Retarded 80s Cartoons
(Page Two)

The Godzilla cartoon... Oye vey! Oh God! Oh sweet Mary Jehosephette and all the gay, prognostic saints in Purgatory... This one sucked giant, wrinkly, green dick. Holy shit. First of all, every kid at the time was crazy ape-shit over the Godzilla of the movies. We even loved Godzilla Vs. Megalon, where that faggy robot, Jet Jaguar, was able to turn Godzilla-sized and helped the big, radioactive fool beat the shit out of Atlantis' pathetic last resort against humanity, the drill-bit-handed, giant, lady-bug, Megalon. But the cartoon was just all wrong. All wrong. But that's what you get when you have Hanna Fucking Barbera (i.e. the ONLY name in generic, inoffensively boring Saturday Morning cartoons in the late 70s to early 80s) make this shit. Oh, and feces it was. First of all, animated Godzilla didn't look or act a thing like the man-in-suit Godzilla. His spine, dorsal fins were all wrong; he breathed actual "fire" and not the cool radioactive breath of the movies; he had stupid laser-eyes (what the fuck?!); and he sounded absolutely NOTHING like the original. That awesome, trademarked, trumpety bellow was gone. Add to that the fact that a bunch of punk-ass bitch kids "controlled" him by remote control and you have a train wreck on your hands to rival (MacDonald's attempt at feature-length motion picture marketing) Mac & Me. But at least Mac was so bad that it was funny (and I piss myself laughing so hard just thinking about that face Mac makes just as he's about to be plowed by that car! Ha!). Godzilla the series was so bad that it went beyond being "just bad" and "laughable bad" to "I'm going to shoot myself through the eye, because they fucked up something that could have been the greatest thing in the world since Banana-Flavored Farina" bad. And then there's Godzookie. Seriously, was that to reach out to the "Special Olympic demographic?" Oh, and that theme song was mongo too. Something about him being "30 stories tall," and towering over all... or whatever. "Godzilla! Godzilla! Godzilla!"

Not to give you the wrong impression, but not all 80s cartoons were unoriginal. There were a few retarded shows that were very unique... But I'm going to continue talking about the "based on" shows for a little while longer. I mean, I didn't even cover the "based on video games" mongo toons yet. Yup, lame cartoons based on video games weren't invented in the 90s. Hell, I remember the Pac-Man cartoon (that's right, a cartoon based on a circle that ate dots in a maze)! It was so bizarre -- Pac-Man and the missus (and baby Pac) would tool around Pac-Land with their pets (a round dog and round cat) and scare off the ghosts, Inky, Blinky, Sue and Clive (Clyde?), and their freaky looking master, Mezmarron. Mez had the weirdest costume... Though it was weird enough that he was the only humanoid creature in the land of the walking, yellow spheres. Mez's long, flowing robes are what I remember most, and a bald, shiny head. He looked kind of like Vader at the end of Jedi after Luke de-suction-cups his helmet off his conehead. This cartoon was just a mess! It was just so absolutely bizarre, even by today's standards. Oh, and every time Pac-Man ate one of the power pellets from the Power Pellet Forest (think "Gummi Berry Juice," or "Smurf Berries" of the Pac World -- the power pellets grew on trees and were what the bad guy of the series was after, 'cause the writers needed some kind of retarded McGuffin to give us show after unforgivable show), he's say some shit like "Wacka-Wacka Wacka-Wacka!" and get all super strong and kick the stupid ghosts' asses... Wow, I was originally going to say that the Gummi Bears cartoon was one of the few original NONretarded 80s toons, but it's obvious to me now that the writers totally ripped off the Pac-Man show (Just replace the Gummis with the Pac family, the trolls with the Ghosts, and Duke Igthorn with Mezmarron. That's... That's just sad). What's even sadder is that Pac-Man also had some Christmas and "Pacs-giving" cartoon specials.. In case you were wondering the ghosts were the Indians in the second special... Asshole Indians. As a side note, both Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) and Frank Welker (the previously mentioned voice of Megatron and Glomer) played Pac's pets. I'm telling you, this toon was fucked up.

