Major Tom?



I believe there's a character on the cartoon Chaotic named Major Tom, at least that's what I thought I heard while flipping through the channels and happened upon Chaotic on Toon Disney. Now many of you are probably too young to get the reference but Major Tom was rock legend, David Bowie's first successful persona. He was the character in his song Space Oddity (His first commercial hit) and then later his song Ashes to Ashes.

Major Tom as a ghost also appears in The Venture Brothers as well as The Action Man, another character from David Bowie's song Ashes to Ashes, in fact the first scene of that episode is dialogue consisting only of David Bowie song lyrics. David Bowie appears as a character repeatedly in The Venture Brothers as a powerful shape shifter version of himself. Hmm... Jareth from Labyrinth?

Adam Sandler also sings Space Oddity in the film Mr. Deeds.

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"Major Tom" was also the name of a song done during the "Neue Deutsche Welle" (new wave German) pop trend of the early 1980s, by Peter Schilling. At that time everyone thought Schilling was ripping off Bowie. Nothing to do with shapeshifting or anything Chaotic-related, just a bit of corollary history.


"She's gotten herself engaged to an inebriated newt-fancier!"

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Major Tom Coming Home by Peter Shilling was a salute to Bowie, not a rip off. It was a homage.

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Could be, could be. Maybe it was intended as a homage, but I was in college at the time (and had just returned from a junior year abroad in Germany) and everyone was talking about it as though Schilling couldn't come up with anything better, so he took "Major Tom."

Again, just a bit of historical eyewitness commentary, not trying to get into an argument with you.


"She's gotten herself engaged to an inebriated newt-fancier!"

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I liked that song and to me it felt like a kind homage to Bowie the way Bon Jovi's Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars talks about Ziggy Stardust.

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