Welcome to Fantasy Friday everyone. As always, it’s time to Blog for a Beer! (click here for the rules.) We’re pretty sure you’ll love this week’s topic since we almost had an awesome discussion about it two weeks ago:
A few years ago when I first discovered TVShowsonDVD.com and danced with glee that such a website existed, I went through their extensive list of shows and chose many that I’d like to receive alerts on should there be news about a DVD release. Some shows I choose out of desperate hope — like Spartakus or The Mysterious Cities of Gold — and some I was pretty sure we’d eventually get — The Real Ghostbusters and Freakazoid. But lo, the gods of TV on DVD did not disappoint me, and Mysterious Cities has been released in the UK and should be available in region 1 early next year. (fingerscrossedfingerscrossed) There’s a glimmer of hope that Spartakus may come out from the same company. Happy Geek Girl is happy!
Due to the fabulous mini-conversation from two weeks ago, I know many of you out there are happy about Mysterious Cities and Spatakus and a whole host of other cartoons from your childhood that have already come out or may come out or you hope will come out on DVD. Let’s geek out on old cartoons! Maybe we’ll even get a top 10 list out of it all. (That, and $10 for someone…)
I’m usually disappointed when I watch shows I used to be a huge fan of: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comes to mind.
One show I’d risk watching now would be Gargoyles especially since I only watched it sporadically as a kid. It was, as I recall dimly, very well done in terms of characters and content, especially the mythology. That and a large handful of ST:TNG cast members providing voices.
I usually don’t remember the shows I watched as a kid until someone brings them up and then it’s this huge wave of nostalgia. I don’t even remember the names of a lot of them, just vague memories of strange cartoon creatures.
Wikipedia, as always, comes in handy here. It’s like a nostalgia overload: Bananaman, Danger Mouse, Heathcliff, Little Koala, Muppet Babies, Inspector Gadget, Count Duckula, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Beetlejuice… and those are just the Nickolodeon ones. I won’t even get started on Warner Bros.
I think I need to take a breather before I try to buy as many of these as I can.
BANANAMAN oh god I’d forgotten about that one. It was such an odd show! Really random. and, if I remember, came on at random, too. It wasn’t a full-length show but 5 minute interstitials, right?
The way he flew was so… wrong.
Kidd Video. Very ’80′s. Kidd Video versus Master Blaster, and the Copy Cats!
It’ll never make it to DVD though – too many royalty issues.
Animaniacs. It had EVERYTHING: social commentary, vintage Hollywood tributes, musical numbers with brains (almost everyone remembers the “States” song, but what about the genius behind the Gilbert-and-Sullivan twisted “I Am The Very Model Of The Cartoon Individual”?) and a supporting cast of charaters that couldn’t be contained…
Yes, Pinky and the Brain, I am looking at you… ZOT.
(Are you pondering what I’m pondering?)
(I fink so, but how are we going to get the rubber pants on the gorilla?)
Josh, I have some episodes of Kidd Video on DVD, and I’m sorry to say it doesn’t hold up at all. It’s…terrible.
I suppose that might be said for most shows remembered through the haze of nostalgia, but I can still enjoy Thundercats, which at least had some excellent animation for the time, vs. He-man, which had barely any animation at all.
I wish they would release a DVD set of seasons 1 and 2 of ReBoot sometime.
Er… I meant I have Kidd Video on *VHS*.
I had a couple of Saturday morning favorites. One was a poor excuse for not reading as much as I should have. The show was called “Storybreak” and featured a 20 minute cartoon that summed up great kids books. Captain Kangaroo’s Bob Keeshan hosted. It was a bad habit because I wasn’t much of a reader when I was younger. Books were hard to come by, our library was tiny and featured more bodice-rippers and Dr. Seuss books than nearly anything else. It was the only library for about 70 miles. The librarians were friendly, but had a heckuva time recommending books that were outside of their sphere of beliefs. Books about dragons and monsters somehow didn’t make it to the shelves. Storybreak was my first exposure to Jane Yolen when they featured Dragon’s Blood on the show. The animation was terrible, but it amped me up enough to get the book through library loan. After that I was hooked. Too bad though that it was the only book I got into after the show. I didn’t read How to Eat Fried Worms, Hank the Cowdog, or many of the others. Nope, there wasn’t enough time for that what with the Transformers, Thundercats, or M.A.S.K. after school.
