Retarded 80s Cartoons
(The Counter Revolution of Antiprogramming)

I never even thought about the lame "realities" that some shows were trying to impress upon me back then. For example, He-Man was the most powerful fucker on all of Eternia (he could fart and all of Skeletor's Legion of Doom would go flying)... His alter-ego, Prince Adam, was the Universe's biggest pussy (and he loved to wear pink and "light-purple" taffeta too)... Yet, for some reason, He-Man always changed back into Prince Adam after he stomped on Skeletor's evil, gay, Nazi nutz and plan of-the-week. Why? Why didn't he just stay He-man? It's not like He-man had a timer or anything, and Skeletor couldn't do anything to the Royal Family while he was around anyway (He-Man could probably keep more people safe if he was exposed as the Prince than he did by hiding this fact). So why let the world think he was a no-talent gimp most of the time? If he stayed He-Man he might have even had a chance of slipping into Teela's battle-panties after killing Beast-Man for the hundredth time. And why didn't he ever just wage an all-out assault on Snake Mountain, Skeletor's domain? He knew where it was, and Skeletor only had something like 10-12 followers at any given time (and most of them would pee themselves and run like a coked up race-horse whenever the oiled-up, fur-briefs-wearing man popped his mulleted head around the corner). It would have been so easy. On a different note, just what the fuck was Orko anyway? And why did they allow his brazen incompetence and faggy stupidity when he constantly put others' lives in danger just by being present?! Maybe the Kingdom of Eternia was meant to be destroyed; its only problem was that it got an even lamer enemy than itself to keep the cosmic scales in balance.

I had apparently blocked it all out, but one Saturday morning not too long ago, when I accidentally caught some of the shit they call "children's entertainment" in this day and age on the boob tube, all the forgotten, retarded memories of my youth came gushing back into my head all at once. And my mind exploded. I suddenly remembered all those weekday afternoons, racing home from school to catch Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, Deputy Dog and Pink Panther before my older brother got control of the TV and made me watch live action crap like Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, H.R. Puffinstuff, or the Bugaloos (holy shit did the Bugaloos blow bendable Bangkok). I can recall waking up really early on Saturday morning (pre-sunrise) in order to catch Pandamonium, The Muppet Babies and Meatballs and Spaghetti before all the shitty toons of late morn and early afternoon kicked in. In fact, my life seemed to revolve around retarded animation more than it did Retarded 80s shitcoms. Am I a better person for this? No, probably not. In fact I think that it took me longer to separate fact from fiction in my messed up little brainiac head thanks to shit like The Superfriends and Kids' Super Power Hour (With Shazam!).

I wasted (yes, I admit it now, wasted) soooo many hours of my young life watching pure crap. Once I got a TV of my own in my room (I was about 8, and it was a kick-ass 13" color, dial TV [i.e. no remote control back then]) I was never heard from again. With my Atari 2600 (and eventually my NES) hooked up to it, along with the endless supply of retarded cartoons and sitcoms that plagued the mid to late 80s after school schedule, I was a TV-junkie to shame all couch potatoes the world over. Honestly, all my friends at school were amazed that I could keep up with conversations about ANY TV show on at the time, while they were maybe allowed to watch 2-3 shows a week. See, I had a photographic memory for facts and figures back then (I still might now, but thankfully haven't been tested on it for years), and I didn't have to study more than 5 minutes a night for all my classes combined. So, I would lock myself in my room as soon as I got home from school, and turn on my TV really low after I told everybody not to bother me, cuz I was busy studying... They all bought it because I was a straight "A" student, but in hindsight they probably all thought I was whacking it to the bra and panty section of the newest SEARS catalogue... Eh, I'll probably have to clear that up during some Thanksgiving dinner conversation years from now (none of my family, not even Jaime, truly ever reads my site, so they'll never see this). But I digress. My point is that I saw every episode of every 80s cartoon at least 8 to 25 times. Hell, I'd even watch the girly shit like Jem and It's Punky Brewster ("Punky Brewster Come on it's just a fantasy, you know-uh-oh") if nothing else was on... Sometimes even if there was. This is my story.