This was the worst mistake a child could have made in the 80s... Setting time aside to watch The Real Ghostbusters cartoon only to find out that what you were really getting was the shitty Ghost Busters cartoon that followed that shitty 70s sitcom (starring Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch of F-Troop fame... And no, I can't make that shit up), and not the hilarious 80s movie. The fake Ghost Busters show was all about the lame adventures of a team of paranormal fucks who somehow got a monkey named "Tracy" to help them track down ghosts and stuff without humping every Volkswagen he came upon. It was laaaaaaaaame. The Real Ghostbusters was the one with Slimer (yeah, Slimer was lame himself, but still 20,000Xs cooler than that ape in the khaki shorts). The RGB scripts were actually well written, and didn't talk down to kids... The fact that the other GB show had a talking monkey should tell you what those writers thought about kids. I just remember that one episode of RGB where a demon from Hell gets a guy to sign his soul over to him in exchange for any wish that he wants, and he wishes that all the chickens in the world would disappear. Then the demon becomes a laughing stock in Hell, and he tries to get the Ghostbusters to get the guy to cancel his contract. That's high quality entertainment right there!

Oh man, besides Pac-Man, there were cartoons made from Q-Bert, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Pitfall, Frogger, Kangaroo and Dragon's Lair -- every last one of them retarded. The reason why they were originally made as video games and not movies or TV shows was because THEY DIDN'T HAVE A FUCKING STORY TO TELL. Donkey Kong was about a monkey who kidnapped a girl and then climbed a construction project. That's it. That's its plot. It's just the last 5 minutes of King Kong. Q-Bert was about a testicle with a hacked-off penis for a nose, that jumped up and down a pyramid and avoided springy snakes. Frogger was about an amphibian that wanted to cross the street. How the fuck did anybody say, "Man, this game is fun and all, but WHY does the frog want to make it to that pond? Why do the cars not care if they hit him?" What he should have been asking is "why did I just blow my entire annual salary on a tabletop full of cocaine and Thai Horse? And why did I just snort the whole thing in less than ten minutes?" Seriously, ten minutes! He should have died from that much intake. What a dick. Anyway, my point is TV shows based on games suck. This is still true today. Maybe even more so.

Wait! Holy shit, I almost forgot to mention some of the WORST video game shows ever shat out like festering piles of diarrhea from the anuses of network producers who should have then been forced to EAT their own excrement instead of throwing it in their impressionable viewers' faces. My sister, Jaime, still hasn't forgiven me for making her watch the shitty as all shit Super Mario Bros. show, and the hideous, lacking of any redemption whatsoever, Legend of Zelda toon. Urrgh! The production values on both were terrible. "Special" Ed, that kid who sat in the back of all my 6th grade classes laughing at his own dick (which he'd secretly have unzipped throughout each period), made crappy little flipbooks with better character models and more fluid animation than those two almost-aborted Nintendo toons. Zelda in particular was such a let down. The kingdom of Hyrule in the cartoon was populated by one King, his daughter (Zelda), a demon-pig man (Ganon) and a gay elf in green tights (Link, of course... Moron). That was it. It felt so sparse and cheap. And Ganon in the show was such a pussy too. He was never a serious threat with his lame crystal ball and lamer schemes. If I remember correctly, his most successful nefarious plot involved capturing the princess in a giant bubble and then throwing her into a deep, dark hole in the ground. Yeah, Link saved her (a blind-folded, lobotomized Scrappy Doo could have saved her), and then Ganon somehow got caught in his own bubble... Which he couldn't pop from the inside like the complete mongoloid that he was... Oh God, I hope I just misremembered all that. If that shit was really written, animated, and shown on TV, then we, as a species, are already doomed. The only saving grace of the Nintendo cartoon-shitfest of the late 80s was the fact that Captain Lou Albano played Mario in some live-action mini-acts between the sucky animation blocks. Captain Lou played Cyndi Lauper's dad in her "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" video. That put him on par with "Weird Al" Yankovic in my childish 80s mind. And as you know, Al is part god.

