The most iconic Cyborg of the 1980s was originally a Japanese/French Gentleman Thief's..... DESCANDANT?

I've known about this for a long time but many of my readers might not be aware of this.

But did you know that INSPECTOR GADGET,

a Mid-1980s Cartoon Cyborg from your Bygone Millennial Childhood days of ASSEMBLY LINE-DRIVEN CARTOONS, originally was a pitch to have a more......

AMERICAN/EUROPEAN Lupin that was localized and made for the NORTH AMERICAN Market?

It's true.

There are sources that the reason why INSPECTOR GADGET even exists was because both DIC & TOKYO MOVIE SHINSHA had to recoup the costs left behind by the then abandoned LUPIN VIII project which was a planned collaboration between the two companies and actually had animation made but that project fell through due to financial disputes with the LEBLANC ESTATE.

First, let's start off with the LUPIN VIII project.

What was it about?

The thing was set in the future....

Don't know what year but it's hinted that these characters are the descendants of the original LUPIN Characters from MONKEY PUNCH's manga.

Other changes happened like for example:

LUPIN is not a thief but rather more of an Anti-Hero Detective,

Also, Violence and Blood had to be toned WAY DOWN due to STANDARDS being firmly in place by most networks,

JIGEN was not allowed to smoke,

and sexual attraction had to be kept at the strict minimums such as not showing as much skin as the anime would love to show off.

But when the LEBLANC ESTATE demanded Royalty Money that did not exist,

the project was abandoned and that's why Inspector Gadget exists.

The LUPIN character became INSPECTOR GADGET.

And Fujiko's descendant became the ever Popular PENNY...... albeit aged down due to Network standards.

And that was for the USA Market.

TMS must have been pretty annoyed about having been forced to abandon their collaboration with DIC to create an AMERICAN Series for that particular market that they had to create a new LUPIN for the JAPANESE Market.

And that gave birth to the PINK JACKET Series

I guess an abandoned project does allow the salvaging of original ideas to blossom to alternative products but rarely has it managed to branch into two.