I took every lame and unthought out cartoon plot to heart. Call it my youthful imagination or my juvenile doltishness, but I bought into everything. A broken roller coaster that transported a bunch of good-for-nothing kids to a fantasy realm and granted each of them amazing skillz, weapons and powers for no goddamn reason whatsoever? Sure, why not. Three abnormally large rodents who liked to wear color-coded T-shirts and sing like they had their woodland nuts caught in a bear trap? They made me laugh AND tap my feet, so yeah. A couple of Milwaukee gals originally from a live-action sitcom from the 70s, based in the 50s, where in the two broads join the army and are subjugated to a talking pig drill sergeant who didn't wear pants? Well, that was pushing it, but there was nothing else on after the Smurfs ended, and I refused to step one foot outside until every last cartoon of the day was over.

And you thought that all the Yu-Gi-Yoh and Pokemon rip-offs of today were unimaginative. Nothing was as unoriginal as 80s Saturday mornings. Snorks, for all intents and purposes, were simply just Smurfette's horrible left-over abortions that were flushed into the sea, where they should have died, but unfortunately prospered... And grew erectile dysfunctioned penises on their foreheads. Well, they prospered for at least a season or two. But I mean, come on! The name is even a rip on the Smurfs! It was like the creators were seeing just how close to copyright infringement they could get before getting swatted with the world's largest, animated lawsuit. Fuck you, Snorks. Smurf my big ole smurfing smurf, you smurfingly smurf smurfs!

What gets me now, in hindsight, is how blatantly some cartoons ripped off other, popular ideas, no apologies. And they did it so completely without shame too. Let's take the Smurfs for example, seeing as they were on for like a 3 hour programming chunk every Saturday morning for like 10 years. The Smurfs were über popular. First there was a movie, then an animated special (where a spying, brunette Smurfette first penetrated Smurf society for the dark lord, Gargamelle), then the TV series, which only ended years and years later because the Korean animators ran out of blue paint. The Smurfs were tiny, blue, forest dwellers who smurfed around all day smurfing all the smurf they could, while they tried to stay hidden from the humans who wanted to make gold or some shit from their magical smurfy bodies. Each Smurf looked physically identical, but in order for us (and them) to tell themselves apart as the walking clichés that they were one wore glasses (the smart one), one wore a baker's hat (the gluttonous one), one had a beard (the fatherly one), one had a tattoo (the butch homo one), one always carried a mirror (the vain homo one), etc.etc... Well, anyway, after seeing that there was money to be made with shit like this, the unoriginal bastards in the executive chairs (i.e. all of the network chiefs other than those at NBC) gave the go-ahead to create their own versions of "small magical creatures" hiding from "large humans," only in different locations. The Snorks lived in the sea, the Biskitts lived in a swamp, The Littles lived in a house, and they all... Ow, my fucking head. IT HURTS!!! But in the end it didn't even matter, 'cause morons like me watched them all no matter what. I now understand what shame is.

Some of the people who came up with some of the mongoloid ideas for cartoons in the 80s should be shot dead like J.R... Only it wouldn't be "just a dream." Not only did they rip off other more popular cartoons, but they sometimes just turned to prime time or movies of the day, stole what was already created, and claimed it as their own. A good number of these idiots wouldn't understand the definition of "originality" if they had Corky tie them to a chair, shave off all their hair and explain it over and over again in his ever-so-lovable mentally handicapped way. "I said, originality is when you make a poopy that is yours, and not when you poopy somebody else's poopy... Corky needs hug!" Those show creators would then be like, "I see what you're saying... So, making a cartoon about an already produced TV show, like say The Dukes of Hazzard, and adding a dumb plot twist, like having the Duke boys and Daisy race around the world against Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane and Flash, would be ingenious! But we'll just call it 'The Dukes' (so as to let people in on what it's about, but also let the shittard kids know that it is indeed a different, gorgeous premise). Yes! And we'll even throw in Uncle Jessie too so that hot thespian, Denver Pyle, can give me shaggy BJs in the recording booth while the others do their lines! Brilliant! Corky, give me the phone so I can call the studio!" Then Corky would spend the next 4 days crapping himself and smearing his pudding-filled feces all over said TV writer's face.

