Leaving anime out of this for the second, recent cartoons just aren't the same. Yes, I know it's nostalgia and if I was forced to watch them again I may regret it but still...
A rather good summary of several of these can be found on the [BBCi site]. Notably, the only recent cartoon they felt worthy of inclusion was PinkyAndTheBrain...
Rhino Entertainment (who have recently released, among other things, the TransFormers TV series very nicely remastered onto DVD) are running a [survey] as to which of their title holdings they should release onto DVD in the future.... I rather think some of the titles might be of interest to those reading this page. ^_^ --Nataku
Just in case you are interested, there is a [site] with downloads, images etc which is dedicated to 80s cartoons. --Tsunami
A list of those shows which spring to mind...
DungeonsAndDragons - Hank, Bobby, Sheila, Eric, Presto and Diana in their epic quest to reach level 2 and to actually understand something that DungeonMaster? says to them... And Uni. Don't forget Uni.
BraveStarr? - A sheriff with animal spirit powers versus the mechanical skeleton (I think... Or was that another show?) Tex-Hex... Also starring 30-30, Sarah Jane and the deputy/sidekick who smoked... (Tex-Hex: I'm the meanest, evilest creature this side of the galaxy and even I don't smoke.)
Oooh! I actually know the answer to this one. There were two such series - GalaxyRangers? and BraveStarr? - both featured the same main character, but the former as a SuperheroTeamOfFive and the latter had the mechanical talking horse with the big shotgun.
Interesting, I don't remember seeing GalaxyRangers? at all. 30-30 is the mechanical horse. Was Tex-Hex the bad guy in both or just BraveStarr?? - Kazuhiko
GalaxyRangers? was MonsterOfTheWeek I think. The only episode I can think of had them investigating a sunken city and discovering a magical shiny thing that took one of them over and got beaten only just in time. Pretty sure it didn't have the transforming town either.
No! The Galaxy Rangers fought an evil queen who stole souls and used them to power her armies.
';'Oh yes, definitely... I even used to have a He-Man action figure with special punch action (i.e. a spring) and... umm... the battering ram guy, with special jump action (i.e. a spring). Plus Cringer (or rather Battle Cat)! She-Ra I don't remember so well, but I seem to remember thinking it was quite cool at the time... - Kazuhiko''
The new He-Man series is quite good. Talked with the creator of the whole thing once and apparently it's closer to what he always had in mind. --Nataku
Battle Of The Planets -- Dire. Absolutely dire. You won't believe how dire it is -- your memories will blind you to the true awfulness, like they did me. You will want to watch it. 'Surely,' you will ask, 'it can't be as bad as all that?' But it is. It is.
Don't forget all of the other 'just like it' things. The one with the line of toys with magnets in was a particular favorite. Everything on the show had to have an action button that did something that could be replicated using magnets. There was also a rather good 'earth space defence' show whose name I cannot remember.
'Battle of the planets' originaly aired in Japan, and was called Science ninja team, Gatchaman (I think the American name for it was G-Force). The two crappy robots were added when the Americans butchered all the violence out of it so that their kids woldn't be affected by it. It was originaly a much better show, but that didn't stop myself and several of my friends crying with laughter while watching one of the characters' death scene at a convention many years ago.... - Tsunami
The Whinging Pom
Wha?
Seconded. Would someone care to expand on this? - Kazuhiko
Round the Bend -- Included many great cartoons, like Thunderpants and False Teeth From Outer Space. Doc Croc was the editor.
Ah yes :) You'll talk about RolandRat? next, won't you?
The Bluffers -- Only they can get enough fer your dreams.
This seemed to have pretty much zero web presence last time I looked, searching for the full words to the theme tune. Can anyone remember them? --M-A
Last weekend, I asked another roomful of people if they'd ever heard of The Bluffers, and none of them had - I think it's all a conspiracy...
Captain Planet -- Indoctrination on a Sunday Morning.
The Snorks perhaps also?
Bucky O'Hare -- He goes where no ordinary rabbit would dare! With Jenny (mmmmmm), Dead-Eye, Blinky, and Willy DuWitt?!
This one I really really liked. Fantastically silly, yet with plot. And a theme tune of doom. Utterly derogative dreck through and through - but done well.
Aaaaagh! It's a betelgeusian berserker baboon... Run!!!.
The series was notable for never having any death scenes at all. The evil toads always escaped in life pods.
The evil computer blew up periodically - does that count? --Vitenka (wonderful, wasn't it?)
Dogtanian -- Muskahounds are always ready! They drink a beer and swear they're faithful to their king! The most faithful adaptation of Dumas's book ever.