Toy commercials, in retrospect. But very bitchin’ toy commercials.
The other favorites of mine on Saturday morning were Dungeons and Dragons, and Thundarr the Barbarian. Both were considered works of the devil by the church pastors of a few of my friends, which made them even cooler.
D&D offered a half hour of escapism, mild peril, and the possibility that someone was going to take an energy arrow in the chest. When channel 4 was playing the Smurfs, channel 7 was duking it out with goblins, wizard battles, and half-dressed girls and teenagers with familiar emotional conflict. It was great stuff, especially with the Skeleton Warrior Knight and the nightmare man who would kidnap earth kids to use in his attempt to keep a mystical clock from striking midnight.
Thundarr the Barbarian was also pretty wicked. You’ve got a world that has gone to hell because a comet split the moon in half. It’s a post-apocalyptic world complete with magic, lightsabers, barbarians, and for the pre-pubescent boy that I was, scantily clad girls who kick ass. It was like Conan meets Mad Max. Of course church-goers were pissed. The shows used to come on during unscheduled times, like some kind of cartoon bootlegging bathtub gin operation. It was like pouring gasoline on a campfire when it came to fueling the imagination of a kid growing up during the cold war. We had a fear of nuclear war everyday, so seeing what was possible in the event of the survival of mankind was outstanding.
Why Anyone Would Watch Dukes of Hazzard
My “childhood” was mostly in the 1970s, an era before Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.
One of the odd things about childhood TV that I remember was watching shows that really were adult-oriented, but that I find rather dull now as an adult. Mostly that occurred in the cartoon wasteland that was, well, anytime not Saturday morning or the hour or so just after school (prime children viewer times).
So I ended up watching many non-animated shows not really targeted at kids, like Perry Mason, Bonanza, Happy Days, and I Love Lucy. And yes, Dukes of Hazzard. Hey, it was the era of Smokey and the Bandit, okay? Sadly, Deputy Enos is one of the few impressions I do fairly well. Oh, the shame. But in my defense, I’m sure that if I’d had Cartoon Network at the time then I would never have watched those shows.
But I didn’t, so I did.
A related animated example is The Flintstones. I just can’t watch it anymore. A show about an outdated concept of marriage (well, except for among backwards conservatives), based on the Honeymooners, with a husband who wanted to go bowling and to lodge meetings, expected dinner on the table when he got home, etcetera, and wife who shouted “da da da DUH da DAA – CHARGE IT!” before going shopping without (gasp!) her husband’s knowledge or permission. How was that interesting to a kid? How is that entertaining today? I don’t know. Yet I watched it.
On the other hand, we also had old school Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Bionic Woman, as well as Wonder Woman, and The Incredible Hulk, Mork and Mindy, etcetera.
Granted, cartoons continue to include adult humor today, making shows like Spongebob equally appealing to young and not-quite-as-young-anymore. But with the exception, of course, of Adult Swim shows, Robot Chicken, etcetera, I think children today have a much wider variety of shows aimed specifically at their age group than I did. Well, not so much aimed as marketed …
The Death of Saturday Morning Cartoons
What ever happened to Saturday Morning Cartoons? I mean, yeah, it is spoiled for kids today by the fact that they have Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon 24/7. But still, how did we go from Saturday Morning Cartoons to Sunday Morning Toy-Adverts-Disguised-as-Cartoons (and even those have faded away)?
Just one less reason to actually drag your butt out of bed at any decent hour on the weekends, I suppose. And less temptation to break out the Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch.
I posted this same comment a couple weeks ago, to which Cheryl Holland pointed out that the cartoons of the 1980′s she remembered were toy adverts — Transformers, Visionaries, He-Man.
I think this was a transitional period. The Reagan years definitely saw a serious shift towards hard-core capitalist values and lack of substance in many areas.
But as a child, the action figures I most remember playing with were The Six Million Dollar Man, Evil Knievel, Batman, and ROM (http://www.bugeyedmonster.com/toys/rom/). Even the G.I. Joe toys my brother played with were not based on the as-yet-to-be-made cartoon.
