- Acting for Two: According to the Rocky Solotoff interview and The Western World of Sailor Moon, Adrienne Barbeau voiced both Queen Beryl and Queen Serenity. This was due to budget constraints; according to the Screen Actors' Guild, one performer can voice up to three characters and still be paid the same.
- The Cast Show Off: Maria Chaidez, Danny DeLacey and Tami-Adrian George were the only ones with dance training, and so put that to good use in the dance sequence.
- Dawson Casting: According to Tami-Adrian George, who was Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Mercury's actress, Melinda Cowan, was the only cast member under the age of eighteen. In fact, Maria Chaidez, who played Sailor Venus, was in her late twenties and already had a child.
- Early Draft Tie-In: Ever wonder why the American version of the Sailor Moon Crystal Star Compact, known as the Sailor Locket, combines said compact with Usagi's first brooch? That's how it appeared in this pilot. The show got far enough into production that this version of the locket, along with a toy of a vehicle called the Moon Cycle, got produced.
- Executive Meddling: The Five-Token Band to diversify the original all-Japanese cast of the anime was a mandate from the higher-ups. So was the call to have the character designs resemble those of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power.
- Follow the Leader: This was one of many pilots for potential American adaptations of Japanese shows inspired by the success of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (adapting Super Sentai). Had this been picked up instead of simply dubbing Sailor Moon into English, the anime boom in the west may not have happened as it did in the 90s.
- Hey, It's That Place!: The live-action scenes were shot on the same set as Saved by the Bell: The College Years, and close inspection of the promo video can identify the same hallway and dorm room.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: The trailer for what they planned on doing with the series was screened at a Fan Convention and didn't resurface in full until August 2022; fans had to make do with incomplete camcorder footage until then. Nicknamed "Saban Moon" (despite Saban not being involved; it was produced by Toei's American division Renaissance Atlantic, who helped produce Power Rangers), and wasn't seen by anyone outside the industry for years. Because of that, it has become something of a curious sacred treasure among some members of the American Sailor Moon fandom, who want to see for themselves just how bad it really was. Even the animation cels and shooting script (for the animated segments) sold for thousands on eBay.
- Missing Episode: The pilot was considered lost for twenty years until it was uncovered in the Library of Congress in 2022 and shared publicly
. - Never Work with Children or Animals: In this version, Luna would have been made telepathic and communicated with the protagonists that way; as a more cost-effective way of making a cat talk, as they were using a real cat. The cat itself was difficult to work with as, according to Rocky Solotoff, it "peed everywhere" and its wrangler had to sedate it; making it like working with a ragdoll.
- No Budget: The pilot was created on a shoestring, requiring animators and other crew members to work on it in their free time while they were working on other shows. And at one point, the animation was outsourced to Korea.
- One-Episode Wonder: Just a pilot, that's it.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: On the more mundane end of the scale of things, when the girls are getting ready for the dance Venus appears to applying makeup with a shower pouf loofah for some reason.
- Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Due to the DiC dub re-using the logo from this, and the pilot's uncovering eventually revealing that Sailor Moon's English name was Victoria - it's been theorised that the names used in DiC's early pitch video for the dub were what the Sailor Soldiers' names would have been in this. Usagi's was Victoria, and Mamoru's was Darian (the dub just spelled it Darien), with Luna keeping her name. Usagi's was Victoria in the video, with the others being Bleu (Ami), Dana (Rei), Sarah (Makoto) and Carrie (Minako).
- Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: Tami-Adrian George and Danny DeLacey had to wear wigs to hide their long hair. Ironically their anime counterparts were long-haired, and Mercury was the one with Boyish Short Hair, but this portrays her with long red hair.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: As the pilot was a demo reel not for public consumption it appears the production crew just used a karaoke version of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds for the soundtrack.
- Uncredited Role: Well everyone, but as of 2024, the identity of the voice actor playing Darian/Tuxedo Mask was the only one not known yet. As is the Korean studio Toon Makers outsourced some of the pilot's animation to.
- What Could Have Been:
- This series was going to air on FOX in Fall 1994 note , along with an English dub of Magic Knight Rayearth and a drastically different Mega Man cartoon.
- Although Luna was re-coloured to have white fur rather than black, Rocky Solotoff stated that she wasn't a Composite Character of herself and Artemis, and they would have introduced the latter further along in the series.
- In 2018, Kotaku writer Cecilia D'Anastasio attempted to find a copy of the pilot herself. After searching around, attempting to contact personnel (including Toon Makers founder Rocky Solotoff, who still runs the company today but ultimately didn't have a copy or even the copyright to it), she managed to get in contact with Frank Ward, founder of Power Rangers co-creator Renaissance Atlantic, who helped fund the pilot. Miraculously, he managed to secure a copy of what he believed was the pilot. However, it sadly wasn't, but it was at least another lost curio - it was a promo video for a different yet still blatantly Sailor Moon-esque live-action series from 1998 called Team Angel, which also seemingly never ended up materializing.
- Word of Saint Paul: The human names of the Sailor Scouts besides Moon/Victoria are unknown, since the script isn't available, but Maria Chaidez said in an interview that she thinks Venus's might have been Valerie.
- Working Title: The pilot had the codename, "Project Y".
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/ToonMakersSailorMoon
FollowingTrivia / Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon
Go To
