Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers - Production

Production

When Tad Stones first came up with the idea of the Rescue Rangers series, Chip 'n Dale were not part of the show. In the original idea, the show would center around a team of animals, which included a chameleon, an earlier draft of Gadget, and Monterey Jack (with a different name). The main character, though, was an Indiana Jones type mouse named Kit Colby who sported a fedora and a fluffy collared leather jacket. When he proposed the show in a meeting with Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the idea was well received except for the character of Kit Colby. At Eisner's suggestion, he was replaced with the chipmunk duo to give the show some established Disney characters to work with. (The chameleon was also removed for unknown reasons.)

While Chip and Dale were established characters, in order to bring them into the series only their general appearance and basic personality traits were kept. Unlike their appearances in Disney shorts, in the Rescue Rangers the chipmunk duo are very verbal, with Chip voiced by Tress MacNeille and Dale voiced by Corey Burton. Audio processing was used to speed-up the voice recordings and give the voices a higher pitch, particularly Chip's. The pair were given clothes—Chip the clothing of the original concept Kit, while the goofier Dale, was modeled after Magnum, P.I., with his Hawaiian shirt.

The series premiered in 1989 on the Disney Channel before moving into a regular slot in the Disney Afternoon line up the next year.

On October 2, 1995, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers began reruns on the Disney Channel as part of a two-hour programming block called "Block Party" which aired on weekdays in the late-afternoon/early-evening and which also included Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, and DuckTales.

The show's opening theme was performed by the pop group The Jets. It was written by Mark Mueller, an ASCAP award-winning pop music songwriter who also wrote the theme song to Duck Tales.