Characters

The Copper Kidd

The navigator of the SilverHawks and the only non-Earthling on the team, from the Planet of the Mimes. He speaks in whistles and tones, throws razor discs, and out-calculates the ship computers.

Side
SilverHawks
Affiliation
SilverHawks
First seen
The Origin Story
Appearances
55 of 65 episodes

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The Copper Kidd is the navigator, the youngest SilverHawk, the only one not from Earth, and the only lead character in the series with no dialogue.

The essentials

RoleNavigator and mathematician
Weapon birdMay-Day
HomeThe Planet of the Mimes
WeaponsRazor discs
VoicePete Cannarozzi
DebutThe Origin Story, 1986

A lead who never speaks

He communicates in whistles and tones, and the show commits to it. There is no episode where the device quietly lapses and he says a sentence, and no translator character standing next to him turning him into exposition. What that costs the writers is obvious. What it buys them is a character whose every scene has to be built out of action and reaction rather than dialogue, on a syndicated cartoon with a twenty-two minute slot and a toy line to service.

It also produces the strangest credit on the show. Pete Cannarozzi was a musician and sound designer on the Rankin/Bass productions before he was the Kidd, so the performance is played rather than spoken, and it is the one role in the series that could not have been recast out of the same New York booth as everything else.

His other job is arithmetic. He out-calculates the ship’s computers. In 1986 that was how you said a teenager is the smartest person in the room without having to write him a single clever line.

May-Day

May-Day is his weapon bird, and he throws razor discs, which for the youngest member of a police squadron is a slightly alarming loadout nobody in the show ever remarks on.

The figures

Super7 released a cartoon-accurate Copper Kidd in Wave 5 and packed him with the Space Racer in the same wave. A chrome toy-version is in Wave 8 and still on preorder. Kenner had him in Series 1 in 1987 with May-Day, and catalogued a second Copper Kidd variant and the Copper Racer that were never produced.

Browse them on the Super7 catalogue, or the vintage line on the Kenner page.

Elsewhere on the site

Carries

Most often in the same episode

Counted across all 65 episodes. Sharing an episode is not the same as sharing a scene.

Seen in 55 of 65 episodes

Compiled from the episode articles on the ThunderCats wiki and cross-checked against this site's episode guide.