So, I’ve been watching Thundarr The Barbarian on Boomerang of late, and I find much to my surprise that I like it. It’s half an hour of mindless fun. I do NOT like most American cartoons as a general rule, including the ones that are supposed to be hip. But I do like Thundarr.
I’m OK with liking it, hell, I like SciFi Channel original movies, well, some of them, so I’m psychologically comfortable with liking, um, substandard movies. It’s just that I can’t put my finger on the reason that Thundarr is different in my mind than SWATCATS, or Jabberjaws, or any of the other crap Hannah Barbara has spewed out over the years.
I guess I like its faithfulness to it’s mythology, for one thing. Thundarr and Oogla the Mok and Pincess Jasmine (whatever her name is) wander a post-apocalyptic earth filled with evil wizard, leftover superscience, mutants, aliens and small bands of humans needing to be rescued from all of the preceding. Princess Jasmine is the real heavy-hitter of the trio, she’s a sorceress who can cast glowy things that can do just about anything. Thundarr has a fabulous sun sword that can deflect wizards glowy things and slice through most anything. Oogla the Mok is kind of a third wheel, a giant catlike humanoid that is only a little bigger and more muscular than Thundarr. They wander around riding on My Little Ponies righting wrongs and such. Can’t figure out why I’m not bored senseless with it, as I am with most Hanna Barbera stuff.
Help me figure this out before I wind up with a guilty taste for the Herculoids as well. THAT would be embarrassing.
Well Thundarr the Barbarian didn’t come from Hanna Barberra, it came from Ruby Spears so you’re OK there.
I haven’t sat and watched it in a while, but I used to love the heck out of it despite the fairly obvious Star Wars homages. Also, the princess is kind of hot, so that’s nice. I thought the scenery with the busted up moon and decayed cities was pretty cool and the two headed villian was a pretty creepy and unique antagonist. It had some pretty good voice work for a Saturday cartoon as well.
Plus Ookla was named after UCLA, so it’s got that going for it, which is nice.
A few famous names from comic books were involved in the creation of “Thundarr”
Jack Kirby, Alex Toth (Space Ghost), Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck), and Mark Evanier (various cartoons and comic books) were all involved to some extent, so good ol’ Thundarr has quite the pedigree.
The last couple paragraphs of this section go into more detail:
I was in high school, but I still watched it from time to time. I get that way with just about any show of this sort – I want to watch the series, so I can find out each character’s backstory. What’s a Mok? Where does it come from? How do they live? What do they eat? What religion does it have? And how does this whole thing end?
I also remember getting into discussion with other high school age kids – if a runaway planet came between the Earth and the Moon, what would happen? Would the Moon fracture yet remain associated, just like in the cartoon? This sort of random sci-fi weirdness even comes up on General Questions, so it’s not too surprising. People like sci-fi, and what else was there back then. Star Trek:TOS reruns? Battlestar Galactica starring Cousin Oliver?
Your problem is believing people who say “A is great and B is for morons”. I’ve generally found after watching “A” that it’s either depressing or unintelligible. Why let other people decide what your going to watch or what you’re going to like?
No, my problem is, "What is it about Thundarr that distinguishes it from other American cartoons of that time and place. Clearly, it has a different pedigree than Hanna-Barbera crapola, so that’s one thing. But what have they done differently from others? That, I’m not sure of. I suppose I could get a handle on it if I watched a few Hanna-Barbera shows of similar ilk, but I’ve no real interest in doing that, due to … it would hurt!
I loved the show and still watch it occasionally. My only beef is that I never saw Thundarr actually hit anybody with his fabulous sun sword, only inanimate objects.
And I think the sorceress was named Princess Aeriel.
It was a end of world cartoon that fit in with all the end of world movies produced at the same time that were a hit. It was a more mature cartoon by topic, even if it was still for kids. Ark II, Planet of the Apes, Logans Run, Buck Rogers and other kid shows were teaching us that the Earth was going to give out if we didn’t change.
I realize that though I remain fond of them, the vast majority of the cartoons I enjoyed in my youth were just average fodder. But some stand out as actually good. Thundarr is one of those. It is hard to say why it’s great. But great it is.
I was, and still am A Thundarr junky. The Pricess was named Ariel.
Shakes I believe the term was," Swamp Urchin". She actually made two appearances.
The two faced wizard was named " Gemini".
Yeah, I mean, I can get shocked at some of the stuff they showed on the old Jonny Quest (people getting machine gunned; Race using the phrase “you heathen monkeys”! Not that I have any moral objections to the former. The latter is a another story, of course. :eek: ) But even some old GI Joe episodes from my childhood occasionally take me by surprise, during rewatching. Mostly little stuff—a character casually mentioning he’d been in 'Nam; a speaker at an outdoor labor rally accidentally addressing the crowd as “comrades—uh, I mean, friends!”
