Super Dave Osborne encyclopedia topics

Appearance history

Super Dave made his first appearance on The John Byner Comedy Hour, a 1972 TV series. Einstein then regularly played the character on the short-lived 1976 variety show Van Dyke and Company starring Dick Van Dyke.

Super Dave received his first significant exposure as a regular on the 1980s series Bizarre. He was also a frequent guest on Late Night With David Letterman.

In 1987, a variety show titled Super Dave began airing, followed in 1992 by the animated series Super Dave: Daredevil for Hire that aired on FOX. The character was featured in the television specials Super Dave's Vegas Spectacular in 1995 and Super Dave's All Stars in 1997. Super Dave was also the lead character in a movie released in 2000, The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave.

Super Dave also appeared in Nike commercials in 1990, comparing his latest dunking contraptions to the Nike Air Flight basketball shoe. One commercial had him appearing with Reggie Miller, and another with Gerald Wilkins (mistaking their names as Roger and Harold, respectively).

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 invariably go 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 when a stunt goes unbelievably bad.

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 neither indigenous to nor range in 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.

Cultural references

He was referenced in Tupac Shakur's song "Rather Be Ya", in the line, "Smoke blunts, but leave them stunts up to Super Dave." and in the Ice Cube song "Wicked", with the line "We'll have to break his ass up like Super Dave".