I didn't concede, I just didn't argue.
Apr. 26th, 2008 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariAnother Saturday, another round of Saturday Morning Cartoons. I'm bored with reading about the Ptolemy Dynasty of Pharoahs (yes, from Captain N to Egyptian Dynasties - my Saturday Mornings have just really...yeah...well....) These were syndicated (or I didn't see them when they first run on networks), so there's no time frame for these, just random comments as I run down Wikipedia's list.
This Way to ACTION!
1950s and 60s
At this point in my life, I only existed as a small egg in my mom's ovaries, along with my sister, and the TV reception in there was terrible. I caught these in the 80s and 90s in reruns or on Cartoon Network/Boomerang/USA Cartoon Express
The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show - The animation was choppy, the character models kept changing, the puns were the worst I'd ever seen...and yet the writing in that show - A-MAZE-ING. I used to watch these bright and early in mornings before school. And people wondered why I grew up wierd all through school. My favorite segments, though, were Peabody and Sherman more than actual Rocky and Bullwinkle.
The Beatles - Caught these on the late and lamented Austin Music Network's late and lamented AMN Kid's Hour. What's funny is AMN's bradcast masters of these seemed to be downloaded directly from YouTube or something just as grainy. Not that I minded, AMN's Kid's Hour just rocked. Another Jay Ward production, this one wasn't nearly as good as Rocky and Bullwinkle, but it had it's cute moments, along with Beatles music to go with it. I'm not sure but I think the guy who did Ringo's voice was Wakko Warner in animaniacs 30 years later.
Birdman and the Galaxy Trio - all I can really say about these shows is that I saw a few episodes that the Williams Street team had added a laugh track to for fun (the show being played dead serious in the 60s). Other than that, eh...I was never big on Superhero shows.
The Dick Tracey Show - Holy cow...this cartoon is just WRONG WRONG WRONG. When the Dick Tracey movie came out, a lot of unsuspecting TV stations bought this old 60s era package and were horrified with what they got. First off, Dick isn't hardly IN any of these cartoons. He'd get a case, then immediately send it to one of his junior investigators...then show up again when the case was over. His investigators? Holy bajeebers. The two bad ones were Go-Go Gomez, a sterotypical Mexican who spoke with an incredibly bad Mexican accent, enjoyed sleeping all the time, and when he was awake was a fast runner. Then Joe Jitsu, a Japanese stereotype...all bucktoothed, yellow skinned, R for Ls, super cowtowing martial arts expert who liked to eat nothing but rice. There were two slightly less bad stereotypes, Heap o'Calorie, an Irish American police sterotype, and Hemlock Holmes, a british Sherlock Holmes character. I can't believe that this show made it on the air in the late 80s, and watched it because it was such a trainwreck waiting to happen. Horrifyingly enough, I found it in 2005 on the digital Kids on Demands cartoon channel. You, too, can watch racism in crystal clear digital video!
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop - An entire show dedicated to having Paul Lynde tie a girl up, put her in a predicament to be saved by little mafia men in a backfiring jalopy. Yeah. And you wonder where I went so horribly horribly wrong growing up (okay, okay, I admit, I saw this in the 90s on Cartoon Network...maybe I'd already gone wrong by then....)
Roger Ramjet - Another Jay Ward production. Back int he 80s, our apartment complex got this wierd "cable" channel just in the complex. It was called Showtime, and was only on Channel 7. At night, it showed movies (with a wierd video toaster bumper between them), but during they day, they showed WGN out of Chicago. Not only was this a way for me to see Star Trek EVERY day, but they also showed Roger Ramjet in the afternoons. I really don't remember much from the show other than the jets were really wierdly drawn and i expected Roger to crash his jets everytime he landed (the landing animation was a steep pitched down nosedive at lightning speed). Of course, he had the strength of 20 atom bombs, he prolly had dominion over inertia and the gravitational constant of the Universe.
