Yeah that was stupid because A) you know Egon from the others just because he has glasses and B) They(the kids) were able to tell them apart in the movies right?

As for the B&B part, well hey, I've never seen a full episode of B&B in my life and never will.

fome
maybe Mike Judge likes RGB (*peter)

Mike Judge? Wasn't he Donnagon Giggles on the Spy Kids movies. Wow, didn't know he created B&B. Well now that I know he was responsible for them, I loathe him now.

I would love for them all to return. I don't know why they all think their image would do them harm. Ghostbusters has never been about image, it's about science fiction with a big dose of humour.
I mean why would actors feel their image is a problem? They are hired for their look for a role, why would they need to change it.
Part of me thinks it's not about image, it's about “returning” to do a sequel that they don't want their faces attached to if it bombs. They can hide behind a voice-over.

And that pic of Annie Potts? Yowza! She's gorgeous!

I would hire Janine anytime (*janine)

fusi0n
And that pic of Annie Potts? Yowza! She's gorgeous!

You can say that again
We love ya, Annie!

Matthew
Egon had blond hair in order to differentiate his character from the others. For the same reason Ray had orange/ginger hair and Peters brown hair. The same reason their jump suits were all different colours. The animators thought that children might not be able to tell them apart which was a little stupid.

It's not really that stupid, every cartoon I remember had everyone looking drastically different from each other and with their own clothing/colour style.

It was only Power Rangers that took that idea too far.

Can't really understand the reasoning? Well, it's hard to think like you did ten+ years ago.

Even when I was 8 years old I remember thinking “Why do they look like that?”. Kids are alot smarter than adults take them for. Too many kids shows unnessessarily play down to children which can feel patronising even to a child. There's no need for it.

Matthew
Even when I was 8 years old I remember thinking “Why do they look like that?”. Kids are alot smarter than adults take them for. Too many kids shows unnessessarily play down to children which can feel patronising even to a child. There's no need for it.

Far worse sins were commited by ‘powers that were’ thinking they knew best. Individual colour schemes and haircuts was actually pretty small scale.

It's been my experience that animation looks to color and exaggeration as keys to creating a dynamic product. Just like most superhero costumes look crappy if exactly rendered into live action, teams of people colored exactly alike tend to make animation look dull.

The producers of RGB were unable to use the actor likenesses. That's a fact. So they went for caricatures that didn't even look much like the actors, giving Ray and Egon different hair colors in the interest of a far more dynamic product visually.

They produced a trailer where the Ghostbusters wore the exact same tannish flight suits…and somewhere along the line somebody probably decided that the color pallett was still too limited and dull for the requirements of animation at the time, thus the more colorful flight suits.

Ghostbusters is far from the only property to undergo color makeovers for animation. Take the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for example: in the original Mirage comics, on the covers and the occassional rare color issue, all of the Turtles wear red masks. When it came time to put the Turtles on TV, the animators took the bunch (who look far more alike than the Ghostbusters ever would) and came up with the idea of different colored masks to help differentiate them. Raphael, like Ray Stantz, got to keep his original color…everyone else got a makeover.

The Turtle's color infusion has carried over into every version ever since…Mirage is pretty much the only ones who color all four in red masks. The live action movies and the newer cartoon, while keeping closer to the art stylings of the comics, still use the different masks. They've even given the Turtles slightly different shades of skin tone. I'm sure there are purists out there who whine about the TMNT's not all wearing red like in the original, but I haven't heard it.

Suffice it to say that there's still a minority of us out there who think the animated likenesses are more interesting and dynamic, and don't get insistant that the Ghostbusters must be four guys in tan who look like Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis, and Hudson.

It wasn't the best but it was still great to have a cartoon, regardless of what color their suits and hair is.

But the idea of them being different colors so children could tell them apart will more than likely mean they're going to have to follow that same rule with a CG film. Meh.

And why couldn't they get actor's likeness?

Well, the good news about being “colorful” is that since 1986 a lot of anime has made it to the States, and there has been some of that that's been downright dark and grim. The “animation is just for kids” mentality has loosened just a tad.

As for the question “And why couldn't they get actor's likeness?”

Well, there's the obvious answer, right from JMS himself:

We can't show Bill Murray's face, because he owns that

(Interview in Starlog Magazine, Issue #111, October 1986)

Different actors have different contracts. We all know how Bill Murray doesn't like anyone using his likeness; I'd expect the cartoon producers probably could've gotten the rights to everyone else, but chose not to because it was cheaper that way.

A lot of people nowadays don't realize what a trailblazer RGB was; how it broke from so many of the conventions of the time. With something that different from everything else being shovelled into Saturday morning, there was always the chance it could've been a colossal bomb. One theory I've heard (I can't remember where, so take it with a grain of salt) is that the cartoon appearances were so different to make it easier to disown if didn't work.