I almost forgot. The worst cartoon series ever is Rude Dog and the Dweebs, a cynical attempt to market a surfer line that lacked any sort of redeeming features.
Hm. I disagree strongly on this one. Handmade stop motion is difficult and painstaking, and these were done well (imo), by Art Clokey, a pioneer in the field and the same guy who created Gumby. It’s charming as hell and I’d rather watch these shorts than 99.9% of what came after them.
No hate for Max and Ruby?
Ohhhh… I hated, hated, HATED that show, when my kids were little. Max is a little shit, and Ruby is a sanctimonious twit, and an episode or two made me want to defenestrate myself.
I can’t think of a more annoying kid’s show. (Caillou was very close, though.)
Dear Lord have mercy.
Regards,
Shodan
One thing that really annoyed me was the “____ and Friends” trend. As in pay the royalties for one quality short, usually from Warner Brothers, and then pad the rest of the half-hour with forgettable entries from various C-list animation studios.
“And Friends”? Bugs Bunny’s bodyguards would tackle any of these loser “friends” who tried to walk up to him on the street.
I always said that Max needed a good butt whuppin’. Ruby was the stereotypical bossy older sister. The thing is, Rosemary Wells’ other characters tend to be fairly likeable.
Sadly, Davey & Goliath and Veggie Tales were Christian children’s TV at its apex. Those two had enough quality to have some crossover appeal. The real dreck was stuff like Bibleman or Psalty the Singing Songbook that no kid outside the fundamentalist Christian community ever saw.
In the 70s, the anime shows that were broadcast in the US were pretty much the same shows that were broadcast in the 60s: Speed Racer, Marine Boy, Kimba the White Lion, etc.
In the late 70s, both Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman and Star Blazers/Space Cruiser Yamato hit American airwaves. These were both shows that aired in the mid-70s in Japan and were a huge step up from the Japanese shows of the 60s.
Mazinger Z was Tranzor Z in the US. It was produced in Japan in the early 70s, but wasn’t shown in the US until the mid-80s, in an attempt to cash in on the robot craze of that time. It looked very very dated compared to other robot shows of the time (Transformers, Robotech, Voltron, etc). I didn’t watch it, but I’m pretty sure that the giant breast-missiles were edited out in the US. Mazinger Z was actually a historically important show. It was the very first manga/anime to have a giant robot controlled by a pilot inside the robot. (Prior to that, robots were either autonomous or remote-controlled).
Heidi, Girl of the Alps was never broadcast in the US. It is best known here as a historical curiosity, as it was a series that both Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata worked on before going on to found Studio Ghibli.
Nope. And the station I watched it on was WGGS, the local Christian broadcast station.
Some Saturday Morning Cartoon showcase ads courtesy of Mr Kitty’s Stupid Comics page.
Thrill to Frankenstein Jr, The Impossibles, Partridge Family (in space!), the previously mention Clue Club, Kwicky Koala and more.
Nothing wrong with a bit of Denver the Last Dinosaur!
They sure do like to make fun of it in anime, probably mostly because of Miyazaki.
I dunno, given a budget for flip-card level animation and probably about four hours to write each script, I think they did the best they could. It seemed like the show writers themselves were aware of how bad the show was and poked fun at it. Like naming the two mad scientists “Dr. Weirdo and Count Kook”.
^ Now that you mention it, they wrote songs for that show, too. Pre-dates the Groovy Ghoulies by, what, five years?
Given that pretty much all Japanese cartoons were pretty heavily edited for US broadcast until relatively recently, I’m actually pretty surprised they let that go.
I was a big comic book reader as a kid and I used to pore over those preview ads, trying to plan out how to waste my Saturday mornings.
I’ve never seen any Crusader Rabbit but I have seen Rocky and Bullwinkle and I agree they’re great. They’re radio shows with drawings, but that hardly hurts them: Their writing carries them through and it holds up well.
As for lame, my contribution is Captain Planet and the Planeteers and, by extension, every cartoon (every show, really) made to push a message to the exclusion of being a good show. It’s possible to have messages in good fiction, and it’s certainly possible to have messages in good cartoon shows, but there was a dark period in the 1970s through the early 1990s when cartoons were seen as purely disposable and the ones which weren’t simply toy commercials were used as cheap wrapping for whatever message the creators wanted to get across. It’s condescending shit which degrades the message, as it’s being conveyed by something nobody can take seriously or is taking seriously, and destroys any entertainment value the show itself might have had. There’s plenty of good in tying art to real social issues, but there’s nothing good in doing it in a ham-handed way.
That page broke my mind.
Crusader Rabbit had even worse animation than Rocky and Bullwinkle. It was one of the first cartoons made for TV and the cut so many corners it became a circle. Much of it was still pictures with no animation at all (other than perhaps some camera movement).
But it had great writing and was a terrific show.
remember yogis ark? and hb’s last tom and jerry series ? I don’t know who was in charge but about 1975 someone decided hb cartoon was too violent and decided to be ghandi its why scooby doo went to mysteries to straight alleged comedy …………….
ted turners ownership of Hanna- barbera unleashed some of the worst cartoons ever made……… 2 stupid dogs tom and jerry kids captain planet swat kats the remade droopy and son was the only bright spot
but if you want to know what saved cartoons in the 80s? the smurfs ……if it wasn’t for their surprise popularity nbc would of switch to its current news and sports line up about 1982 …….