Shazzan - Another of the mid-90s Cartoon Network reruns. Chuck and Nancy get caught in the world of Arabian Nights, with their genie Shazzan and theie unfortunately named camel Kaboobie. Shazzan was invincible. Nothing could ever hurt him, and he solved everything constantly. I don't see why the kids didn't bring him out as soon as someone looked at them wrong.
1970s
For most of the 70s I wasn't very sentient (heck I wasn't even born for the first four years), so again, a lot of these were caught as reruns in the 80s and 90s.
The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan - Much like the Dick Tracey show, except now there's a lot less sterotyping, spread out among a whole bunch of his kids. At the beginning of the show, Charlie Chan needed to solve a mystery, and went off and, well, solved a mystery you never saw. In the meantime a SECOND mystery would show up, Chan would leave, and his kids would need to solve it, and usually did it in time for Charlie to come back from his own mystery, solved. While I saw it on USA's Cartoon Express, most folks have at least seen the character models, as they were "Shoyu Weenie" in an episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
Clue Club - I hated Scooby Doo. I really did. Scooby never appealed to me, but Clue Blub, a Scooby clone, did. A group of kids solve slightly less fantasical mysteries than Scoob and the Gang, with the help of their home-based little kid sister and her computer. Woofer and Whimper, their two dogs, comment on the kids' mystery solving techniques. I dunno why I REALLY like Clue Club over Scooby, but it was prolly the less supernatural elements of the mysteries (although they had their share of ghosts and monsters).
Devlin - Ernie Devlin is a daredevil in a circus with his brother and sister as his manager and stunt coordinator. It was actually a pretty good series, and played pretty seriously instead of as a joke. No laugh track, either. The only real low point in the show was Devlin spend 5 minutes doing the exact same stunt TWICE in every episode (and the occasional Very Special Episode that it was prone to because it was more serious). When it was taken off USA's Cartoon Express, I was very sad. Folks prolly know Devlin from his Harvey Birdman appearances as a fat, pain-medication addicted Super Christian.
Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch! - Put here for completedness sake. I watched it...I don't quite know why I did...seems kinda stupid now. :D
Hong Kong Phooey - Okay, any cartoon with Scatman Carruthers is INSTANT WIN. There are voice actors who literally phone in their lines, there are others who have no real emotion, and others who overact...but Scatman...man, he sounded like he was having fun in ANY character he played. Super Globetrotters, Hong Kong Phooey, Jazz, The Shining...he sounded like he was having a blast.
The Jackson 5ive - A lot like the Beatles cartoon, this was a show where an episode was kinda written around a song, which was aniamted in the middle of the episode. My biggest memories of the Jackson 5ive were that it was the very first cartoon in the morning on Saturdays (After Gobs of Fun at 6AM!). That and the live action videos that opened and closed every show. Wonder whatever happened to that Michael Jackson guy....
Josie and the Pussycats (In Space) - Another of the 90s Cartoon Network reruns...I mainly liked it for the animation used in the music videos, which were probably rotoscoped, but didn't LOOK like they were rotoscoped (There were a lot of shows I watched purely for the animation, versus the stories). The shows themselves, I wasn't really into, especially the In Space episodes. There was a really cool music video, though, for them made for Cartoon "Shorties:"
The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show - The only real iteration of the Flintstones I ever liked, and I think because it featured teenagers more than it featured the older Flintstones. It was also really different in that the adventures were more adventures, then Slice of Life episodes (and there's only so many "It's a Living" jokes you can make over the course of 50 years. Plus teen Pebbles was cute. Silly redhead fixation. :)
The Roman Holidays - The Flintstones in Roman Times. It wasn't much different, but different enough that I watched it and not the Flintstones.
Space Sentinels - I actually caught this first run in 1977 - I had to be three (I missed this on the last post I think). I don't remember much other than a coloring book I have, and the wierd colored computer head thing they had.
The Super Globetrotters. Oh my dear sweet lord...what were they THINKING. It's not just the Globetrotters...it's the SUPER Globetrotters. They have super powers. Like turning into a giant basketball with a face. Or the ability to pull any object out of a gigantic afro. Still, it DID have Scatman Carruthers, so it sounded like a lot of fun, if just incredibly wierd.
