Review: Saturday Morning Cartoons

As a continuation of a previous post, I thought I would post a review of some of my favorite shows from my own childhood, and invite comments from the blogosphere about their own favorites. This involves a little more audience participation, so Constant Readers - both of you - let’s see it.

In no particular order:

Muppet Babies - Muppet Babies was a great concept for a cartoon. Since every exciting thing that happened was in the imagination of the kids (were they really kids? eh... too philosophical) they never needed much of a device to get rolling on any kind of adventure imaginable. The random vignettes from Star Wars and Nosferatu were a nice touch, largely attributable to Gonzo (with whom I could deeply relate). I have had occasion to see an episode or two within the last year (probably bootleg, but I won’t speculate) and they actually hold up pretty well over time. The animation is somewhat dated, in that it has the less-than-smooth look of hand drawn cartoons, and everything actually looks like something specific, as compared with the intentionally sloppy, poorly rendered animations of more recent vintage. Also, listening to Miss Piggy’s voice is something like putting bamboo shoots under my fingernails, if my ears had fingernails. On the whole though, I’d watch this with my kids.

Thundercats - Nothing like a bunch of poorly drawn man-cats in spandex fighting an intergalactic mummy to get your day going. This show is truly terrible. I do not know what I saw in it. I will undoubtedly take some flak for this assessment from certain die-hards, but seriously - lay aside your nostalgia and just watch it! I am lumping it in with Silverhawks (produced by the same company, I believe) and He-man as a few cartoons that simply didn’t survive the journey to adulthood. In short bursts, any of the three can render some entertainment value for unintentional humor (especially some of the more homo-erotic moments in the original He-Man). Still, I don’t have any desire to inflict these on my kids.

Voltron - Sadly, Voltron doesn’t do much better than Thundercats in the retrospect-o-meter. I will give it props for some of the animation, truly scary monsters (you know, to a kid), and for having a pretty B.A. robot made up of five pretty B.A. robots. I really loved this show as a kid, but the dialogue is pretty terrible, and there’s only so much you can do with this formula. Not that this has stopped a stream of much-worse ripoffs from being produced in later years (MMPR anyone?)

The Real Ghostbusters - They had to add “The Real” to the title because of a dispute with another studio over its own Ghost Busters property - something to do with a gorilla I believe.
Sadly, I have not had the opportunity to go back and watch any of these episodes in recent years. As I recall, the show was pretty well written, very funny, and adding Slimer as a regular member of the team - while not exactly canon - was both a clever cast addition and a brilliant marketing ploy. You know at least half of you had a Slimer toy of some description.

Animaniacs/Tiny Toons - Some will say you cannot put these two together. Fox did, in a single one hour time slot after school, and that’s the beginning and end of my argument. Animaniacs was certainly the more clever of the two shows, and had some legitimately educational aspects (the Country Song, anyone)? But the animated shorts format of the show inevitably led to some segments being much weaker than others (I pretty much changed the channel everytime the damn pigeons came on). Tiny Toons was more predictable, with longer stories, and was a transparent attempt to pull new viewers towards the classic Warner Bros. cartoon characters with new, “rad” versions of those characters (i.e., Buster and Babs Bunny, et al). Still, it was not without its charm (who didn’t love the Tiny Toons music videos for They Might Be Giants’ “Istanbul” and “Particle Man”?). Both shows would be welcome in my house.

I also want to make special mention of Batman: The Animated Series. I mention it separately because it doesn’t have the little kid appeal of the others on this list, and I was a good bit older when it came out. Batman’s animation was not the best I’ve ever seen, but it was unique and stylized in a way that fit the feel of the show. More importantly, it had some of the best writing of any cartoon I’ve ever seen, and the writing holds up - I’ve seen several episodes in adulthood and was equally impressed. I wouldn’t mind watching this again just for me, let alone with my kids. Besides, who doesn’t love Batman?

There are tons of other cartoons that I remember with greater or lesser clarity, but I’d love to hear from some of you. What were your favorites? How’d they hold up if you’ve seen them more recently?