That Thread About Old Cartoons: "The kerium rush brought outlaws by the storm!"

Zombipanda said:
See, everyone seems to think kids want something they could relate to. I know that's not the case when I was a kid. I wanted big, awesome space ships, things blowing up, and wicked guns.
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I don't think it's a case of that.

I'm complaining primarily about the fact that almost all the cartoons now take a high school / grade school setting and then insert a 'destabilizing element' such as rock star dad, a teenage robot, the ectoplasmic powered son of a ghostbusting squad or a kid with an alien wrist watch. Which I think is perfectly fine, since the insertion of destabilizing elements into mundane settings is the hallmark of many a fine television program, animated or otherwise.

The problem is that so many of them revolve around that, rather than going an extra mile of ape **** loco by creating a whole setting out of cloth such as the hyper-polluted caricature of present day society in Toxic Crusaders and Biker Mice from Mars, the geo-politically militarist anthropomorphic feline future world of Swat Kats or the psychedelic landscapes of the Etheria and Eternia.


Zombipanda said:
The first three are easy (Bucky O'Hare, Biker Mice From Mars, and Voltron). The rest I have no clue about...
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The volting robot thing is a cheat since it actually applies to a lot of properties, so I won't count it as a wrong or right answer. The rest in no order are Sky Commanders, M.A.S.K., Spiral Zone and Centurions.
 
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ourchair said:
If I knew how, I'd be converting episodes of Early Edition in a heartbeat. We must research this problem.

Also, what is this C.O.P.S.? I knew a lot of kids my age who were fans but I could never catch it around my schedule.
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Basicallt, it was about this special operations group in the near future. All the Cops in the group were cybernetically enhanced. The villains were bioterrorists and mobsters.

[youtube]k_7JavDL3tU[/youtube]
 
skotti-chan said:
*holds up VHS tapes* one of my friends had Bravestar and C.O.P.S. at his parents' house, we're trying to figure out how to hook up my VCR to my Mac.
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ourchair said:
If I knew how, I'd be converting episodes of Early Edition in a heartbeat. We must research this problem.

Also, what is this C.O.P.S.? I knew a lot of kids my age who were fans but I could never catch it around my schedule.
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Can't you just transfer the VHS onto DVDs?

ourchair said:
The planet of New Texas, which floats deep in space.
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Ah Texas, first you were your own country, now you are a planet.

*swelling of pride*
 
skotti-chan said:
Basicallt, it was about this special operations group in the near future. All the Cops in the group were cybernetically enhanced. The villains were bioterrorists and mobsters.

[youtube]k_7JavDL3tU[/youtube]
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That intro is awesome. I also love the hyper-broad shoulders of the heroes and extreme caricatured style of the villains.

I think one of the key differences between the old cartoons and today's cartoons is that the old ones were written as ensemble casts.

They were fundamentally hobbled by some hokey writing, leaps of logic and really piss poor science, but I think that makes them no worse of than comparing the best of late 60s-early 70s comics against the best of today's. That aside, they all seem to be conceived with at the very least, a limited amount of diversity across a broad range of stereotypes.

I think part of that has to do with that many of them were built around toy lines whose genesis occurred BEFORE the animated series. As such, the writers were forced to give at least token representation to each character in order to initiate a modicum of interest in collecting the entire toy line.

Today's cartoons tend to be concept first, with the merchandising considerations worked in. This is why you have say, Ben 10 whose space watch allows him to transform into a pantheon of highly collectible characters or The Powerpuff Girls, whose character designs translate into a multitude of merchandisable forms ranging from huggable-sized plushies to hood ornament rubber to accessorizable plastic.

I don't think either approach is fundamentally better than the other, but they both have pros and cons in regards to how the properties would be developed.

The former gives freedom to the toy designers who are encouraged to exercise their ability to create a myriad number of figures while encouraging the animation producers to find ways on how to incite interest in those designs.

The latter gives primacy to the animators who must develop a property that is interesting while maximizing the merchandising possibilities and their saleability.
 
I had the first Dino-Riders episode on tape as a kid and I had every line of dialogue memorized. It was so awesome.

This is when episode sof cartoons occasionally came out on tape one episode at a time and cost a lot of money.

There's an ad in old comics advertising GI Joe coming out on VHS and one of the lines, I swear, is "And at only $34.99 each, everyone can afford them!"

35 bucks for a 22 minute episode. . . 25 years ago!
 
Let's see...

The Obvious:

- Batman The Animated Series (although I only very barely remember this during its initial run and it wasn't repeated here very often)

- Spider-Man The Animated Series (a ******* staple of my childhood and my awesome introduction to the tangled web of Spider-Man's world)

- Superman The Animated Series (Meh. I could care less if I never saw this again.)

- Batman of the Future (Unfortunately retitled for UK/Ireland audiences, this was perfect for the time it was made and easily the darkest DCAU show ever with the best opening titles of any DCAU show, ever. I remember when I first saw this show, I nearly crapped my pants from the awesomeness of the opening titles.)