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. I first caught this on 90s Cartoon Network, when it was rerunning old cartoons on weekends, and I immediately took to it. It was a LOT like a milder version of "All in the Family," with all the seriousness/comedy and forward thinking without any of the controversy, and while it had a laugh track, it took itself more serious than most cartoons of the time. I really dug some of the more topical issues it hit, too. Really well done.
1980s
The First Run Syndication Market was pretty dry in San Antonio, growing up. We were the largest TV market with no independent stations, although all that changed in 1985, when KRRT and KABB came on the air, and they had the lock on after-noon cartoons (The other stations were still showing TV Magazines after school).
Bionic Six - Not something I watched a lot, but I caught it when I could. I thought the premise was neat, but never really got to see too many episodes, and as far as I know, no one reran it. I do remember remarking to a friend that he thought Rock-1 was cute, and I mentioned I preferred Mother-1, which got a wierd wierd wierd look from him. I mean come on - we're talking about the cuteness of animated characters...like social norms apply to animation cels. ;)
Captain N: The Game Master - I missed this when it first came out, never caught any reruns, and, believe it or not, am only just now seeing it NOW via http://www.kewlcartoons.com . It's a nostalgia headtrip, for sure with all the music and sound effects from the 8 bit era of video gaming. I love the animation attempts to recreate that 8x8 pixel "Stamping" that the NES did, too. I also really liked the just really odd character design for Princess Lana (well, minus that tuft of hair ponytail fountain thing on her head).
Challenge of the GobotsChallenge of the Gobots - Ah, the very first of the KRRT Cartoons I watched. Even before the Transformers, and now, sadly, can't find it anywhere (bitTorrent, how hath thee failed me!). It wasn't as well animated as the Transformers (Hanna Barbera was no Toei around this time), but one thing it had were female GoBots who were right up there with the males in rank and fighting ability. AND they weren't in prissy tiaras, dresses and makeup (I'm looking at you, She-Ra).
And now it's time to go home...I'll finish this up some other Saturday Morning. :)
This Way to ACTION!
1950s and 60s
At this point in my life, I only existed as a small egg in my mom's ovaries, along with my sister, and the TV reception in there was terrible. I caught these in the 80s and 90s in reruns or on Cartoon Network/Boomerang/USA Cartoon Express
The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show - The animation was choppy, the character models kept changing, the puns were the worst I'd ever seen...and yet the writing in that show - A-MAZE-ING. I used to watch these bright and early in mornings before school. And people wondered why I grew up wierd all through school. My favorite segments, though, were Peabody and Sherman more than actual Rocky and Bullwinkle.
The Beatles - Caught these on the late and lamented Austin Music Network's late and lamented AMN Kid's Hour. What's funny is AMN's bradcast masters of these seemed to be downloaded directly from YouTube or something just as grainy. Not that I minded, AMN's Kid's Hour just rocked. Another Jay Ward production, this one wasn't nearly as good as Rocky and Bullwinkle, but it had it's cute moments, along with Beatles music to go with it. I'm not sure but I think the guy who did Ringo's voice was Wakko Warner in animaniacs 30 years later.
Birdman and the Galaxy Trio - all I can really say about these shows is that I saw a few episodes that the Williams Street team had added a laugh track to for fun (the show being played dead serious in the 60s). Other than that, eh...I was never big on Superhero shows.
