Must get to keyboard…must…bump…thread…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=62701
You’re welcome.
Reading that thread reminded me of “Pac-Man” and “Donkey Kong”. Just plain bad.
I must shake your hand, sir. I didn’t think anyone remembered this particular stinkburger! Ran on CBS, if I remember correctly. Darn near every original voice, with the exception of Tina Louise (natch). They even had to use a different look for her (ash blonde instead of redhead).
Filmation shows certainly have the upper hand of nominees… He-Man, Tom & Jerry, Mighty Mouse, and many others like Blackstar and the whole ongoing serial show that had several different titles within it, including Tarzan, one about two African-American superheroes with their dopey sidekick dog (I remember she was “Micro-Woman” while he could shapechange), some kind of Arachnawoman thing, and the kicker–really bad Batman cartoons, with none other than Bat-Mite.
Some other notable entries:
Lazer Tag Academy: Boy, was I disappointed in this one! I expected lots of shooting and fighting and stuff. Instead I get lame time-travel stories, and the Starlyte pistol was little more than a levitation device and time-travel facilitator.
Space Stars: Another lame multi-title show, featuring new episodes of Space Ghost and The Herculoids bundled together with tripe like Kid Komet and Astro and the Space Mutts.
Saturday Supercade: All your classic 80’s videogame heroes in really bad cartoons! Included in this particular rogues’ gallery are Donkey Kong (with Mario et al), the characters from Pitfall, the characters from Q*Bert in a 50’s teenage setting (uh…), and Frogger as an adventuring newspaper reporter (uuuuuhhhh…).
Those’re a few of my least favorite things.
I don’t think that enough people appreciate the brilliance of “Jabberjaw.” This is an example of a derivative formula taken to the farthest extreme possible, and it should get credit just for that. Sure, stuff like the “Pac Man” cartoon and the “Gary Coleman Show” were hideous, but they just stopped at exploiting ONE current star and/or fad. “Jabberjaw” exploited everything:
A group of mystery-solving teens (like Scooby-Doo et. al.)
in a band (like “Josie & the Pussycats,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids”)
with a shark (“JAWS”)
who talks like Curly (“The Three Stooges”)
and constantly says “no respect” (Rodney Dangerfield)
while fighting alien supervillains (“Space Ghost” et. al.)
underwater (“Sealab 2020”, “Aquaman”)
in the future! (“Star Wars,” et. al.)
Not a single original concept in the show, and yet it somehow managed not to be noticeably more awful than the other shows that did bring something new. And that’s to be lauded.
I do. But I really wish I didn’t.
Does anyone remember that Cartoon Express thing that USA used to show in the late '80s? Their cartoons were pretty bad – in fact, a lot of them have already been mentioned.
Oh, and Sealab 2021 rocks. Yes it does.
<hums to block out insults to The Smurfs and He-man>
Worst old cartoon:
Speed Racer
Worst modern cartoon:
Speed Racer
What sort of drugs were people taking to aprove an update of this crapfest? This cartoon sucks big buckets full of @$$. Hysteria, though, is a close second for the worst modern catogory.
Go Speed Racer GO!
Here he comes
Here comes Speed Racer
He’s a demon on wheels
He’s a demon
And he’s gonna be chasin’ after someone
He’s gainin’ on you
So you better look alive
He’s busy revvin’ up
The powerful Mach 5
And when the odds are against him
And there’s dangerous work to do
You bet your life
Speed Racer will see it through
Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer, GO!
He’s off and flyin’
As he guns the car around the track
He’s jammin’ down the pedal
Like he’s never comin’ back
Adventure’s waitin’ just ahead
Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer, GO!
How can you not love a show with such a cool theme song?!
Sadly, “Star Trek” (the animated show) was produced by Filmation for its one-season life. The stories were great, but the artwork and the disjointed, emotionless voice track (you could tell the actors weren’t working at the same time) really drove down the quality.
How can you not love a show with such a cool theme song?! **
[/QUOTE]
Easily. One person’s cool is another’s insanely repeative, that’s what I always say.