I mean, LOOK at them! They are just so fucking retarded. At the very least, Lucas allowed them to talk in English. I swear, I would have just lost it if valuable Saturday morning scheduling was lost to a bunch of intergalactic koalas who only communicated by saying shit like "Chub chub" and singing like Yanni over and over again till the credits rolled. Honestly, if I ever get the chance I'll travel back to the early 80s and dunk every last cel of this filth in turpentine before it's aired... No, wait, on second thought I'll go even further back and murder whoever originally put the idea of the Ewoks in Lucas' head in the first place, which made him replace the Wookiee home world with Endor in Jedi. That person must suffer. I'll probably handcuff the asspirate to a TV (with all the knobs and dials removed so that he can't turn it off or anything) and play nothing but every line that the Ewoks belched out in that movie over and over and over again until he repents. He'd probably crack in under an hour. I know I would. I might also leave a hacksaw for him and tell him that it would take an hour to cut through the cuffs, 30 minutes to get through the TV, and 10 minutes to hack off his arm, just like in Mad Max (except the stakes would be higher with the Ewoks).

Gag me with an ass flavored spoon. The 80s were just FILLED with unoriginal, crappily produced cartoons. And they weren't even unoriginal cartoons that we wanted to see. Take for example the whole Star Wars phenomenon. In the early 80s that's what being a kid was all about. Star Wars movies, toys, comics, trading cards, vibrators and shot glasses. We wanted whatever Lucas shat out with Darth Vader's or Chewbacca's mug on it. But what we wanted most of all was a continuation of the fun story that we'd only seen a glimpse of in A New Hope, Empire and Jedi. So, what did Lucas do? He made a couple of Star Wars cartoons.... About the gay droids and the bitterly hated Ewoks (who plagued the final film and even made me and my generation schizo as we tried to love the rest of that movie and loathe nothing but those unrealistic, stupid, gay and lame teddy bears... Oh, and Boba Fett's totally uncalled for death). The Droids cartoon was bogusly unwatchable (this coming from a guy who admits he loved Hulk Hogan's Rockin' Wrestling). I actually turned that shit off. Ewoks however, I did watch some of since Jaime loved them so. I just couldn't get into it, try as I might. It was such a kick to the throat from Lucas to all of his youngest fans. All he had to do was take all his Star Wars actors (who were then out of jobs) and have them voice their old characters to shitty animation and bad storytelling and he'd have had a hit that would have lasted longer than The Simpsons. But no, we got talking, pugly teddy bears who only once intermingled with the Empire or anything else from the movies in the entirety of their run.

Besides The Ewoks, we got other recycled, unoriginal garbage (just with drinking-Drano styled stupider plots) like Godzilla (where the TV series creators had to add a midget, flying, homosexual Godzilla-like creature because they thought us gaijin kids were as retarded as they themselves were), Laverne and Shirley in the Army (with that talking "don't ask, don't tell" pig I mentioned above), Teen Wolf (which unlike Godzilla, the primary movie sucked from a child's point of view, and it didn't even deserve a second shot at fame in the form of animation), Muppet Babies (for Christ's sake, we wanted more Muppets!... Don't give us mongo retreads in diapers!) and It's Punky Brewster. Okay, I admit it. Punky, which although very unoriginal, was something I did watch religiously. For some reason that theme song really stuck in my head, and I thought that Glomer (that fuzzy, leprechaun-rodent halfbreed) was a pretty decent guy. I mean, there he was, stranded in Punky's world, away from his family and friends who lived in the end of the rainbow, and yet he was always happy and granting Punky and her pals wishes and crap. Plus, Glomer was voiced by Frank Welker; the same guy who did Megatron. That right there was reason enough to watch it. Huh... Yeah, I'm not buying it either. I'm a pussy, I know.

Page 2, where I talk about original retarded 80s toons,
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