The Dick Tracey Show - Holy cow...this cartoon is just WRONG WRONG WRONG. When the Dick Tracey movie came out, a lot of unsuspecting TV stations bought this old 60s era package and were horrified with what they got. First off, Dick isn't hardly IN any of these cartoons. He'd get a case, then immediately send it to one of his junior investigators...then show up again when the case was over. His investigators? Holy bajeebers. The two bad ones were Go-Go Gomez, a sterotypical Mexican who spoke with an incredibly bad Mexican accent, enjoyed sleeping all the time, and when he was awake was a fast runner. Then Joe Jitsu, a Japanese stereotype...all bucktoothed, yellow skinned, R for Ls, super cowtowing martial arts expert who liked to eat nothing but rice. There were two slightly less bad stereotypes, Heap o'Calorie, an Irish American police sterotype, and Hemlock Holmes, a british Sherlock Holmes character. I can't believe that this show made it on the air in the late 80s, and watched it because it was such a trainwreck waiting to happen. Horrifyingly enough, I found it in 2005 on the digital Kids on Demands cartoon channel. You, too, can watch racism in crystal clear digital video!
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop - An entire show dedicated to having Paul Lynde tie a girl up, put her in a predicament to be saved by little mafia men in a backfiring jalopy. Yeah. And you wonder where I went so horribly horribly wrong growing up (okay, okay, I admit, I saw this in the 90s on Cartoon Network...maybe I'd already gone wrong by then....)
Roger Ramjet - Another Jay Ward production. Back int he 80s, our apartment complex got this wierd "cable" channel just in the complex. It was called Showtime, and was only on Channel 7. At night, it showed movies (with a wierd video toaster bumper between them), but during they day, they showed WGN out of Chicago. Not only was this a way for me to see Star Trek EVERY day, but they also showed Roger Ramjet in the afternoons. I really don't remember much from the show other than the jets were really wierdly drawn and i expected Roger to crash his jets everytime he landed (the landing animation was a steep pitched down nosedive at lightning speed). Of course, he had the strength of 20 atom bombs, he prolly had dominion over inertia and the gravitational constant of the Universe.
Shazzan - Another of the mid-90s Cartoon Network reruns. Chuck and Nancy get caught in the world of Arabian Nights, with their genie Shazzan and theie unfortunately named camel Kaboobie. Shazzan was invincible. Nothing could ever hurt him, and he solved everything constantly. I don't see why the kids didn't bring him out as soon as someone looked at them wrong.
1970s
For most of the 70s I wasn't very sentient (heck I wasn't even born for the first four years), so again, a lot of these were caught as reruns in the 80s and 90s.
The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan - Much like the Dick Tracey show, except now there's a lot less sterotyping, spread out among a whole bunch of his kids. At the beginning of the show, Charlie Chan needed to solve a mystery, and went off and, well, solved a mystery you never saw. In the meantime a SECOND mystery would show up, Chan would leave, and his kids would need to solve it, and usually did it in time for Charlie to come back from his own mystery, solved. While I saw it on USA's Cartoon Express, most folks have at least seen the character models, as they were "Shoyu Weenie" in an episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
Clue Club - I hated Scooby Doo. I really did. Scooby never appealed to me, but Clue Blub, a Scooby clone, did. A group of kids solve slightly less fantasical mysteries than Scoob and the Gang, with the help of their home-based little kid sister and her computer. Woofer and Whimper, their two dogs, comment on the kids' mystery solving techniques. I dunno why I REALLY like Clue Club over Scooby, but it was prolly the less supernatural elements of the mysteries (although they had their share of ghosts and monsters).
Devlin - Ernie Devlin is a daredevil in a circus with his brother and sister as his manager and stunt coordinator. It was actually a pretty good series, and played pretty seriously instead of as a joke. No laugh track, either. The only real low point in the show was Devlin spend 5 minutes doing the exact same stunt TWICE in every episode (and the occasional Very Special Episode that it was prone to because it was more serious). When it was taken off USA's Cartoon Express, I was very sad. Folks prolly know Devlin from his Harvey Birdman appearances as a fat, pain-medication addicted Super Christian.
Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch! - Put here for completedness sake. I watched it...I don't quite know why I did...seems kinda stupid now. :D
Hong Kong Phooey - Okay, any cartoon with Scatman Carruthers is INSTANT WIN. There are voice actors who literally phone in their lines, there are others who have no real emotion, and others who overact...but Scatman...man, he sounded like he was having fun in ANY character he played. Super Globetrotters, Hong Kong Phooey, Jazz, The Shining...he sounded like he was having a blast.
