Prince Planet
A cartoon I watched in Chicago when I was a kid. Have never seen or heard of it since (outside of a Google search).
He had a pendant with a “P” on it. It would drain and have to be recharged for him to maintain his powers.
I have wonderful memories of a lot of short-lived '80s dreck.
My fave being Wizards & Warriors
http://www.wizardsandwarriors.org/
Also love the rarely mentioned Manimal & Automan.
Prince Planet ran on channel 53 out of Pittsburgh when I was a kid. It was a UHF station in those days. It also ran Eight Man, Marine Boy, and Speed Racer. You could catch Kimba the White Lion over on channel 4 as part of Paul Shannon’s Adventure Time. Paul Shannon, BTW, is frequently credited as the man who revived the careers of The Three Stooges by running their shorts as part of his show in the 60’s.
Yborg, I was the other person that watched The Secret Life of Machines on the Discovery Channel. I think it was too “British” in tone for American audiences (the nerdy host with his “unprofessional” delivery, dry humor, the wonky supercheap animated bits - done by the host IIRC-, a whole show devoted to the history of the sewing machine, etc.). I could never get anyone I knew interested in it. But I loved it, just enough education mixed in with the entertainment to make it feel worthwhile. I’d love to have a DVD set, although another season might have been hard to do, there are only so many common appliances and devices to cover that most people interact with.
I’d say Due South was too popular to fit in here. And the American cop was named Ray, not Vinnie. It does seem to have been more popular in Canada and the UK. When I first went online, I was surprised how many fans sites and episode guides there were devoted to it. At least when the show was still airing in syndication and later reruns on cable, the show had quite a slash fanfiction following as well. Another show I’d buy on DVD, the first two seasons for sure.
To whoever mentioned The Highwayman, we was rambling about it about two pages back on the thread as well. I got to googling around about the show afterward, once I saw the name Glen Larson attached as producer and frequent writer, I realized why that show was so terrible. That man has a very high crap to quality ratio.
I watched Flying Blind, mostly because I had a crush on Tea Leoni’s squeaky-voiced female roommate played by Clea Lewis. Damn, I have weird tastes.
Oops. My bad. (Does this mean I have to turn myself in to the senility cops?)
And, yes, I’d love to own that show on DVD, too.
It’s horrifying the amount of dreck brought in this thread that I remember.
Other bad 80s short-lived shows I watched:
“Supertrain” - a ripoff of “Love Boat” set on a nuclear-powered luxury coast-to-coast train with stuff like a swimming pool car, a nightclub car, etc. and a whole bunch of unknown guest stars each week (even the C-list stars who made up the “Love Boat” passengers were above appearing on this show.)
“Cliffhangers” - a half-hour show split into three distinct ten-minute serials. The first was a modern-day Dracula story, the second about a cowboy in the 1800s who found a futuristic “high-tech” society living in caves below the wild west plains, and the third was about a female reporter on the trail of a watergate-esque conspiracy. Every episode, all three of the serials ended with a cliff-hanger (of course).
And does any one out there remember a short-lived daytime soap opera called “Generations”? It lasted about a year and a half. When it premiered, there was a lot of ballyhoo over the fact that most of the characters on the show were black, with only a handful of white characters/actors appearing. But from the very first week, the almost 20 black characters / actors got relegated to the background, while the two or three white characters got most of the screentime, IIRC.
Like I previously stated, neither Tooter nor the Hunter were Jay’s.
You’re right. I had missed your earlier post. My faulty memory at fault again.
I was also wrong about Tooter being contained within The Hunter as this link explains:
Well, I used to watch PEYTON PLACE religiously with my mother but that was learned behavior.
The obsession I can rightfully claim as my own is FAMILY, with Sada Thompson, James Broderick (Matt's dad), Meredith Baxter Birney, Gary Frank, and Kristy McNichol. I never saw it till it was in syndication in the mid-80's and when VCRs became available, I filled up a dozen or so videocassettes, taping every episode of that goddamned show, all of which I still own today and play over and over again, never failing to burst into uncontrollable sobs.