Everything Else:

- X-Men (This doesn't really count. I only have extremely vague memories of watching this when I was about three, because for some reason, it wasn't shown for very long over here and I don't think I've ever seen reruns of it.)

- Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (That's right. It was called 'hero' Turtles over here, because their was restrictions on the word 'ninja' in kid's programming. The newer one had the 'ninja' in the title, though.)

- Aladdin (The spin-off show from the Disney movie. I remember it being awesome.)

- Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers (One of those unavoidable, constantly on shows that I was pretty much forced to watch lest I go outside and get some exercise)

- Tom n' Jerry Kids (See above)

- Hey, Arnold! (Now we've reached the good stuff!)

- Doug (Yes. YES. My friend recently downloaded the entire first season.)

- Rugrats (What child of the nineties didn't watch this?!)

- Kablam! (Anyone remember this? It was a sketch 'toon that had 'Action League Now!' which is in the running for the funniest superhero spoof show, ever.)

- X-Men Evolution (As I say, I was too young for the other one. I remember this being quite cool, but I'm hearing very different things around these parts.)

- Spider-Man Unlimited (Initially, I thought it was pretty cool, but I quickly realised that it was a rather shoddy, shameless, Batman Beyond ripoff. Which was ironic, because in many ways, Batman Beyond ripped off Spider-Man, right down to the high school bully.)
 
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Putting my mod hat on and saying that there are other threads for the old comic-based tv-shows, and I think this thread is meant to talk about the old obscure properties... So lets not turn it into Spidey/Batman thread.
 
mine was a question about continuity between 3 old cartoons
 
Gothamite said:
Let's see...

The Obvious:

- Batman The Animated Series (although I only very barely remember this during its initial run and it wasn't repeated here very often)

- Spider-Man The Animated Series (a ******* staple of my childhood and my awesome introduction to the tangled web of Spider-Man's world)

- Superman The Animated Series (Meh. I could care less if I never saw this again.)

- Batman of the Future (Unfortunately retitled for UK/Ireland audiences, this was perfect for the time it was made and easily the darkest DCAU show ever with the best opening titles of any DCAU show, ever. I remember when I first saw this show, I nearly crapped my pants from the awesomeness of the opening titles.)

Everything Else:

- X-Men (This doesn't really count. I only have extremely vague memories of watching this when I was about three, because for some reason, it wasn't shown for very long over here and I don't think I've ever seen reruns of it.)

- Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (That's right. It was called 'hero' Turtles over here, because their was restrictions on the word 'ninja' in kid's programming. The newer one had the 'ninja' in the title, though.)

- Aladdin (The spin-off show from the Disney movie. I remember it being awesome.)

- Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers (One of those unavoidable, constantly on shows that I was pretty much forced to watch lest I go outside and get some exercise)

- Tom n' Jerry Kids (See above)

- Hey, Arnold! (Now we've reached the good stuff!)

- Doug (Yes. YES. My friend recently downloaded the entire first season.)

- Rugrats (What child of the nineties didn't watch this?!)

- Kablam! (Anyone remember this? It was a sketch 'toon that had 'Action League Now!' which is in the running for the funniest superhero spoof show, ever.)

- X-Men Evolution (As I say, I was too young for the other one. I remember this being quite cool, but I'm hearing very different things around these parts.)

- Spider-Man Unlimited (Initially, I thought it was pretty cool, but I quickly realised that it was a rather shoddy, shameless, Batman Beyond ripoff. Which was ironic, because in many ways, Batman Beyond ripped off Spider-Man, right down to the high school bully.)
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Besides Kablam I've seen all of those and loved them. I said to my friend it's not nickelodeon with out Rugrats. I even said there was something to make you feel old. Turn on Nickelodeon and see the Rugrats have now grown up and are in high school!


A cartoon I use to love but it absolutely sucks now was Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors but still this song is the most awesome cartoon theme ever as far i'm concerned

[youtube]E6hxdVsy86g[/youtube]





Others I used to love


M.A.S.K
Muppet Babies
Back to the future the cartoon
Bill and ted's excellent adventures
life with louie
Pinky and The Brain
Rocko's Modern Life

Also two peter pan cartoons one was on bbc 1 the other ITV. One had a much more serious look to it and was a little darker. The other was like really cartoony pretty bad animation but had better stories like one he was knocked out cold and fell from the sky as a cliff hanger.
 
Planet-man said:
I so want to watch the first few seasons of Rugrats in their entirety again. It's been at least ten years since I watched it properly and it really was pretty much the best and most creative kids cartoon ever.
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Agreed before they added dill and gave chucky a sister , rugrats was great.
 
Dr.Strangefate said:
Putting my mod hat on and saying that there are other threads for the old comic-based tv-shows, and I think this thread is meant to talk about the old obscure properties... So lets not turn it into Spidey/Batman thread.
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Ha, was just about to say that as well. We already have Timmsverse threads and 256 other comic-based cartoons.

Basically anything that isn't licensed from comics is fair game here, unless it was licensed from a REALLLLY obscure comic, which to some extent TMNT counts.

So, what did anyone think of my theories?
 
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