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 (Egon confirms with his Plasmatometer in addition to the P.K.E. Meter). Elsewhere, television cable attacks two cable workers and retreats into the sewers when the team opens fire. Peter refuses to follow it underground. 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. The team tries the salvage yard's car compactor, forcing the creature into a cube, but it unfolds back into a new three-legged form with pincer claws.
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.
Ghosts and Locations
The Foundry Haunter is the main antagonist of the episode. In its natural state it is a pink snake-like ghost with yellow beaver-like teeth, car-headlight eyes, skinny limbs, three-clawed hands, and two-toed feet. Voiced by Townsend Coleman, it haunted the UR Steel mill before the Ghostbusters were called in.
After being electrolyzed and fused to molten steel, the Foundry Haunter distributed itself across New York City in a variety of everyday metal objects: an avocado-green Dears refrigerator, a length of television cable, loose nails, canned goods, museum sculpture girders, a construction-site beam, and the replacement fire pole installed at the Ghostbusters' firehouse. Once the pieces began reuniting, they formed first a giant spider-like conglomerate, then, after the compactor attempt, a three-legged giant with pincer claws. The Foundry Haunter is a one-episode character with no further appearances in the series.
UR Steel is a steel mill located in New York City. The company hired the Ghostbusters to clear the haunt, not knowing the ghost had fused with their product. After the Ghostbusters recovered the possessed metal and towed the crane back, UR Steel allowed them to use the smelting vats a second time to free and trap the ghost. The name is a nod to U.S. Steel.
Dears is a New York department store chain whose avocado-green house-brand refrigerators play a prominent role when one animated piece of the Foundry Haunter walks out of the store. The name echoes Sears, the real-world retailer long associated with home appliances. Dears' known employees include a floor manager and a stock worker (credited as Lowman and Manager, voiced by Julie Miller). The store also makes a non-canon background cameo in IDW's Ghostbusters Volume 2, Issue 3.
Noble's Salvage is a junkyard in Newark, New Jersey, where the Foundry Haunter's scattered metal pieces converged via the New Jersey Turnpike. The Ghostbusters tracked the refrigerator crossing six highway lanes to this location and ultimately defeated the creature here using the yard's crane magnet. Noble's Salvage makes a non-canon background cameo in IDW's Ghostbusters Volume 2, Issue 1, as a company tow truck parked outside the firehouse.
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 Mr. George Whipple, 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."
The episode contains a few additional character details offered in passing: Peter mentions attending the Woodstock music festival, and Winston reveals he is afraid of needles. In the firehouse scenes, Janine is shown working on a crossword puzzle; the visible top row spells "Witch." An animation error in the salvage yard scene renders Ray's hair the wrong color.
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
References
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Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 16. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Lost and Foundry" (1986).
