Rin Tin Tin was the action mutt! If Lassie was about somebody understanding that "Arf! Arf!" meant "Timmy's down the well!" Rin Tin Tin was about understanding that sometimes a boy, a dog and the U.S. army have to kick some heiney!

   The Adventures Of Rin Tin Tin was a show set in the wild old time west. Orphan Rusty and his German Shepherd Rin Tin Tin found action and adventure at Fort Apache where they were basically the mascots for the local soldiers. A kid on his own with a dog in the wild and woolly west - what more could a kid, especially a little boy, want in a TV show? Who wouldn't want to be Rusty - setting aside the whole "dead parents" thing?

   In 1988 Rin Tin Tin returned to TV in new adventures on the cable station The Family Channel. Obviously after so many years it wasn't the same mutt. Heck, the dog in the first series wasn't the original Rin Tin Tin. Tinny started in movies and the dogs in the first series were his descendants... well most of them. The Rin Tin Tin in the 1980's version was also in point of fact also a descendant of those same mutts. That and the name Rin Tin Tin were the only ties to the original show. The new Rin Tin Tin was not set in the old west but in a modern day city. The new Tinny was a police dog and just like his ancestors he found action and adventure. Of course despite being a police dog their was still a young boy to pal around with Rin Tin Tin - Stevie, the nephew of Tinny's handler. Action! Adventure! The usual stuff. As far as I am aware though the new show was never tied in any concrete way to the old one: they never said that the current Rin Tin Tin or his owners were in any way related or tied to the original show's characters. The new Rin Tin Tin could have been the best show ever but it will never replace the original show in the hearts of kids like me who grew up watching it in repeats.