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Lost and Foundry

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Lost and Foundry is an episode of The Real Ghostbusters. After a ghost is trapped inside a steelyard and seems to be vaporized, it instead fuses with the molten steel. The contaminated metal is cut and shipped out across the city, and the scattered pieces begin to crawl back together so the ghost can rebuild itself.¹

The episode aired during the show's second season. It was written by Mark Edens, with regular voice work from Lorenzo Music, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Arsenio Hall, and Laura Summer, plus guest voices Townsend Coleman and Julie Miller. The title plays on "lost and found," the area where misplaced items wait to be reclaimed. Its production number was 76037, and the episode was recorded on July 21, 1986.²

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Plot

The Ghostbusters chase a ghost through UR Steel's mill and yard, cornering it in a room of smelting vats. Egon's proton stream knocks the ghost into a vat, where it appears to vaporize. Egon is baffled by the negative reading on his P.K.E. Meter, and Ray suggests a ghost might be disintegrated by the ion streams. Peter is content to call it a night and head home. As Ecto-1 pulls away, a pile of steel glows behind them.

Back at the firehouse, Slimer turns up wearing Winston's only clean jumpsuit. Peter taunts Slimer with a ghost trap, and Slimer grabs a thrower and accidentally fires, narrowly missing Peter and cutting down the fire pole instead. Peter shrugs it off and tells Janine to order a replacement, since UR Steel owes them a favor.

A string of strange calls follows. At the Dears department store, one of the avocado green refrigerators walks off on its own, yet both Ray and Egon read nothing on their instruments. Elsewhere, television cable attacks two cable workers and retreats into the sewers when the team opens fire. Nails fly out of a hardware store during a sale, cans pour out of a supermarket, a metal sculpture gallops out of a museum, and girders come to life at a construction site. Each time the readings come back empty, but Egon becomes convinced there is a pattern.

When another call sends Peter sliding down the new fire pole, the pole spins him around and then leaps out of the building on its own. Egon works out what happened: the ion streams electrolyzed the ghost and fused it with the molten steel, and the rigid molecular structure of the metal masked any reading. Every animated object holds a piece of the ghost, and the pieces are naturally drawn back together. Ecto-1 chases the runaway pole to Noble's Salvage yard in Newark, where the scattered fragments assemble into a giant spider-like creature. Proton fire only scatters it, and it instantly reforms.

Cornered, Peter ends up stuck in a salvage crane and triggers its magnet, which yanks the creature apart and pins the metal to the magnet. The team tows the crane back to UR Steel and melts the metal down in a vat. As Egon lowers a trap into position, the ghost separates from the molten steel and is blasted by Peter and Winston, then trapped.

Production

The episode falls in the second season of the series. The story was credited to Mark Edens.

UR Steel reads as a nod to U.S. Steel, and the "Dears" chain echoes Sears, a department-store name associated with home appliances. The shopkeeper surrounded by spinning cans of beans is modeled on the "please don't squeeze the Charmin" advertising character, and even repeats the line.

A 1959 Studebaker muffler that Ray spots in the salvage yard later lines up with the year given as Ray's birth year in the episode It's About Time.

Legacy

Lost and Foundry has circulated to home video as part of the franchise's animated releases, including The Real Ghostbusters: Complete Collection. On that set it sits on Volume 2, Disc 3.¹

Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 16. CPT Holdings, Inc. ↩ ↩²

Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Lost and Foundry" (1986). ↩

Lost and Foundry

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Lost and Foundry

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Plot

Production

Legacy

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Plot

Production

Legacy

Footnotes