The art style. The slightly more child-friendly tone. The episodic cliffhangers? It's no wonder we're all getting big "Saturday morning cartoon" vibes from Netflix's new animated series Stranger Things: Tales From '85. Hell, it's even set during the time cereal-munching kids would plonk themselves in front of the telly to kickstart their weekend...
In a recent interview with GamesRadar+, though, showrunner Eric Robles explained why he's deliberately "trying to stay away from the term" in the run-up to its release.
"[It] could mean anything from Care Bears to He-Man to Robotech," he tells us. "Look, I'm a Saturday morning kid myself, but it's so vague that it pops different ideas in people's minds. I would hate to use that nowadays, because somebody may be like, 'Oh, it's going to be super kiddie. And it's like, 'No, it's not right'. I didn't try to make it feel young for the sake of it."
Executive produced by the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things: Tales From '85 fills us in on what the D&D-playing youngsters got up to in the winter after the Snow Ball. If you're a long-time fan of the flagship series, you'll remember that season 2 opened on Halloween and the summer-set season 3 took place around July 4th – so there's plenty of gaps to plug. It's heavy on the mystery and while there are plenty of "awesome monsters" across its 10 episodes, it skews a little lighter than its live-action counterpart.
For Robles, the tone of the show was inspired by illustrator Kyle Lambert's official Stranger Things posters. "I looked at those things like I looked at Drew Struzan's Back to the Future posters as a kid, and my imagination would just go wild. I thought to myself, 'If we can bring those posters to life with that kind of authenticity and those brush strokes and that artistic kind of approach, we'll have ourselves a pretty cool show."
He goes on to say that he grew up watching the likes of The Lost Boys, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street with his dad – and that he wanted to create some of his own darkly fun moments in Tales.
"With all these movies, there's horror involved, but it's going to be okay. These kids are going to be okay. We're going to figure it out," Robles notes. "And that's all we wanted to do. I wanted to really capture that sense of real danger and make a show that wasn't Scooby Doo Light, but also not super heavy."
Stranger Things: Tales From '85 premieres on April 23. While we wait, check out our picks of the best Netflix shows for some watchlist inspiration.
