80s cartoons

[elmuerte]

At the beginning of the previous retro thumb car Lu and I were discussing 80s/90s cartoons (for some reason). We were talking about how terrible those cartoons are now, even though we thought they were awesome back then.

Lu had the terrible opinion that Inspector Gadget was an awful cartoon. That's so wrong...

 

Anyway. I wanted to extend this discussion on the forums.

 

There have been quite some 80s/90s cartoons I've re-watched later in life. Some of them are quite bad... but others are still awesome. I don't think I've been able to properly follow cartoons when I was a kid. Even the cartoons that I liked I often missed (because of shitty airing, or activities). And then there's the stuff which was never aired over here. So I've missed out on a lot. I've been trying, a couple of times the past years, to catch up on the 80s/90s cartoons. This is really difficult, even within the "illegal" circuit. Copyright ownership of those series is often uncertain, and if it is the studios have zero interest in earning money. A lot of series were created by companies long dead, under supervision of companies which were bought out.

 

For example, some big names are Sunbow Productions, DIC and Saban. A bunch of stuff they created was partially owned by Matel, Hasbro or Marvel back then. Disney appears to have bought various parts of all these companies. So has Time Warner. But for me its uncertain if any company owns 100% of those cartoons. Either way... I wanted to talk about the cartoons itself, and not who owns the imaginary property.

 

 

 

So there have been a couple of cartoons I watched back then, and some I've been able to rewatch more recently. So, here goes...

is for series which held up, is for no, and not sure

 

 

Transformers (G1)

The original transformers cartoon. For me this series holds up quite well. For a cartoon which was basically an advertisement for toys it's really good. There's even an awesome full length movie with Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles (although Welles didn't like it). For the  Saints Row 4 players, the "The Touch" song is a reference to this movie (for which "The Touch" was written).

Transformers has all the elements of a classic 80s cartoon: a child some how involves in big things, continuous background sound track, morale guidance, story arch but also episode isolated story lines.

 

The Racoons

My memory of this series was much more fond than it was after rewatching. It's still quite good. It also features a great background soundtrack. It's pretty much like a non-Dinsey Ducktales, although a bit different. The episode stories are quite ok, and best of all, it doesn't feature the horrible morale segments.

 

M.A.S.K., G.I. Joe, Captain Planet

I'm going to name these three at the same time because they are equally terrible. The stories are horrible, and very moralistic. And the end of each episode there's even an awful extra segment of morality. It's quite vomit inducing. I haven't bothered watching more than a few episodes.

 

Buck O'Hare

Somehow I always seem to associate it with battletoads. It's a rather short lives series which is quite a shame, because it's quite good. It doesn't habe the Battletoads pause music though. There is the usual "kid" element in this series, which is rather dumb.

 

Ducktales, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck, Chip & Dale

Disney knows their craft. That's all I can say, except Ducktales is much better than the others.

 

Visionaires

There's so much wrong with the setup of this cartoon. The whole wizard part makes no sense at all. I'm not sure if I watched this as a kid, but rewatching it really doesn't satisfy my viewing pleasure.

 

Alfred Jodocus Kwak

This is a Dutch cartoon which is absolutely awesome, and also quite heavy. It deals with quite some heavy real life elements. For example, it discusses the whole slavery/colony and nazi regime of Earth history. It starts out quite innocent, but later in the series it really gets serious.

 

Dommel

A Belgian cartoon about a dog and his owner, who is a disturbed professor. It's a bit like Wallace & Gromit in its setup (except that the dog isn't that smart). Anyway, the humor still works for me.

 

 

There are a couple of series which I have some reservations about, and need to rewatch when I'm able to:

• He Man; I fear the worst
• Thundercats; I'm sure it holds up for me, but I need to see it first. The remake wasn't as good as I hoped
• Teddy Ruxpin; is on my queue to rewatch
• Teen Age Ninja Turtles
• C.O.P.S.; impossible to find, and I think it will suck big time
• ...

 

 

So, what's your list. Any recommendations of series I should watch?

 

[Sno]

I'm probably younger by a couple years since i really only remember the tail end of the 80's.

90's cartoons though, man!

X-men was great.

Some of those mainframe cartoons were great, like Reboot and Beast Wars. (The last season of Beast Wars where it ties itself into the G1 mythology is the best.)

 

Loved the Battletech cartoon, but i watched it while being way into Mechwarrior 2, so that might be skewed.

The entire DCAU is amazing, that's definitely something to catch up on. (Starting with Batman: TAS, ending a decade later with Justice League Unlimited.)

I remember really loving this:

 

[elmuerte]

lol... Cadilacs and Dinosaurs: "One man stands alone ..." and then they should clips of the man and his teams. These logical flaws bug me now, but never as a kid. Although it's not limited to children cartoons, movies are filled with them.

