I was thinking that whenever I saw an old cartoon that I used to like (deputy dog, Yogi the bear,…). I always think that was the worst cartoon ever. but now I see “spongebob and squarepants” and “catdog” and “rimp and stimpy” and I think that cartoons have to be like that for kids to watch them. so based on the ability to judge all cartoons from a kids perspective what is the worst one, which lasted more than a couple years, of all time?.
Benie and Cecil was the worst piece of crap ever. thought so then.
The cartoons they used to show on “The Banana Splits” were dreadful. I hated them when I was a kid. I’d wouldn’t want to try and watch them now.
The cartoons were:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Gulliver’s Travels
I think it’s kind of hard to judge recent cartoons from a kid’s point of veiw. Just because I hate Pokemon, Johnny Bravo and Dragonball Z doesn’t mean 5 year old kids don’t drool over this stuff. If you go by the merchandising, they probably do.
BTW: I loved Ren and Stempy and enjoyed Spongbob Squarepants.
Even as a kid I hated all of the Harvey cartoons. If a target audience 8 year-old thinks it sucks, it sucks. Casper was a wimp (and why did Billy never remember who Casper was from cartoon to cartoon?); Heckle & Jeckle were just annoying, not funny; Herman & Catnip was a crappy Tom&Jerry rip-off, with the slight change that the damn mouse always won; and Little Audry was a “girl show” so I never watched it. Heck, it might have been great for all I know.
In the 60’s there was a very bad cartoon version of Dick Tracy. Bad animation, bad story line, you name it. But what made this cartoon series stand out as worst of the otherwise merely sucky cartoons were two sidekicks: Jo Jitsu and Go Go Gomez. These were the ultimate in racial stereotypes. Jo Jitsu (an oriental) had buck teeth, thick glasses and said things like “so solly.” Go Go Gomez was depicted as a lazy, shiftless hispanic. Just remarkable!
Clutch Cargo sucked. The *Tom and Jerry * toons in the 60’s (with the steel drum music and jerky animation) really sucked. The Pink Panther show where he talked and had sons. Most Hanna-Barbera toons were bad.
Sheep in the Big City
The New Transformers (why not just get up and take a shit on celluloid. How dare they even show it with the same name)
Johnny Bravo (a good idea gone too far)
Past
Turbo Teen (Whatta a load of crap)
The Gary Coleman show (The good part was that he was dead- bad part he was a angel)
The Chipmunks (not the early stuff by Jay Roach…I mean the absolute crapfest they made in the eighties. Lets not forget the furry’s wet dream…The Chippettes. Just cause mutant chipmunks can walk and talk does not mean I want to watch it)
Super Globetrotters (puke)
The Scooby Movies/ Pup named Scooby Doo / 13 ghosts of Scooby Doo
and of course
anything involving Scrappy Doo (whoever the wit was that made him over at Hanna Barbera needs to be drug out in the street and SHOT)
It’s amazing what they got away with in the 1960s. I agree that the stereotyps were atrocious. Nevertheless, I have to point out that “GoGo Gomez” was not lazy and shiftless. He was, like “Speedy Gonzalez” of Warner Brothers cartoons, the exact opposite – a speedy go-getter(Hence the name “GoGo”, which was not meant to be ironic). It still is stereotyping – it was thought to be funny because it was the opposite of the usual stereotype – but it’s arguably not negative.
There’s a lengthy discssion of all Dick Tracy cartoons in the book Cartoon Confidential, wich I highly recommend.
Johnny Bravo was good in the early eps and though I think the redesign (adding “Carl” most of all) destroyed it, but every now and then they have this joke thrown in that is so incredibly random that you can’t help but love it.
I agree with you on The Gary Coleman Show. They used to show reruns of that early morning on Cartoon Network; I’m fairly certain they don’t anymore.
On Scooby: Last I counted, the show had five spinoffs. I’m very impressed that they kept it going that long. The only Scooby show I ever liked was “A Pup Named . . .”, b/c it was the only one that seemed to give the characters any personality. The rest, it seemed they had carboard cut-out personalities to match the cardboard cut-out animation.
I nominate Superfriends for the “so bad it’s good” award. I remember one episode invovled Green Lantern trying to stop comets from crashing into the Earth; his plan of action?
“My power ring won’t work on those yellow comets; I’ll have to move The Earth out of the way!”
After that episode, I was hooked.
“That looks like . . . a giant pinball! And it’s coming right at us!”