The Jackson 5ive - A lot like the Beatles cartoon, this was a show where an episode was kinda written around a song, which was aniamted in the middle of the episode. My biggest memories of the Jackson 5ive were that it was the very first cartoon in the morning on Saturdays (After Gobs of Fun at 6AM!). That and the live action videos that opened and closed every show. Wonder whatever happened to that Michael Jackson guy....
Josie and the Pussycats (In Space) - Another of the 90s Cartoon Network reruns...I mainly liked it for the animation used in the music videos, which were probably rotoscoped, but didn't LOOK like they were rotoscoped (There were a lot of shows I watched purely for the animation, versus the stories). The shows themselves, I wasn't really into, especially the In Space episodes. There was a really cool music video, though, for them made for Cartoon "Shorties:"
The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show - The only real iteration of the Flintstones I ever liked, and I think because it featured teenagers more than it featured the older Flintstones. It was also really different in that the adventures were more adventures, then Slice of Life episodes (and there's only so many "It's a Living" jokes you can make over the course of 50 years. Plus teen Pebbles was cute. Silly redhead fixation. :)
The Roman Holidays - The Flintstones in Roman Times. It wasn't much different, but different enough that I watched it and not the Flintstones.
Space Sentinels - I actually caught this first run in 1977 - I had to be three (I missed this on the last post I think). I don't remember much other than a coloring book I have, and the wierd colored computer head thing they had.
The Super Globetrotters. Oh my dear sweet lord...what were they THINKING. It's not just the Globetrotters...it's the SUPER Globetrotters. They have super powers. Like turning into a giant basketball with a face. Or the ability to pull any object out of a gigantic afro. Still, it DID have Scatman Carruthers, so it sounded like a lot of fun, if just incredibly wierd.
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. I first caught this on 90s Cartoon Network, when it was rerunning old cartoons on weekends, and I immediately took to it. It was a LOT like a milder version of "All in the Family," with all the seriousness/comedy and forward thinking without any of the controversy, and while it had a laugh track, it took itself more serious than most cartoons of the time. I really dug some of the more topical issues it hit, too. Really well done.
1980s
The First Run Syndication Market was pretty dry in San Antonio, growing up. We were the largest TV market with no independent stations, although all that changed in 1985, when KRRT and KABB came on the air, and they had the lock on after-noon cartoons (The other stations were still showing TV Magazines after school).
Bionic Six - Not something I watched a lot, but I caught it when I could. I thought the premise was neat, but never really got to see too many episodes, and as far as I know, no one reran it. I do remember remarking to a friend that he thought Rock-1 was cute, and I mentioned I preferred Mother-1, which got a wierd wierd wierd look from him. I mean come on - we're talking about the cuteness of animated characters...like social norms apply to animation cels. ;)
Captain N: The Game Master - I missed this when it first came out, never caught any reruns, and, believe it or not, am only just now seeing it NOW via http://www.kewlcartoons.com . It's a nostalgia headtrip, for sure with all the music and sound effects from the 8 bit era of video gaming. I love the animation attempts to recreate that 8x8 pixel "Stamping" that the NES did, too. I also really liked the just really odd character design for Princess Lana (well, minus that tuft of hair ponytail fountain thing on her head).
Challenge of the GobotsChallenge of the Gobots - Ah, the very first of the KRRT Cartoons I watched. Even before the Transformers, and now, sadly, can't find it anywhere (bitTorrent, how hath thee failed me!). It wasn't as well animated as the Transformers (Hanna Barbera was no Toei around this time), but one thing it had were female GoBots who were right up there with the males in rank and fighting ability. AND they weren't in prissy tiaras, dresses and makeup (I'm looking at you, She-Ra).
And now it's time to go home...I'll finish this up some other Saturday Morning. :)
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-27 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-29 02:05 pm (UTC)I didn't realize that was Sally Struthers...although now I can "hear" it.
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Date: 2008-04-29 02:40 pm (UTC)