Courage the Cowardly Dog. hands-down the awfulest.
of course, it may just be that they translate everything to chinese…
Aaargh! Pardon me while I primal-scream. Thanks a million for bringing back the most painful memories of my life.
My nominee:
Who is green and blue but otherwise walk, talks and acts like a (crappily animated version of) my 3rd grade teacher on a bad hair day?
It’s…
Captain Planet and the Planeteers!
(Reportedly, Ted Turner himself came up with the idea for this stinker. Thanks, Ted!)
While I’m at it, let me mention:
- Grape Ape. Big purple ape, rides on top of a van driven by his wacky sidekick. Nuff said.
- Tweety Bird. Is it just me, or this one of the most annoying cartoons of all times? I only watch it in the hope that the main character will finally get eaten.
- Josie and the Pussycats. What were they thinking?
- Rubik, The Amazing Cube. They actually tried to make a cartoon series about Rubik’s cube. I was unfortunate enough to actually see it.
- The California Raisins cartoon. Please don’t get me started.
- I must second the nominations for Gary Coleman and The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.
- Everything by Filmation.
I think we have Ren and Stimpy to thank for saving the format after the atrocities of the 80s (Simpsons too, of course, but I see them more as a sitcom that happens to be animated than a cartoon, and it has inspired fewer followers). Post-R&S, there’s a whole lot of excellent, creative, funny, and frequently un-PC cartoons out there. It’s possible that later generations will look back at the nineties and 00s and see a golden era of TV animation.
While I’m at it: Hammerman, the animated version of MC Hammer.
“Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em.” didn’t seem to help that time.
Fortunately, it wasn’t “Too legit too quit” after a single season, as the network finally brought down the Hammer.
Gotta disagree with this one. I loved Crusader Rabbit. The first ones were done by Jay Ward and company – the folks who later gace us Rocky and Bullwinkle, and it shows (Short, clever, earnest hero – CR or Rockey – with a tall, powerful, yet dense sidekick – Ragland “Rags” T. Tiger or Bullwinkle – and a stereotyped black-caped mustachioed villain – Dudley Nightshade or Snidely Whiplash of “Dudleu Do-Right” – notice the two “Dudley’s”.)Later CRs were done by others, but still very good (and with smoother animation). CR plotlines and jokes, like those in the later Rocky cattoons, were filled with gags only the adults would get (seeking refuge in the desert, Dudley Nightshade spies an office of what he thinks from the initials to be the American Federation of Labor, so he stops in and joins up, only to find that he has enlisted in the Arabian Foreign Legion. What kid is going to get that?) CR also had the trademark limited, bad animation. In fact, the earliest CR’s had even more limited animation than Rockey ever did. It was part of the charm.
I have to admit that I never even * heard * of ** Pwwow the Indian Boy**. But I nominate Dodo the Kid from Outer Space as the worst cartoon and the one with the dumbest name.
remember it had to last 2 seasons.
and when I found that drugs where not invented in the late 60s and that they were around in the dark 50s, I immediately thought of Bennie and Cecil. those guys must have been on serious drugs.
believe me , I have seen a lot of them. remember the pet “king kong” one and the pet killer whale one and… but they all blended in together. except B&C. it gives me nightmares to this day.
Gilligan’s Planet.
It took me a while to even remember this one, and I seem to have blocked out nearly all memories of it. I just remember that it was really, really, bad.
Most cartoons are just bad and then they go away until they end up on some hip guy’s t-shirt. But for me, the worst is (and remember, this is just an opinion) Ren and Stimpy.
Not only did I find this show utterly laugh-proof, it spawned the current trend of unappealing art coupled with fart and booger jokes passing as cartoons. We’re only just now starting to crawl out of the wreckage caused by Ren and Stimpy.
I’m gonna catch flak for this one but:
Scooby Doo Where Are You?
As a matter of fact, 90% of all cartoons with Hanna or Barbera’s names on them were crap. Unfunny jokes that were labored beyond the point of sanity.