;j
Best
[list=1]
[li]Doug[/li][li]Tom Slick[/li][li]Hey Opal[/li][li]Augie Doggie and Doggy Daddy[/li][/list=1]
:wally
Worst
[list=1]
[li]Mighty Mouse (that voice, ugh!)[/li][li]Ren and Stimpy[/li][li]Hey Opal[/li][li]Cat Dog[/li][li]Roadrunner[/li][/list=1]
Different category: All the Peanuts/Snoopy/Charlie Brown shows are good. Never could figure out why adults couldn’t talk (or at least couldn’t be understood).
Teacher: MMMMMUUUUUMMMMMMMMUUUUUUUAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMM
Charlie Brown: Yes, ma’am, I’ll have it by tomorrow.
I don’t understand why kids like “Ren and Stimpy”, I think it’s an adult show…
I LOVED Ren and Stimpy
ducktales was cool too
It’s hard to pick which Hanna-Barbera cartoon is the worst, but I’ll go with Scooby Doo, because unlike the others, it refuses to die…it still contaminates the airwaves.
For the worst recent cartoon, definitely Cow & Chicken.
I apologize for not having an original cartoon to add to the infamous list. I really hated Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Their hamfisted style of delivering environmentalist propaganda was offensive to the max. I remember watching an episode where some Native Americans on a reservation managed to tap into some water and started a rice farm. Of course the water ended up being bad for bald headed eagles and after defeating the villain they replaced everything with windmills in order to generate clean cheap electricity. Problem solved!!
Marc
Rude Dog and the Dweebs
I’ll have you know that Thundercats is held in great esteem by several members of my age group. I loved that show when I was a kid. Of course, I also liked Rainbow Brite, so what the hell did I know?
Blasphemer.
Blasphemer.
I think you’re being WAY too harsh on Hysteria. Okay, so the potty humor and flatulence jokes are really dumb. Still, the show had some great novelty songs and some incredible vocal characterizations. There were also plenty of subtle jokes that must have gone way over the typical kid’s head. (Example: Depicting Lewis and Clark as pastiches of Jerry Lewis and a Clark Kent/Dean Martin combo.)
In the 60s there was a Marvel super-heroes show. 1 story per show split into three episodes. They were featuring only Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk and the Sub-Mariner. The animation, to be polite, was ultra-lame. It looked like they took the comic book, made photocopies of every panel, did a little bit of clipping for the parts that needed to move and voilà !! An instant cartoon.
Captain Planet… that show causes me physical pain.
Scooby Doo with Scrappy shudders
An extremely bad cartoon called Mighty Ducks, only the ducks were superhero hockey players that were actually ducks… it was a couple of years ago, and unbelievably awful…
Pinky & the Brain & Elmyra… took a perfectly brilliant show and completely crushed it… at least it only lasted about half a season.
Btw, has anyone seen the Tom and Jerry movie?? It came out sometime between 1994 and 1998… they talked, which should tell you all you need to know.
Good Lord, do I hate Histeria. The premise is promising enough in its own way; teach the tykes about history via cartoon wackiness. But I don’t think they ever managed to impart a single bit of actual knowledge in the show. So really it’s a cartoon pretending to validate itself by being educational when in fact it’s just a pile of crap. The most insulting was a sketch on Rosa Parks. Depicted as an attractive young black woman, Ms Parks doesn’t want to ride in the back of the bus, not because it’s insulting to her race to be forced into the back of the bus based on their skin color, but because the amazingly annoying kids from the show are back there. Way to teach civil rights.
As for Captain Planet, everyone I’ve spoken to agrees that the Brazilian kid with the power of Heart should actually have the power of Void. Not only would it finish off the five elements properly, but it would have been infinately cooler. “Don’t want to give spare change to the starving kids, huh? Prepare to meet Oblivion in an eternity of nothingness! Yeah, thought you’d change your mind.”
Old:
- Care Bears—worse, worse, worse, worse, worse than Smurfs
- Scooby Doo in any of it’s incarnations
Current:
- Jay-Jay the Jet Plane. on PBS in the US these days. Humanoid faces moving on animated backgrounds. The jets have entire faces, but the poor prop planes have propellers sticking out of their noses. The theme song also makes my teeth hurt more than Dragontales.
- Don’t get me started on Dragontales.