Hot news regarding the Impala Wreckers! Remember actor Bill Fagerbakke, the Minico High School grad who found a second — and highly successful — career in Hollywood as the voice of an animated starfish? He’s got a new gig, and it may be even more lucrative.
MagicValley via TFW2005 has revealed that the guy behind Spongebob Squarepants and Bulkhead in Transformers Animated – Bill Fagerbakke will be voicing as one of the Wreckers as a stock Chevy Impala in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Regarding the news, there were two types of Chevrolet Impalas on the set during Transformers 3 filming; NASCAR Wreckers and an Orange-Black stock car.
The first two Transformers films earned $1.5 billion — yes, that’s billion with a “b”. Fagerbakke, Minico class of ’76, had a 10-season run as the dim-witted “Dauber” Dybinski on the ABC comedy “Coach.”
In 1999, he became the voice of Patrick Star, a dumb starfish on Nickelodeon’s animated TV series “SpongeBob SquarePants,” which ran for seven seasons and spawned a movie in 2004. The film itself made $140 million, and the series and the movie ignited a windfall in licensing from Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Go-Gurt, Kellogg’s cereal, and other products from video games to boxer shorts, flip-flops, pajamas, T-shirts, slippers and radios.
It also led to merchandise lines at Borders, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, RadioShack, Target, Big Lots, Wal-Mart, ShopKo, Kmart, Sears, JCPenney, Kohl’s, Lowe’s, T.J. Maxx and Toys “R” Us stores, and kids’ meal tie-ins at McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King. In 2007, Fagerbakke was hired for “Transformers Animated,” a Cartoon Network TV series based on a line of Hasbro toy action figures and comic books.
Transformers are giant robots that can transform into vehicles, other objects and animal-like forms. Fagerbakke voiced Bulkhead, a mustachioed and goggled Autobot armored vehicle, and other characters. The series ran until 2009.
Counting its multiple TV series — an earlier version was produced in Japan — the films, the video games, the toys and the spinoff products and endorsements, Transformers may be the richest entertainment franchise of all time except for Disney.
And the 53-year-old Fagerbakke, who discovered acting after an injury ended his football career at the University of Idaho, is right in the middle of it. Steve Crump is the Times-News Opinion editor.
-Magicvalley/TFW2005