And of course there were many awesome shows that were not toy-oriented:
[*] Starblazers
[*] Shazam and Isis
[*] HR Puffinstuff
[*] Fat Albert
[*] Scooby Doo (sans Scrappy Doo)
[*] Superfriends
[*] Land of the Lost
[*] Harlem Globetrotters
[*] Bugs Bunny and friends
[*] Speed Racer
[*] Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp
[*] Batman (non-animated)
[*] Muppet Show
And some not so awesome shows, but still childhood staples, like Gilligan’s Island.
Even in the 1980′s there continued to be cartoons that were not toy-oriented. Granted, most of them sucked as bad as the toy oriented ones (although it would be hard to top Rubik the Amazing Cube), but there were some I enjoyed quite a bit:
[*] Thundercats
[*] Dungeons and Dragons (arguably game promotional)
[*] Captain Caveman
[*] Dragon’s Lair (also arguably game promotional)
[*] Fraggle Rock
[*] Godzilla (and Godzuki)
[*] Thundarr the Barbarian
[*] Spiderman and his Amazing Friends
[*] Space Ghost
[*] Voltron
The Death of the Holiday Special
Remember when those old stop-motion holiday specials like Rudolph were a special event you looked forward to as a child? The whole family gathered round the warmly glowing box to watch them, a little taste of the Christmas-morning magic to come. Now, kids can just throw in the DVD in the middle of Summer when they are bored, and mock the lack of decent CGI effects. Sometimes, technology (and commercialism) sucks.
Let’s not forget Schoolhouse Rock!
Freakazoid old? Freakazoid is not old, you’re young.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to commiserate with Felix the Cat, Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, and Popeye.
Freakazoid old. :snort:
My kids have the Muppet Show seasons one and two on DVD and watch them religiously. The guest stars are all but forgotten to today’s audience. Ask my kids who their favorite folks on the Muppet Show are and they will probably tell you Ben Vereen, Bruce Forsythe, Lena Horne, and Paul Williams. As a result, my kids don’t always have a lot to talk about with other kids their age. But if the conversations revolve around Spongebob and Patrick, oh well. At least they have a grasp of Vaudeville, important historical performers, and comedy that extends beyond fart jokes.
They also dig on the Electric Company and of course, the old Popeye, Felix, and Tom and Jerry cartoons (before Tom and Jerry were a cat and mouse duo–they were two British guys in bowler hats).
Anachronistic little monsters that they are. Personally, I’m a big fan of the 1930s and 40s Warner Bros.
Randy, a hearty “HELL YEAH!” on the Land of the Lost show. Again, one the kids took to like a duck to water.
Marshall, Will and Holly
On a routine expedition
felt the greatest earthquake ever known!
AAAHHHHHH!!!!!
I still have an unhealthy fear of sleestacks.
Lisa @ 4:
I would definitely watch animaniacs again and finally get all the jokes I missed when I was younger. I still remember when they met Satan and made some comment about his tan and George Hamilton’s. It’s great when a show or movie can be enjoyed by kids and adults. I’m looking forward to watching movies like Shrek with my daughter when she gets older. I can laugh at the Hollywood jokes and she can laugh at the slapstick.
Another great show was Histeria, and I actually did learn some history from it.
Egads. It just hit me. HR Pufnstuf. It was certainly weird enough to believe the writers were indeed “puffin stuff.” Was it like the song Puff the Magic Dragon, one big in-joke, and I just never realized it?
That show was so frakked up I think the creators were Puffin’ stuff, huffin’ stuff, AND snuffin’ stuff.
Clint @ 12.
Apparently, they are making a big budget movie of Land of the Lost starring Will Ferrel: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457400/
Just won’t be the same.
Also, there was a video floating around Youtube for a while of the guy who played little Will all grown up and hosting a Land of the Lost marathon. The vid seems to have been pulled for copyright reasons. Truly painful to watch, yet you just couldn’t stop watching. Funny for all the wrong reasons.
I wonder what it’s like to write kids’ shows. I’d have a hard time writing something I wouldn’t watch/read. So either the writers are a) really children, b) very dedicated to bringing quality TV to kids, or c) hacks who churn out formulaic crap just to get paid.
