As
I’ve talked about before I, jut like most kids in the old days, loved
Saturday Morning Cartoons. It’s really a shame they don’t exist anymore.
We all remember the classic stuff like Alvin and the Chipmunks,
Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, The Smurfs, Garfield, and Superfriends. But
sometimes the less than stellar stuff stay in our memories also. A lot
of these shows came and went because they were kinda silly. And while
some stuff was so silly we all remember it existed, like Rubik The
Amazing Cube and Shirt Tales, there are other shows that I never see
anyone talk about.
My colleague Rowdy Reviewer has been discussing Saturday morning cartoon’s the last few weeks. It occurred to me that they fall into two categories. You remember them fondly (Shirt Tales) or you never heard of them (The Biskitts?). It’s easy to remember the good stuff that people love so much that they’ve even been rebooted (Yeah I see you over there Muppet Babies). But what about the other stuff? The ‘Wish Kids”, “Camp Candy”s or “Foofur”s (that last one was a real thing!!). Here are five Saturday Morning Cartoons which I always remembered…even if they weren’t great. And since I was not a kid for forty years, there’s only a small range here in the mid to late 80’s. Though I’m pretty sure that awful Happy Days cartoon would have been on here if I had seen it.
Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling!
Oh hell yes! It’s hard to believe in the 80’s Wrestling was a huge thing. I even got hooked into it (even went to a few live shows). So a cartoon series was a given with the “good guy” wrestlers vs the “bad guy” wrestlers. Is that still a thing in wrestling? The wrestlers appeared in live action segments. So what makes me saw this was “awful”? The funny thing is that while the word wrestling was in the title and Wrestlers were the main characters (voiced by others), there was never any wrestling on the show!! Yeah the plots were generic as they could be. At least the Mr.T cartoon had interesting plots and the actor provided the voice!
Superman (1988)
A few years before the decent Superman:The Animated Series we had this show which never caught an audience, for some reason. Yeah I have no idea why the show didn’t catch on, it seemed like superhero shows and Saturday morning’s had a hard time mixing. This was a Ruby-Spears production and in one episode it had Wonder Woman in it, which was awesome! I guess I can’t blame people for not watching it was on CBS. I think it was trying to hard to be like the classic Fleischer cartoons rather than just be its own thing. Thankfully the 90’s animated series was a lot better.
Misadventures of Ed Grimley
So imagine you’re a kid who has barely heard of Martin Short and sure as hell never seen his work on Saturday Night Live. And then one day a new cartoon comes around based on one of his quirky characters. Yeah the setup made no sense to me, but the show wasn’t half bad. If you don’t mind half assed animation and boring stories so weak they need live action cutaway’s to fill the run time! It was about Ed Grimley getting wacky hi jinks. Yay. To be fair it really did feel like they were trying to make something work with this show, but in the end it just a mess.
Dink, The Little Dinosaur
What “Land Bedore Time” ripoff? I don’t see a “Land Before Time” ripoff! Yeah that’s pretty much what this was. This aired on NBC just a year or two before they gave up on Saturday Morning’s completely. It was about a little dinosaur who explored the world with his friends….and that’s about all you need. Even for a show aimed at small kids this was, underwhelming. Ruby-Spears did this as well as a ton of other cartoons from the good old days including Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Saturday Supercade. I’d say they ruled Saturday morning’s, but a lot of their stuff was only OK. At best. The show survived on Cartoon Network and as you can see even managed a DVD release.
Back to the Future:The Animated Series
I once brought this up in an aticle on the worst shows I ever saw. And Ok ok, this wasn’t the worst thing ever made but man was I disappointed. To be fair this came around when I was kinda getting out of Saturday Morning’s. But a cartoon based on my favorite movies? SOLD! To bad they didn’t take it seriously. The tone was off the chart, the characters were stupid (especially poor Marty) and none of the actors did the voices. Christopher Lloyd did do the live action wrap around which was cool, I guess. If this had been faithful the to the movies the way the Real Ghostbusters had been, I’d have been a fan. As it is, nope. This show has its fans and I’ll admit I was probably to hard on it when it came out. But I’d still take “Back to the Future:The Ride” any day. That was AWESOME.