Is that serious? It was great, but I'm sure Dumas didn't put in quite so many 'big nose' jokes.
I remember the opening theme to this being really catchy, but can't place it... - Kazuhiko
WOOF woofwoof WOOF woofwoof WOOF muskahounds are always ready.... -- That help? Mjb67
Umm... Yes... ^^;;;;;; - Kazuhiko (who now has the theme running through his head at full blast)
Incantation to fix that... Ku Ru Mi.
Don't forget: They fight with swords ... and ... with ... sticks. --M-A
You must be kidding! It was a travesty of the Dumas novels. Read the original. Accept no substitutes. --DR
Around the World with Phileas Fogg - and a whole bunch of other adaptions in the same vein. 20,000 leagues and journey to the centre of the earth. Shame they stopped before we got a fluffy version of the time machine. (Now, how would they have the predictable evil transfer follow them THERE?)
That would have been odd, because ;The Time Machine was by H.G. Wells, so why it would have shown up in a series of Jules Verne adaptations I don't know.
Right you are. Phileas was obviously too hard for kids to pronounce. --Vitenka
Mysterious Cities of Gold -- Ooooo-ooooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooooo
Another anime that got chopped for US consumption. All I know about it is that it was originaly called 'Esteban, child of the sun'. - Tsunami
I know it came via france - much of the work was one there (and possibly some of the original concept) - as for chopped, sheesh - it's long enough as is. (And strange enough, at the end)
Original character designs by Miyazaki! As I recall, it was shown (almost) uncut once on BBC but after that they cut off the odd alien bits at the end... - Kazuhiko
Is it possible to get hold of the unchopped version? -- Senji
The version CUCAS was showing some years ago was the full version I think. --Vitenka
Well done to them then. To my knowledge it is notoriously difficult to get copies of the series in anything but French - Kazuhiko
I have the entire lot in English (about 2.4 GB in total I think...). --qqzm
Oh yeah, wonderful music, good animation, I looked forwards to this one. --DR
GummiBears -- Bouncing here and there and everywhere. I don't think it was a tie-in with the sweets, but I've never been sure.
It was inspired by a packet of Gummi Bears at a supermarket IIRC. --Nataku
Raccoons
Yay! Wonderful wonderful wonderful.
Who / What was the bad guy again? An Aardwark? Pink with a bent nose is about all I can remember... - Kazuhiko
They were supposed to be aarvarks, I believe. Wasn't the bad guy's son (Cecil, had square glasses) friends with the hyperactive raccoon boy? But the three pigs were the funniest. --Oneiros
I loved this cartoon. It was great. The evil guy was Cyril Sneer. What an excellent name --Jumlian .
Well remembered that rock. Did the pigs have names? I know that the racoons were mostly named with 'r' - Ralph is the only one I can remember, and I have a sneaking suspicion that was the name of the puppy. They ran a newspaper, I remember that. --Vitenka (They had an annoying Christmas special too)
Ah yes, a true classic. It had some very sad moments too. -- Xarak
It had angst, which, for a kid show, is pretty cool... - Kazuhiko
Yeah, I remember it being a firm favourite of mine along with this next one --Oneiros
Mmm yes. They kept the plot rolling by having him FAIL every episode. Which made a nice change.
Excellent! Me2 to both of them. Ulysses was great. I remember almost nothing about Jayce except that I liked it at the time. I suspect Ulysses might fare rather better on rewatching now. But that's not what this page is about :) --AlexChurchill
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors - Evil plants (that can transform into vehicles) are taking over the universe and the stalwart heroes ranged against them include a girl on a flying fish and a Merlin/Elminster? clone. (I know there are others but can't remember them right now.)
Oh heck, I remember this. Lets see, there was the HanSolo? clone, hardbitten pilot and trying not to be a good guy but coming through anyway. Jayce the hero... the girl was named Flora and was half plant (like that makes any sense) which made her telepathic with the evil plants (any excuse to make the female hero telepathic, eh bucky?) the wizard guys main power was to draw his score in pretty lights in the air in front of him during the intro. I guess the floating fish has to count as a final character by the RuleOfFive. They took monster trucks (hey kids, buy the toys!) which were basically zoids, complete with interchangeable parts and blew up plant trucks. The plot is basically that of PiratesOfDarkWater I think - the evil plants were spreading through the galaxy, and the hero was on a quest to find his father and maybe save the ghalaxy at the same time. All I really remmeber about the plants goals was that their castle could teleport using a black light drive. Good mindless fun - though I suspect if episodes had ever shown in order, and at some other time than 4am, it might have had an ongoing plot ;) --Vitenka
Rainbow Brite... shudder... but I really liked it at the time...