Cynical? Yeah, I guess. I was having a discussion the other day on Barney vs. the Wiggles. A friend of mine was saying he found something off-putting about how much psychology the Wiggles put into their songs. I find it strange too, but also really no different from writing formulaic pop songs, just more child psychology degrees involved.
Not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. I digress.
Hurray for Animaniacs–my son is currently, while ostensibly napping, listening to an Animaniacs cassette we found years ago at a Goodwill. “Whoopie ti-yi-yo, farewell, Magellan. You almost made it, it’s really not fair. Whoopie ti-yi-yo, oh, ghost of Magellan, the East Indies islands were right over there.” And you know, even though I’d never seen the Godfather movies, I got the Goodfeathers (Pinky and the Brain well deserved their own show, but why not the Goodfeathers as well?), and even though I knew nothing about The Who or The Band or Woodstock, I got Slappy’s Abbot-and-Costello-ish “Who’s on stage?”
Is Animaniacs old enough a show to be nostalgic for though? I guess by asking it I mark myself as older than I tend to picture myself…
My very first Saturday-morning cartoon was Super Friends. There were different versions of it, it seems, some of them truly awful even to the uncritical eyes of a 5-, 6-, 7-year-old, but even going back younger, I loved the ones that included the arch-nemesises (arch-nemesi?), and there was one episode that seemed truly surreal where the Wonder Twins and Gleek went to an underground society called Middle Earth. I’d never heard of Tolkien back then, but the bizarre images that episode left in my head are far darker than your typical Tolkien spoof or clone…almost, dare I say, a New Weird precursor.
Some time in between there–between Super Friends and Animaniacs–before Duck Tales, Ch-ch-ch-Chip and Dale, and Tale Spin, for a while I loved the Gummi Bears–the wild and fantastical creations of their ancestors that they only partly understand, the silly ogres (“Yes, Dukey.” “And don’t call me ‘Dukey!’” “Yes, Dukey.”), when the youngest dresses as a superhero the Scarlet Avenger, and the Clint-Eastwood-inspired bounty hunter chasing them (“Go ahead, Take. My. Pay.”). I might be disappointed today, but that’s probably the one I’d be most likely to seek on on DVD.
I was a bit older at this point (maybe around the same time as Animaniacs), but what about Pirates of Darkwater? “Noy jitat!” There’s one that should appeal to fantasy fans. It doesn’t quite factor in with the nostalgia of earlier shows, but it’s one I’d quite willingly see more of from what I remember.
Transformers(classic); I still collect the “generation 1″ style comics. Heck, I met my ex at a Transformers convention.
Next to that, I’d say Voltron, He-Man, The Real Ghostbusters, TMNT. Oh, does anyone remember Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends?
Michael G @ 17:
Writers of kid’s shows vary in their talent and their freedom.
But they are in fact often talented writers who, like most writers, happily takes any halfway legitimate paying job — even one that may be considered “below” their talent. Because, after all, even a successful midlist novelist barely makes a living wage writing novels alone.
As noted in the Wikipedia entry for Land of the Lost, for example, “A number of well-respected writers in the science fiction field contributed scripts to the series, including Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova, and a number of people involved with Star Trek, such as Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana, Walter Koenig, and David Gerrold.”
However, I remember in a workshop once, a scifi writer (I’m afraid I can’t remember who) talked about her experience writing for Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. This was a cartoon made specifically to pimp a Mattel toy line, and involved vegetable-based aliens who extended vine bridges between planets to invade. She tried to explain to the show’s producers the illogic of vines moving between planets that were themselves spinning and moving through space, etcetera, and was told such details didn’t matter.
So the writers are often constrained by the wishes of the producers, the show’s “bible,” etcetera.
Not that every cartoon employs professional scifi writers, of course. And many shows have a specific set of regular writers, some of whom may very well be hacks, or overgrown children.
Randy! What the hell are you doing!?! You have brought up an implausible means for alien invasion, thought long-dead by toy collectors everywhere. Now the damn SciFi channel is sure to pick this up as a SciFi Original Movie! THE HUMANITY!!!!
Michael @ 19, Spiderman and his Amazing Friends was a favorite of mine too. It was also paired with fifteen minutes of the Incredible Hulk.