Cartoons that sucked when I was a kid (late 70’s - early 80’s):
Mighty Mouse. Old and New. Couldn’t stand either of them.
Fat Albert after they brought in the Brown Hornet.
Tom & Jerry in the 70’s when they became friends.
70’s Popeye (these last three (and new Mighty Mouse) were all done by Filmation, weren’t they?)
Bugs Bunny & Co. after the 60’s. No jokes, just “character A blows up/drops large object on character B”.
All Harvey cartoons - Casper, Herman and Catnip, etc.
Anything “(old cartoon) Kids”.
98% of Hanna-Barbera. Other than Scooby-Doo (pre-Scrappy, of course) and Laff-a-Lympics, it was all dull as dirt.
Hong Kong Phooey
Speed Buggy
Super Globe-Trotters
Fonz and the Happy Days Gang
The Partridge Family in Outer Space
Any other “(previously Earth-based characters) in Outer Space” cartoon
Devlin
Wheelie
Richie Rich
Pac-Man
I’m sure there are plenty of others waiting in the back corners of my subconscious, but there’s a starter list.
And don’t be dissin’ the Superfriends, man. Apache Chief and Solomon Grundy were cool.
Dick Tracy is the worst cartoon ive ever had the displeasure of watching. In fact, I’d forgotten about it before it was mentioned in this thread; perhaps too painful a memory. But yeah, what the hell were the writers thinking? For christ’s sake it was called Dick Tracy, but he was only in the cartoon at the beginning and at the end! I hated the sidekicks; I just wanted to see Dick Tracy do something aside from arrive just after his sidekick dealed with whater was wrong. Honestly, what the hell was the point of this show? At what point does a marketing execute say, “Hey…why don’t we feature Dick Tracy only in cameos, and have the series be focused on his sidekicks?” God almighty, what a disappointment. I wish The Shadow had had a cartoon series. THAT would’ve been cool.
I’ll nominate He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, just for the horrific Filmation “let’s reuse all our animation model sheets” low-budget animation, the goofy plots and dialog, and the sheer stupidity of the characters’ names.
The absolute worst cartoons were the old “singalongs” that the TV stations would throw at us between the rest of the cartoons. “Follow the bouncing ball.” The programmers in Buffalo, when I was young, would mix these monstrosities in with Bugs Bunny cartoons as filler. They looked like they were made at the dawn of animation, with jokes that were old and stale, and they always ended with some crappy song, hence the singalong. It really pissed me off, as there were only 3 channels to watch then, and the other channels were running “Sunrise Semester” or “Lamp Unto My Feet” (the title always made me laugh.)
I’ve got to agree that most of the other examples posted were bad, but Beany and Cecil was a favorite of mine, and I liked Hong Kong Phooey.
"Nyah ah ah, it is I, Dishonest John…(whips out business card that reads…) “Dirty Deeds, Done dirt cheap”.
You know, from the moment I heard 'Cheap Trick’s DDDDC, I knew it was a B&C rip-off!
I nominate : ‘Crusader Rabbit’ and ‘Powow the Indian Boy’ (loved all the animals in the woods. Mhuh…riiiiight.), anyone remember this loser?
Also gotta say I liked the new Mighty Mouse. Wierd perspective, buxom mousettes. Ditto on the short lived new Felix.
Say, does anyone remember a cartoon (old) about a duck and a cat that would always ‘go into’ a book? Cat had a Jimmy Durante-type voice, IIRC. Kinda spooky. Any takers?
This is such an understatement I don’t know where to start. Those cartoons don’t just “suck,” they’re actually evil. Whenever they come on, I get this indescribable creepy feeling and have to turn the channel immediately. It’s like watching the regular Tom & Jerry cartoons while in a fever dream, or even in Hell. All the sound is muffled, the animation is loathesome, the “plots” are nonsensical, the music just makes me inexplicably sad.
On the other hand, I kind of liked He-Man, on the level of being pure idiotic time-wasting “entertainment.” I could never understand the appeal of Thundercats once the theme song ended, though – I always thought they were a little creepy too.
When I was a kid I LOVED Tom and Jerry. I still come across it sometimes and giggle and giggle, and my husband is like “what the hell are you laughing at??”
But I agree…those 60’s weird acid-trip Tom and Jerry cartoons–even I as a small child knew those were just baaaad (as in NOT GOOD). There was just no point to 'em. They definitely sucked all kinds of ass.
