whamo Entertainment's Animated Classic Gold 1 series, is a strategic weapon in yet another animated mice-vs.-cats war, with said animation a particularly irritating limited sort--not as kitschy-kool as Sailor Moon or Dragonball Z and possessed of many of the worst attributes of Hanna-Barbera chase genre ‘toons where the characters spend a good deal of time running past inane background loops, moving only legs and mouths as they forward the plot. Speaking of plot, what there is here is--surprise!--a mawkish rip-off of the ancient Trojan Horse story, but with a big hollow robotic dog. While the characterizations are uniformly perky, and the story is unfailingly sweet in an aw-shucks kind of way, there are far, far better choices in the category of children's animated titles out there, making this "animated classic gold" entry (an obvious take-off on Disney's "classic" and "gold" lines) an unnecessary purchase. Aud: P. (M. Tribby)