Known to hit a five from a mile with a shot
Goofy was Mickey Mouse righthand man
One day smoked a stick, and came up with a brand
Called Pixie and Dixie, two killers from Chicago
A game of 5K, to eliminate Donald
But what they didn't know, is Donald was a G
Had big time respect, from the West to the East
- Coolio -
Everyone remembers being a kid and getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings, eating 10 bowls of sugary cerial, and watching Saturday Morning Cartoons from 7am untill Noon-ish, right? It was the staple of the life of an American child in the 80s and 90s. If you're reading this Blog, you're probably in my age group and you share all the memories I do. Going to bed at 3am on Friday night, waking up at 6am Saturday morning...Cartoons until you crashed.
I'm sure you guys rocked all the big guns, too. You know the roll-call...G.I. Joe, Ninja Turtles, Gem, Smurfs, The Real Ghostbusters, Muppet Babies. We all watched them, we all loved them. Fond memories, right? I bet you're even thinking to yourself..."Wow, those shows were the shiz. It got no realer, son."
Well, I'm here to tell you that you are stone-cold wrong. WRONG.
There were a lot of shows I bet that you guys forgot about when waxing poetic about the glory days of your youths. Cartoon shows that "brought the wood", so to speak, just as hard as the big guns, but got absolutley no love. This post is for you guys...
5) Captain N: The Game Master
You know, when I was a young buck, there were some things that you would have to pry out of my cold, dead, hand if you wanted it.
In no particluar order:
- My Hulk Hogan Wrestling Buddy.
- My Ninja Turtles Astronaut Raphael figure.
- My NES controller.
At the time this show hit the airwaves in...I want to say 1989, Nintendo was really firing on all cylanders. It was selling about eleventy-million NES systems a year (come now, you know you had one. EVERYONE had one. When your parents had you, some Japanese guy walked up to their door and just gave one to them. It was standard issue, people) and breaking into other realms with equal success. Cerial, clothing, music, toys, and then it happened. Television.
Nintendo burst into the TV market with two shows. The Mario Brothers Super Show and Captain N. For the simple fact that I don't have the self-determination to spend a half-hour of my life talking about this guy:
...I'll just focus on Captain N.
To be blunt, Captain N was all that I wish my life could end up being. Descrition as follows:
An otherwise normal teenage boy is chosen to become Captain N, the Game Master. Picked for his unequaled skill at playing video games, he is sucked into a video game universe filled with classic Nintendo characters. Together with the help of heros like Megaman, Simon Belmont, and Kid Icarus, he explores this new universe, and defends it from the evil plots of Mother Brain!
Mmm...Can't you just taste the videogamey...ness? The kid gets sucked into his NES and goes on video game adventures with the people that we children devoted our entire non-scholarly house to playing as. See the opening to this show as a kid was neck and neck with the first time I saw my friend Nick's finished basement and big-screen TV as the closest times I came to orgasm before my testicles fully dropped.
Oh, I can only take pity on my poor sisters. I can only imagine the embarassment they went through when their sleepovers were interrupted by their little punk brother rolling around the living room with his NES Light Gun pretending to help Captain N and pals defeat the evil Mother Brain and her less than intelligent henchmen (Which raises the question of why the evil guys always had such stupid followers, and why they continualy put such faith in their ability to carry out elaborate plans.)
4) Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers
Okay, Disney certainly developed a lot of cartoons during this general time period. Tale Spin, Duck Tales, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck (Which could have a 4,000 word post of its own if I ever feel inclined), Gummi Bears, and the oft-forgotten (and I suppose for good reasons) Bonkers. They were all good in their own right, and they all enjoyed a lot of success...Hell, I even have the Duck Tales theme song comitted to permanent memory. But none of them had the emotional impact on my fragile young mind that those precocious twins have had.
It all can really be traced back to my first trip to Disney World at age four. Walking through Epcot's international village things, I was ignored by Disney's mascot embassadors. ME. The apex of childhood cuteness was passed-over by that smug bastard mouse and that little prick duck. All was lost until they came my way. Chip and Dale. Dressed in full Asian atire (Which, looking back, was a bit unusual considering we were in the heart of Viking Country in Norway.)
Long story made short, they took their time to get a photo and (change the destiny forever) for a scrappy young kid from Youngstown, Ohio and to this day, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Chip & Dale. They may be second-tier stars in the Disney pantheon, but they're numero uno in my heart. One love, boys.
I can't really talk about Rescue Rangers without at least MENTIONING my first true-love. Ladies, if any of you reading this update ever strike-out in the at bat that is Life and end up with me, I have to let you know that when I die...I kind of told Gadget from Rescue Rangers that we'd be together in Heaven. Just letting you know ahead of time because things might kind of get awkward.
Gadget Hackwrench...Mmm. That's a women.