What’s not to like? Crappy animation? Thin plot lines? Swanky 1980′s music? But then you’ve got STAN LEE! He could make a show about cotton balls hold you in thrall, just from the way he narrates.
I’m one of “those people” who remembers the theme song to every cartoon he ever watched. And even some he didn’t watch. Which includes “Jem and the Holograms,” “She-Ra,” and most of the score of the “My Little Ponies” and “Care Bears” movies. Proud? You bet I am. While you’re singing your kids lullabies, my son goes to sleep to me getting nostalgic with the “Silverhawks” theme.
But sometimes nostalgia is where these old cartoons belong. Because some of those ‘toons we watched growing up were just plain awful. My wife and I often discussed how great “Voltron” was, but when we finally got ahold of the series on DVD through Netflix, we were so disappointed with our childhood selves that we had to get hypnotherapy to undo the damage.
Even “Thundercats,” which to me will forever remain one of the Greatest Cartoons From The 80s, loses a bit of its luster when seen through the unforgiving eyes of an adult. “How the hell to robear burbils reproduce?” “Why does Cheetara have such a husky voice?” “What do you mean Panthro was the grandfather from the Cosby Show?!”
I want the entire 80s ‘toon collection out on DVD so my son can watch them, because kids don’t care about things like voice acting or art direction or plots. And maybe, just maybe, seeing his enjoyment in what I used to love will rekindle that old cartoon flame.
Except “Voltron.” Seriously, that was crap.
I can’t believe no one’s mentioned Beverly Hills Teens yet……. I sometimes wonder if it was the inspiration for Beverly Hills 90210.
Like many others here, I like remembering those Saturday mornings w/ fondness but when I try to watch some of the old cartoons (Thundercats and Smurfs come to mind), I just can’t sit through it anymore or they become hysterically funny for totally different reasons.
Danger Mouse definitely rokked my world when I was a four year old! My dad still talks about how much I loved that show (I just turned 25 so I must have REALLY liked it for him to keep commenting about it). I was so excited to find that the seasons had been released on DVD. I bought Seasons One and Two for my dad for Christmas last year, and we watch a few episodes every time I go home to visit. The funniest episode for me was when the villain’s (Baron Greenback’s) caterpillar Nero turned into a butterfly. Greenback looked so crushed! I think that show was the catalyst that sparked my love of BritCom (Monty Python and Absolutely Fabulous are two of my favorites). Also, DM spawned Count Duckula, another of my favorite shows when I was a kid, so in my opinion, DM pretty much kicks butt!
re Danger Mouse
I wonder, how much of a role did DM and Penfold play in the creation of Brain and Pinky?
Alan K @ 26:
Oh, that’s a good point, I never thought of that. Animanics was a great show too! My brother and I were big on that one. I think it was really well done.
Did anyone here watch Tiny Toons? I think that was on right before Animaniacs. That was pretty hysterical also from what I can remember.
Hey everyone, it’s time to pick a winner. There was a lot of fun and nostalgia this week and I’m glad you all took to the topic! And yes, Alan, I am aware that we’re being horrendously Gen-X all over the place. But it IS our demographic
Michael Gordon wins this week because he always adds something insightful to discussions and gets the ball rolling many times
Also, this comment @ 17 made me laugh:
I wonder what it’s like to write kids’ shows. I’d have a hard time writing something I wouldn’t watch/read. So either the writers are a) really children, b) very dedicated to bringing quality TV to kids, or c) hacks who churn out formulaic crap just to get paid.
Congrats Michael! And everyone else is free to continue the conversation. Someone above mentioned theme songs they remembered — what cartoon themes can you sing all the way through? I’m not embarrassed to say I can sing BOTH Jem themes from memory.
W00t! Thanks all!
I am aware that we’re being horrendously Gen-X all over the place. But it IS our demographic
Well, speaking as a Gen Y/Millennial I relished this opportunity to be exposed to kids show references from ten years’ before I was born. It seems that shows haven’t improved or declined much over the past 30-40 years. I find that oddly comforting.
Darn! I’m gutted I missed this discussion. Still, it’s nice to know I’m not alone in planning to brainwash my children with retro TV.