For all of the cartoons out there I can remember there are plenty I can’t. Comment and let me know your favorite shows that weren’t good but we watched anyway. Why? Because Saturday morning’s rocked!!!
My colleague Rowdy Reviewer has been discussing Saturday morning cartoon’s the last few weeks. It occurred to me that they fall into two categories. You remember them fondly (Shirt Tales) or you never heard of them (The Biskitts?). It’s easy to remember the good stuff that people love so much that they’ve even been rebooted (Yeah I see you over there Muppet Babies). But what about the other stuff? The ‘Wish Kids”, “Camp Candy”s or “Foofur”s (that last one was a real thing!!). Here are five Saturday Morning Cartoons which I always remembered…even if they weren’t great. And since I was not a kid for forty years, there’s only a small range here in the mid to late 80’s. Though I’m pretty sure that awful Happy Days cartoon would have been on here if I had seen it.
Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling!
Oh hell yes! It’s hard to believe in the 80’s Wrestling was a huge thing. I even got hooked into it (even went to a few live shows). So a cartoon series was a given with the “good guy” wrestlers vs the “bad guy” wrestlers. Is that still a thing in wrestling? The wrestlers appeared in live action segments. So what makes me saw this was “awful”? The funny thing is that while the word wrestling was in the title and Wrestlers were the main characters (voiced by others), there was never any wrestling on the show!! Yeah the plots were generic as they could be. At least the Mr.T cartoon had interesting plots and the actor provided the voice!
Superman (1988)
A few years before the decent Superman:The Animated Series we had this show which never caught an audience, for some reason. Yeah I have no idea why the show didn’t catch on, it seemed like superhero shows and Saturday morning’s had a hard time mixing. This was a Ruby-Spears production and in one episode it had Wonder Woman in it, which was awesome! I guess I can’t blame people for not watching it was on CBS. I think it was trying to hard to be like the classic Fleischer cartoons rather than just be its own thing. Thankfully the 90’s animated series was a lot better.
Misadventures of Ed Grimley
So imagine you’re a kid who has barely heard of Martin Short and sure as hell never seen his work on Saturday Night Live. And then one day a new cartoon comes around based on one of his quirky characters. Yeah the setup made no sense to me, but the show wasn’t half bad. If you don’t mind half assed animation and boring stories so weak they need live action cutaway’s to fill the run time! It was about Ed Grimley getting wacky hi jinks. Yay. To be fair it really did feel like they were trying to make something work with this show, but in the end it just a mess.
Dink, The Little Dinosaur
What “Land Bedore Time” ripoff? I don’t see a “Land Before Time” ripoff! Yeah that’s pretty much what this was. This aired on NBC just a year or two before they gave up on Saturday Morning’s completely. It was about a little dinosaur who explored the world with his friends….and that’s about all you need. Even for a show aimed at small kids this was, underwhelming. Ruby-Spears did this as well as a ton of other cartoons from the good old days including Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Saturday Supercade. I’d say they ruled Saturday morning’s, but a lot of their stuff was only OK. At best. The show survived on Cartoon Network and as you can see even managed a DVD release.
Back to the Future:The Animated Series
I once brought this up in an aticle on the worst shows I ever saw. And Ok ok, this wasn’t the worst thing ever made but man was I disappointed. To be fair this came around when I was kinda getting out of Saturday Morning’s. But a cartoon based on my favorite movies? SOLD! To bad they didn’t take it seriously. The tone was off the chart, the characters were stupid (especially poor Marty) and none of the actors did the voices. Christopher Lloyd did do the live action wrap around which was cool, I guess. If this had been faithful the to the movies the way the Real Ghostbusters had been, I’d have been a fan. As it is, nope. This show has its fans and I’ll admit I was probably to hard on it when it came out. But I’d still take “Back to the Future:The Ride” any day. That was AWESOME.
For all of the cartoons out there I can remember there are plenty I can’t. Comment and let me know your favorite shows that weren’t good but we watched anyway. Why? Because Saturday morning’s rocked!!!
I don't believe that I ever saw any of these shows myself, except for "Back to the future: the animated series". Yeah, I didn't care that much for it either. Then again, I was in the same situation as you: I only watched it when I was too old to be in its target demographic. So I'm probably not completely fair towards it, since I guess that it was entertaining enough for small kids.
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