3) Biker Mice From Mars
NO ONE remembers this damn show. No one. Not even the guy who made it. That's why it deserved a spot on my list of shows I loved that didn't get enough love. For those who don't remember this shwo, which ran in 1993, here's a synopsis:
The show centers on Throttle, Vinnie, and Modo, a trio of Biker Mice from--obviously--Mars, who barely escaped the destruction of their home planet and the decimation of their people by the Plutarkians, a race of smelly, fish-like aliens who ruined their own planet and, instead of taking measures to conserve their own resources, simply go around stealing them from other worlds, often killing off the entire planet's population in the process. The three of them are shot down on Earth by a Plutarkian ship while trying to return to Mars, and end up landing in the city of Chicago, Illinois. There, they meet a human mechanic named Charley, who quickly becomes their friend and ally. After they tell her about what happened to Mars, and about the Plutarkians, she tells them that the same thing is happening in Chicago. The Biker Mice quickly investigate, and discover that one of the city's leading citizens, Lawrence Limburger, is actually a Plutarkian in disguise, who is buying up Chicago (or just stealing it) and sending the land back to Plutark. So they decide that, as long as they're stuck on Earth, they'll try to put a kibosh on Limburger's scheme to destroy the Windy City--and why not? It's fun!
Here's the deal with this show. A lot of people knock it as a Ninja Turtles rip-off, and I suppose they have a point with some of the things. It kind of came around at the time Turtles was flying pretty high, so you can't really fault the creators for riding the wave as well. There was a lot of cracking-wise in the episodes, I'll give them that similarity. Add in action, fighting, and "in-your-face attitude" up the pooper, and things might get confusing. That's where it ended, though, for me. The Biker Mice? THEY HAD SPECIAL STUFF TO MAKE THEM SUPER-COOL. Modo had a metal arm, Vinnie hada mask, and Throttle had mysterious eyes.
MYSTERIOUS EYES, DAMNIT. EYES FULL OF MYSTERY. THINK ABOUT THAT.
Throttle also held the "CWF (Colin Wrestling Federation) World Heavyweight Championship" in my action-figure wrestling ring for almost 2 months one time. True story. It wasn't until I found my Starscream Transformers figure in my mom's closet that he dropped the belt. I still can't believe the ref missed Starscream's illegal chair shot that led to the pin. Such a travishammockery.
2) Earthworm Jim
Animaniacs, Freekazoid, Taz-Mania, Mystery Files of Sylvester and Tweety, Earthworm Jim. The WB Network launched its Saturday Morning line-up September 9, 1995 with those bullets in the chamber. Now a days, it's got a bunch of Japanese crap filling it's airwaves. I think Pokemon's still on, right? Well, this show didn't last long, 26 episodes, in-fact. If you blinked, you'd have probably missed it all together. To my knowledge, I don't think it's ever even been re-ran on any other network like Freekazoid and Animaniacs have been.
Earthworm Jim's story goes that Jim was minding his own wormy little business when an ultra high tech indestructible super space cyber suit (with arms and legs) happened to fall on him. As luck would have it, the suit fell neck first, covering him in such a way that he was sort of inside it, sort of wearing it. He was instantly transformed into a giant among worms, both physically and intellectually. Of course, being an intellectual giant among worms didn't necessarily mean he was very bright by vertebrate standards.
In a lot of ways, Earthworm Jim kind of paved the way for shows like Spongebob Squarepants and Fairy Odd Parents. My best advice for watchnig that show would be to wear a crash helmet because it went 100 miles per hour and none of it...Not a single bit of it...Made sense. They had an episode where the main villian, Psy-Crow was plotting a way to attack Jim when he drank an octuple-espresso, which gave him super-speed and vibration powers. Thoroughly jazzed, he attacked Jim during a tribute banquet for the Puce Dynamo, the first superhero.
*Sigh*
That's comedy, people.
1) Bobby's World
Otherwise known as: "Howie Mandel Finally Proved Himself To Be Of Worth To Humanity."
God...So much to love about this 1990 gem of a show. SO BLEEPING MUCH. For you guys who sucked at life and haven't heard of this wonderful show, it was created by Howie Mandel and is about a little kid named Bobby with a vivid imagination, escaping into his own "Bobby’s World" when the real world was too weird to understand.
Gun to head, I'd probably narrow my three favorite things about this show to his mother and her delightful Canadian/Minnesotian accent (She's the reason I've been known to say "Fer cryin' in the mud" if properly motivated), and his traveling salesman Uncle Ted. Oh, his Uncle Ted. May as well called him Uncle Buck and gotten it over with...Uncle Buck. If it weren't for The Great Outdoors and John Candy blowing the hair off of a bear's ass with a shotgun, Uncle Buck would hold the crown for my favorite comedy of all-time.
The other reason? My Fox station played this show 6 days a week at 6:30 am. Looking through the course of my life, I don't think I've EVER watched a single show more often than I watched Bobby's World because as soon as I crawled out of bed and struggled to get ready for another day at St. Dominic's Elementary School, that TV was on and Bobby was greating me. Every day. Without fail. From 1990 until probably 1995. Some people use caffine to start their day...I used the insane ramblings on a 4-year old.
So there it is. My trip down memory lane in an attempt to school you guys on the oft-forgotten world of the "B-Team" cartoons. Until next time, as Captain N once said: "We've got to warp out of here before Donkey Kong gives us the Big Game Over."
Forever channel surfing,
Colin