You EvilEvilPerson?. I already put that in the 'awful' section ;)
Oh, I just assumed there was another cartoon called Rainbow Sprites... :P --AC
Chip 'N' Dale, Rescue Rangers. Another classic. With Gadget, the sultry female engineer/mechanic, enticing a generation of prepubescent boys into a life of geekdom... Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip-n-Dale!
Dammit - why am I so bad at thinking of these things until someone else brings them up, today? Anyhow, rememberance of that caused recollection of [this]
Kazuhiko can now claim to know the person who voiced Gadget. This scares him --K
Button Moon - We've gone to Button Moon, we followed Mr. Spoon, Button Moon, Button Moo-oon.
Terrahawks - The Terrahawks are Earth's last defense against the forces of Zelda. Actually a little before my time, this one. But I remember that the baddies sometimes won, and the heroes didn't get along with each other. I have a theory that people of my age have actually suppressed memories of Terrahawks as it was a little scary.
Well, nintendo isn't exactly winning, but... Um. ObJoke? over with, I thought terrahwaks was ok but not especially good. It did seem to have a lot of episodes, but the whole thing was basically ThunderBirds? meets TheGarbagePailKids?. The heroes fighting amongst themselves was pretty novel at the time, but I didn't appreciate it then and I'm a little spoiled for it now.
But now you've done it. GerryAnderson? SuperMarioNation? stuff has been introduced. Let's get it over with quickly. ThunderBirds?, Joe90, CaptainScarlet?, StingRay? and a whole bunch of others I have either never seen or actively repressed.
Sting Raaaaaay, Sting Ray, Mununahnahnana... This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know you can hear us, Earthlings... Countdown is progressing, 5... 4...
I always had problems with the ending theme to CaptainScarlet? (it was on just before the ManFromUNCLE) - it had the line Indestructible Captain Scarlet! in it, and I couldn't help wondering how indestructible that was. I mean, would he burn? Or what about eating poison? Or having his head chopped off? It didn't seem very capable of consistency.. and an indestructible hero is no fun anyway - SunKitten
Don't know about head chopped off, but I'm pretty sure the others happened, plus getting dropped off cliffs, run over, etc. They developed a gun at one point that could actually kill CaptainBlack? (and hence CaptainScarlet? as well) which resulted in an episode where CaptainScarlet? was running around carrying with him the only thing capable of killing him... Seemed a little silly to me :) - Kazuhiko
and an indestructible hero is no fun anyway but that can't be true because Captain Scarlet is fun and he's indestructible. He's always getting blown up, crushed, etc. but because fate had made him invincible he mysteriously survives...
Mysteron agents are in fact vulnerable to high-voltage electricity, as was discovered during an episode when one was electricuted on Cloudbase. And it's quite possible to have drama even with an indestructible hero -- if he had failed he may not have died, but he'd be all lonely without the rest of the human race (boo hoo).
Yeah, he wasn't exactly unstoppable either. He'd be killed most episodes, and come back to life a bit later.
A new Captain Scarlet series is being made at the moment. It will be in CGI, from a firm called Double Negative. I was talking to one of their competitors the other day who were also in the bidding to get the contract - he was stopping just short of "Ohohohohohohoho" at the news that far from being able to deliver two episodes before Christmas (as they originally intended), they were now going to deliver one before March...
I've just seen an episode of the new Captain Scarlet. It's on Saturday mornings. The CG is OK, and it's very jolly and English --Mjb67
Err... Somehow I missed the CG bit before. This sounds terrifying. Does it look anything like the original or did they just give it a complete overhaul? I'm not sure which would be better. :/ --K
Inspector Gadget. Da da da dada Inspector Gadget, da da da dada daa daa. Go-go-gadget helicopter! --shudder--
Reboot! - first really 100% computer animated children's series
With added plot. Kinda. Sadly it wasn't the last pure-CGI series. We're training a generation of people to be nostalgic about godawful specular reflections. Have you considered that? The horror.... --Vitenka (Though the new Zoids is plotful enough to make up, maybe.) ... I just realised why we've invented cell-shading. Doh.
The Family Ness
With the whistles! I remember that. It was awful ;) --Vitenka
Mr Benn
As if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared. "What can I do for you today?" he said.
MASK
Oh yes, I remember that. Some of my friends had the toys, and I think we had a few of the books. Something red was called Spectrum and associated with the leader of the goodies. Wow, what a fine series to make so much of an impression on me ;)
The first offering from SmallFilms? chronologically, and I always thought it was the best. But then I just have a soft spot for anything from the top-left hand corner of Wales. --SF
Those were great books when I was little.. - SunKitten (we had the tapes too. For the car)
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