Okay, I got all that shit out of the way. Now to jump straight into "original retarded 80s cartoons." Honestly, this list is going to be pretty short. MASK, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Voltron, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends... All of them were filmed in Mongo-Vision and broadcast for the sole purpose of whoring toys and comic books, and forsook good plot and characters like my friends had forsaken me when the cops showed up while we were bleaching "The War Eagles football team has very tiny dicks and they are all fags" on the West Bumblefuck High's football field that one Thursday night, before the big game our senior year. Yeah, I have fond memories of most of those shows, and that arrest (plus those die-cast metal Voltron lions were the fucking bomb! I remember becoming friends with dorkier kids than I, way back when, just so I could play with their Voltron toys), but they were retarded. MASK, for all its cool toys, had the shittiest writing of them all, and the most heavy-handed attempts to introduce a new vehicle (toy line) each week. The unfamiliar vehicle/toy would have an entire episode played around its new, important capabilities. Like somebody would get stranded in a tight canyon with some medicine needed for a poor village, and what-do-ya-know, the new motorcycle/helicopter that can conveniently fit in that canyon (where the already out of toy production car/plane couldn't) saves the day! Yay! Big American dance party! And as for Spider-Man... Were he and Bobby Drake (aka Ice-Man) lovers? Why didn't either ever try to bang Firestar? She was hot (no pun intended), and she was willing to hang out with those two lamers, which proved she obviously didn't have any other suitors (or friends of any kind) to get in their way. And the Turtles... Well, they were original and fun, but I count their cartoon as retarded simply because it was aimed at 7 year-olds and I watched it when I was waaaaaaaaay older than I should have been, and it made me feel re-re all the same.

Holy shhhhhhhhhhhit... Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats... I had totally forgotten. Wow, what a crappy show. Oh, let me tell you, it was the bottom of the shit pile of things that us kids would watch... But we did anyway, for the sole reason that there was nothing else on at 2:30 every weekday but this filth and Phil Donahue. The only thing that made this more acceptable was...... Wait, why the fuck didn't we watch Phil? Oh Christ.. I feel sick.

Despite all those mongo cartoons that I just covered (and the thousands of which I didn't even mention, or have already completely blocked out of my memory, and which will only resurface fifty years from now when I'm trying to discuss my mentally self-abused childhood with my shrink for $500 per hour), the 80s did provide an elephant's fecal-load of high quality children's entertainment. G.I. Joe, Transformers, Real Ghostbusters, Galaxy High, Inhumanoids, Robotech, Spiral Zone, Bionic Six (man, if I could choose my own bionic abilities I'd get bionic boobs -- Or I'd get my bionic brain put into two bionic bodies, one male one female... but then I'd never leave the house and Scarab and his cronies would easily take over the world.. or destroy it... or whatever his evil plan was), Galaxy Rangers, School House Rock (true, I was tricked into learning stuff with School House, but those little ditties were very catchy. And I still know all the words to "How a Bill Becomes a Law"... But I probably just made those up seeing at the real song more than likely doesn't contain the lyrics "suck," "fuck," or "rim-job")... etc. etc. Some of the good shows had writers who went above and beyond the call of duty of simply making mass produced pieces of mindless gobbledygook. These writers gave personalities to their trying-to-sell-toys characters, and they came up with plots that didn't hurt our intelligence (too much). And for that I give them a hearty "Yoooooooo JOE!" Without them I wouldn't have had my Transformers: the movie... And.... And I just wouldn't want to live in a world without that cinematic piece of perfection.

It's sad, really. Everybody in my generation remembers Mr. T's really gay cartoon (Sorry Mr. T, but you should really be pitying yourself after having to hang out with all those sad sad casework, gymnast kids and that mohawked dog), Richie Fucking Rich, Kidd Video (what a royal fucktarded mess this premise and show were), Laser Tag Acedemy (which tried to hawk a shitty gun game and tell a Terminator-like story, and failed at both worse than the Grimace trying to sexually satisfy himself with those sad excuses of mitten-hands he was cursed with) and Rubik, The Amaaaazing Cube (yes, they really and truly made a weekly show about THE RUBIK'S PUZZLE CUBE [who's magic could only be unlocked when he was solved! Bonzai!]), but hardly anyone remembers the gems like Wolf Rock TV (starring the one and only Wolfman Jack *AROOOOOOOOOOOO!!!*), Drak Pack (for some reason my older cousins actually allowed me to watch this one with them. Trust me, this was a true treat) and Spiral Zone (and they would "fight for our honor; for our rights, they'll defend. Fight the zone; Zone Riders, Earth's most powerful soldiers are Earth's LAST CHANCE to fight the Spiiiiiiiiiiii-raaaaaaaaal Zone!" [FYI, Frank Welker did the voices of close to half of the Spiral Zone's characters! The man was a fucking oral machine!]). Yes, I did spend/waste/piss away most of my entire childhood (and teenage years, and college life, and my twenties) watching retarded TV, but more than likely, so did you. So BACK OFF! My point is... I hate sauerkraut.

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