Super Dave Osborne - About The Character

About The Character

Super Dave is supposedly an "accomplished" stuntman, though he rarely succeeds when performing the stunts depicted onscreen. His signature is to perform outrageous daredevil stunts which often go disastrously awry and result in grievous bodily injury. These include such mishaps as riding inside the hub of a giant yo-yo suspended from a crane (the yo-yo broke free of its string and rolled off a cliff into a ravine) and being flung inside a giant football (the catapult malfunctioned and "spiked" the football instead of throwing it). After such a mishap, Super Dave would usually appear torn apart, stretched, or otherwise injured. One of his signature logos is a drawing of his head (in a helmet or his ballcap) on top of a pair of shoes with no body. This was occasionally how he appeared after a stunt resulted in something heavy falling on top of him. Super Dave has never shed any blood on camera, even though his stunts frequently were spectacularly dangerous and sometimes appeared unsurvivable.

Super Dave is often accompanied on his various exploits by loyal friend, sidekick and assistant stunt coordinator Fuji Hakayito, played by comedian Art Irizawa. It is usually left to Fuji to set whatever stunt Dave is performing in motion. He is the inspiration and head of the fictional "Super Dave Compound"—a combination resort, theme park, learning center, and anything else needed for the plot-line of a particular episode. Many of his misadventures were based on demonstrating various aspects of the compound.

Trademark components of the Super Dave character include his frequent thumbs-ups, and his many uniforms - most of which include red, white and blue, yellow stars, and stripes, somewhat reminiscent of those worn by Evel Knievel. He was also known for only using "Genuine Saskatchewan Sealskin bindings" in the manufacture of his safety harnesses or seatbelts (not that they ever did him any good). Seals are not indigenous to the landlocked province Saskatchewan, and are therefore part of the comedic juxtaposition predicated on the eventual failure of the stunt by being both "genuine sealskin" and from Saskatchewan.