Make it stop, Mommy, MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!Duckman and Herman’s Head. Both very underrated and already mentioned.
Has anyone mentioned The Critic? A hilarious show not given enough exposure in my opinion.
Call me crazy, but I used to love Later with Bob Costas. He always had interesting guests and thoughtful interviews. Yes, Bob Costas can be a smug bastard, but it was a nice alternative to the late night mindless chatter.I’m a little relieved that I wasn’t the only one to watch Parker Lewis Can’t Lose . I was a major Nickolodeon freak as a kid; most of the shows I watched have been mentioned, with the exception of Out of Control . It had an ensemble cast that included Dave Coulier and a Cyndi Lauper clone, and a lot of the skits revolved around a newsdesk.
Really? I moved fom Chicago to the 'Burgh in '74. I could never find PP, though. Watched plenty of Speed Racer, but who didn’t? 
Boy, you guys have brought up lots of shows I remember fondly, and more I’d like to forget.
I remember Today’s Special (Hocus pocus allamagocus!), Small Wonder, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, Out of This World, James Bond Jr (I believe it was voiced by an American with a really bad British accent), and Punky Brewster, of course. My friends and I would dress up like Punky and her friends, and act out episodes. I was always Cherie. Our favorite was the Punky mini-series where the kids get lost in a series of caves…
Others I remember that haven’t yet been mentioned;
KIDS Incorporated- Disney show, bunch of kids were a band, and had lots of drama between shows.
Rags To Riches- A bunch of orphaned girls were adopted by a rich dude who fulfilled their every dream or something.
Voyage of the Mimi- PBS show, then we were forced to watch it in class in sixth grade…bunch of totally incompatible people on a ship, doing scientific stuff…horrid mind-sticking themesong. Ben Afflek’s definitive role…
Degrassi Junior High- Was a little old for me when it was on, so I don’t remember much.
I want all of you good people to know, that this post took me 3 hours to compose. Consider the 75MhZ processor with the 32MB RAM, the AOL 7.0, the lack of adequate support for a pop-up blocker, and the fact it takes five minutes to switch between IE windows. Also throw in a call to my sister to see if she remembered the name of a show I liked, but she doesn’t, and I don’t remember enough about it to ask you guys. I have a headache and an achy wrist from pounding the desk in frustration. I am going to bed.
Number Three here. I loved that show, and especially its opening theme (which I only recently discovered is, in fact, Take Five by Dave Brubeck.)
The rest of the family and I often watch that around Christmas. Or sometimes just because. It was originally on a old tape (which also contained the Rainbow Brite movie and a coupla episodes of Danger Mouse). After that got lost, my sister managed to hunt down an officially-released videotape of it, and there was much celebration.
Damn, never thought this thread would get this long.
It seems like I am the only person to watch Trailer Park Boys and I have it on DVD as well. Its such a funny show, I hoped more dopers had seen it, but apparently not.
I hesitate to mention this one, but does anyone remember a show about William Tell? I first saw it on the Family Channel in the mid 90’s. It starred Will Lyman, an american actor with a great voice, and several british actors whose names I can’t remember. The show looked like it was filmed overseas which was one of the reasons I liked it.
Hey, I love Trailer Park Boys!
I aso love this show, mid-Eighties, and I can’t remember the name. It was set in Florida and starred Jennifer Tilly and Fisher Stevens. Weird but good! He was a writer and she was a hooker.
I remember and loathed that show as a kid.
To me the oddest thing about it was that it kept bringing in Richard Keil (Sp?) otherwise known as the dude with metal teeth from the Bond Films, as it’s “celebrity guest”.
Has anyone mentioned jot yet? This was a religious cartoon which seemed to run at five a.m. on Sunday mornings when I was little. It was the only thing on so I would watch it. I remember being scared once by it(hey I was five years old).
There was a show I saw back when I was around eight called The Ugliest Girl in Town. All I remember is the guy who dressed as a woman and the theme song was funny. (Hey, I was a kid). Everytime I would get in a conversation about obscure shows I’d bring this one up and no one ever believed me. It got to the point where I thought I’d imagined it. Thank god for google… it was a real show that ran in '68.