But the worst schlockmeisters of TV cartoons were Lou Shiemer/Norm Prescott. Some of their winners:
“She-Ra: Princess of Power”
“He-Man and the Masters of the Universe”
“Sport Billy”
“New Adventures of Tom and Jerry, The”
"New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle,
“New Animated Adventures of Flash Gordon, The”
“Fabulous Funnies, The”
“Space Sentinels, The”
“Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle”
“Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty, The”
“Isis”
“New Adventures of Gilligan, The”
They get points for doing the Star Trek cartoon, but that’s hardly enough.
I seem to be alone on this, but I actually really liked the acid-trip Tom & Jerry cartoons of the 60’s. IIRC, much of the work was done by Czech animator Gene Deitch.
No kidding? The guy who did those excellent one-panel jazzbo cartoons for ESQUIRE in the 1950s? The father of notable Underground Comix artiste Kim Deitch?
THUNDERCATS
Also there was a Menudo’s cartoon in the early 80’s too.
The Smurfs - Jesus wept
Scooby Doo once that little waste of space Scrappy showed up.
Apparently so, although I don’t know about Kim Deitch. here’s his imdb page. Most of the stuff he directed in '61 and '62 is Tom & Jerry.
I’ve happened to see some episodes of Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirdman on Cartoon Network, and damn that was a bad cartoon. It’s not that different from a lot of Hanna & Barbera cartoons of the same time period (the 60s), but it still seemed to be the bottom of the barrel in terms of plot, dialogue, and just about everything else.
I remember one episode where Birdman is looking for some villian, so he jumps up into the sky and begins to fly, and the cartoon then cuts to him flying over a greenhouse and he decides to go down and take a look at it. The villian did have some connection to plants, as I recall, so a greenhouse was a decent hiding place, but if Birdman’s search strategy was to just fly around randomly and stop at every greenhouse he saw, I’d expect him to have some stubble by the time he found the right one.
Heck, i even remember some of the theme song:
“California Raisins, Amazin’ Raisins,
It’s the California Raisins’ Show!
The California Raisins Shooooow!”
The Snorks - Jesus got off the cross and became a pimp
Well, it sure wasn’t good, but it did have a few saving graces:
[ul]
[li]Birdboy, the sidekick (Biiiiirrrrrrdbooy!). I find the idea of having a similarly-named younger sidekick kind of charming in an very Golden Age-ish way (do superheroes still do that today?). Besides, he was voiced by the guy who did the voice for “Speedy”, the Alka-Seltzer pill boy. He wasn’t around that often though.[/li][li]He operated out of a “secret volcano lair”. Much cooler than some dinky cave.[/li][li]He treated supervillains pretty roughly.[/li][li]He wasn’t sneaky, like Batman. He’d shout “Biiiirrdmaan” at the top of his lungs when charging into a figh. Gotta admire a guy like that.[/li][li]He took his orders from a mysterious man with an eyepatch.[/li][li]The Galaxy Trio.[/li][li]Shouting “Biiiirrrdman!” while flapping your arms like a maniac is just so much fun. At least it used to be when I was five years old and had a “Birdman” lunchbox.[/li][/ul]
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Didn’t Dave Thomas do Lorne Green singing the “Pow Wow the Indian Boy” theme song on SCTV once?
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Would that be Gandy Goose and Sourpuss?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by dropzone *
**
Yeah, from Mighty Mouse Playhouse. Voiced by the same guy IIRC.
…eeerrr, wasn’t that AC/DC?
As far as bad cartoons, there was a show that had some hillbilly bear and, I believe, a hillbilly possum that often said: “it’s possible, it’s possible…”
Ugh.
Personally, I think Hanna Barbera let loose many a scourge with their sweatshop cartooning, including Scooby doo. Yes, even in the pre-Scrappy era. But we’ve discussed that before.
I highly recommend Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, however. They took the cheesy cartoon characters and remade them into a campy show that only a GenX-er could love. Ditto with Sealab 2021 with Erik Estrada!