[brkl]

Alfred J. Kwak starts with the death of the protagonist's family, followed by Alfred's wrongful imprisonment which nearly led to his execution.

Eleven thumbs up.

[Roderick]

Besides the obvious ones that ElMuerte mentioned, I have two specific additions.

Jayce & The Wheeled Warriors, which is highly influenced by Star Wars, but has some great, goofy ideas of its own. Yes, it has plant monsters morphing into cars, but that's besides the point. There's a rollicking sci-fi vibe to it that I really love, even now.

Mentioned before here, recently, Ulysses 31. I'm watching it for the first time and though it's less good than Jayce, it's hair-metal guitar-slaying, hippie space Jesus and his tragic adventure to get home against the will of the gods.

[syntheticgerbil]

I can hardly think of any cartoon I liked in the 80s and 90s that stands up to my adult mind as quality entertainment. This includes a lot of cartoons already listed. Usually if the writing and characters were not already complete shit, the animation was terrible, derivative, and inconsistent. Usually this was from outsourcing to Korea and just poor quality control in general. The outsourcing part annoys me in a moral manner, especially now that it is more predominant than ever for animators in games, film, and TV. Funny how DiC usually had some top animators working on the intro and everything following was of poor quality. This actually bugged me as a child, as I completely saw through their shit of presenting only good animation for 30 seconds just to hook you in.

 

So out of the U.S. productions, the only ones I watched religiously as a child and feel hold up in my adulthood are Ren and Stimpy, The Simpsons, and Rocko's Modern Life. There's probably a few others I have forgotten, but those were the main ones. I don't count the later Ren and Stimpy and Simpsons in that category.

 

I actually got a lot of mileage out of watching the anime imported on Nickelodeon by Saban. I remember loving Grimm's Fairy Tales and a few months ago I got bored and started finding the old episodes on Youtube. Figures a few of the episodes were cut for violence, but a lot of the cartoons were straight tellings of Grimm tales and were appropriarity scary some times as a child. I feel like outside of the cheesy dub, these cartoons still hold up for moral tales and fun adventures. The drawings are solid and the ideas are clear. That's how to do limited TV animation correctly. The Lil' Bits was pretty good too and I found a few episodes on Youtube as well, but not as good. Score one for the constantly drunk uncle who was never actually drunk in the dub, but "sleepy."

 

I remember Count Duckula being very spooky, funny, and stylish, but I don't think I have seen that show since I was 6. I should probably check out that one too. I don't think it was produced in the U.S. though. I think the Beetlejuice cartoon may be pretty good? I certainly have gotten more enjoyment in life out of that than the actual movie. The rest of my cartoon diet as a child consisted of a ton of Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons shown on various channels. Come to think of it, a percentage of cartoons I hated as a child was probably only slightly less than the large percentage I hate now.

 

One last thing I remember from my Nickelodeon childhood days are the Sports Cartoons shorts they would show between other cartoons. These are some lovely pieces of Canadian animation. Here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL05FfjoM6s

[osmosisch]

Do the gummi bears and wuzzles belong in this list? And for the dutchies, Ovide & zijn vriendjes?

[elmuerte]

Ovide was and still is quite bad. I'd rather watch Barbapapa.

 

I've got a new one for the list: The Ghost Busters (the one with the gorilla). It's quite bad, think of it as the worst parts of scooby doo, except that's always the same villains. The only awesome part is when they "suit up".

[tegan]

X-men was great.

 

Ever see the totally awesome intros they made for the Japanese dub of X-Men? CRY FOR THE MOOOON

 

[Sno]

I have totally seen those openings.

How about a really awful opening for a really awful cartoon?

Also, it deserves reiterating that the DCAU is the best. These were emmy award winning cartoons.

 

 

So that's Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited, plus a handful of quite excellent animated movies that also exist inside of the DCAU continuity. (There's some other related materials as well, but they don't quite rate a mention.)

[Patrick R]

 

I recently became aware this was a thing. Probably old news to the internet, but Ninja Turtles and Bugs Bunny and Muppet babies and Alf and Alvin and the Chipmunks and Garfield all talking about how marijuana ruins lives (and combating the evil puff of smoke played by George C. fucking Scott) is amazing. Especially love that the arcade is cast as a den of sin where rotten 12 year olds walk around with pocketfuls of loose crack rocks. UGK would be proud.

[syntheticgerbil]

recently became aware this was a thing. Probably old news to the internet, but Ninja Turtles and Bugs Bunny and Muppet babies and Alf and Alvin and the Chipmunks and Garfield all talking about how marijuana ruins lives (and combating the evil puff of smoke played by George C. fucking Scott) is amazing. Especially love that the arcade is cast as a den of sin where rotten 12 year olds walk around with pocketfuls of loose crack rocks. UGK would be proud.

The sad thing is I watched that video at least 10 times. I was really in to the whole cartoon mashup thing and hardly understood what the fuck was going on with the drugs.