Most Ameritrash Cartoon Ever?

Dino Riders anyone?

My first thought was He Man. I saw some of that.

But I'd always be mad if my saturday soccer games conflicted with X-Men.


Most Ameritrash cartoon made by Disney has to go to Gargoyles. Time travel and vikings.

Two fucking pages to mention THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN and the guy has it in second place to a cartoon with Orko in it.

Question: Does your cartoon choice have the moon cracked in half in the opening credits?
Answer: No, so my choice is stupid.

THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN.

jeb wrote: Two fucking pages to mention THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN and the guy has it in second place to a cartoon with Orko in it.

Since when is Orko in Jonny Quest?

The only reason Thundarr is, IMO, (barely) in second place to Jonny Quest is due to the censorship of the violence in Thundarr. He has the awesome Sun Sword, and yet here he is throwing guys and cutting the ends off of spears and using it to cut doors and harmlessly smacking monsters with the blade.

I understand it's a kids show and you can't show bloody disembowelings at 9:00 am on a Saturday morning (and that the censorship itself was SOP for cartoons at the time), but I wish there had been a middle ground. Even as a kid I knew it was bullshit that he never cut anyone, and how many times do we have to watch him literally wave his sword around and tell the rat-men/mutants/monkey-men/wizards to "Stay back!" when they're only in danger of having their weapons cut in half?

Not only that, but a couple of times there were weird endings where the villain wasn't killed but was instead consigned to a fate worse than death. Mindok (a wizard's brain in a robot body) had his robot body crippled by Thundarr and shot into orbit in his spaceship where he was doomed to spend eternity circling the earth, trapped in his now-useless prison of a metal body....but hey, at least he's alive!

Contrast that with Jonny Quest, where the writers went hog-wild figuring out new ways to murder people: "I know! Let's have Race ricochet bullets around a corner to kill a guard by having him shoot a bulldozer blade!" "Even though the pteranodon dies in the tar pit, I think we should have the wheelchair guy fall in, too." "No, no, no, no, instead of shooting everyone in the jeep, let's have Race toss them a grenade!"

Where was I? Oh yeah, Jonny Quest by a nose because it was (allowed to be) more violent, and it was cool violence.

Thundarr was created by Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck), and production design was by Alex Toth and Jack Kirby. Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway contributed stories. Gil Kane and Jim Woodring worked at Ruby Spears around that time, too, so maybe they were also involved in Thundarr. Not sure about that, though.

Another artist that worked at Ruby Spears at the time (and possibly worked on Thundarr) was Doug Wildey. What is Wildey best known for? He created Jonny Quest!

EDIT:

This site confirms that Wildey and Kane were involved in Thundarr:
everything.explained.at/Thundarr_the_Barbarian/

Mike Ploog is credited, too!

Speaking of Johnny Quest, somebody mentioned the shitty animation in the show. It should be noted that the reason Johnny Quest was cancelled after only one season is not because the show was unpopular but because it was constantly over budget. That animation was top of the line for TV.

P.S. It also has the coolest theme song of any cartoon and possibly all of TV.

Sorry Sebastian! I confounded your post (THUNDARR, yes!) with others (HE-MAN, wtf).

I agree with the criticism of THUNDARR's tamed violence, but the cracked moon makes up for a lot in my mind.

A CRACKED MOON.

repoman wrote: Speaking of Johnny Quest, somebody mentioned the shitty animation in the show. It should be noted that the reason Johnny Quest was cancelled after only one season is not because the show was unpopular but because it was constantly over budget. That animation was top of the line for TV.

P.S. It also has the coolest theme song of any cartoon and possibly all of TV.

So much so that the Reverend Horton Heat did a cover of it. Fucking awesome.

IIRC, the animators on Jonny Quest were pulled from the ranks of newspaper cartoonists who worked on serialized adventure comics. That's why the individual drawings look so good with a lot of shading and detail, but it's also probably why they had to lean on limited animation so much (only animating parts of arms/legs/faces, reusing the same sequences, having turns and reversals happen off-screen, etc.) to keep costs down as much as they could.

jeb wrote: I agree with the criticism of THUNDARR's tamed violence, but the cracked moon makes up for a lot in my mind.

A CRACKED MOON.

It's a close second for me, and I go back and forth on which is my favorite. The Thundarr intro is awesome. The cracked moon, the end of the world (earthquakes! floods!), freaky scifi and fantasy monsters, kick-ass music, and Ookla throwing a VW bug just for the hell of it!

repoman wrote: Speaking of Johnny Quest, somebody mentioned the shitty animation in the show. It should be noted that the reason Johnny Quest was cancelled after only one season is not because the show was unpopular but because it was constantly over budget. That animation was top of the line for TV.

P.S. It also has the coolest theme song of any cartoon and possibly all of TV.

That was me and I stand by it. I really don't like the animation of that time period mainly because budgets were so tight they just couldn't get the animation to work. Like I said only two shows at the time really knew how to work it to their advantage. Flintstones and Rocky and Bullwinkle. The golden age of animation is amazing and then things dropped very quickly as the competition got more fierce and the companies wanted larger profit margins. I understand the limitation but that doesn't make it better. Just sadder.

I can enjoy those cartoons as much as the next guy but that bad animation is always a sore point for me. I remember how awesome Popeye was in the 30's and none of these things come close to being as good or as imaginative and I'm a huge animation fan. There is no way I'd buy a whole season of He-Man and yet I own something like 5 DVD collections of Looney Tunes (I do have the He-Man greatest hits collection but it was a present). There's a very good reason for that.

He-Mans greatest quality is the backgrounds, which can be brilliant at times and Johnny Quest is the theme... which has so much potential and makes it sting all that much more when the show looks so bad off pause.

SebastianBludd wrote: IIRC, the animators on Jonny Quest were pulled from the ranks of newspaper cartoonists who worked on serialized adventure comics. That's why the individual drawings look so good with a lot of shading and detail, but it's also probably why they had to lean on limited animation so much (only animating parts of arms/legs/faces, reusing the same sequences, having turns and reversals happen off-screen, etc.) to keep costs down as much as they could.

jeb wrote: I agree with the criticism of THUNDARR's tamed violence, but the cracked moon makes up for a lot in my mind.

A CRACKED MOON.

It's a close second for me, and I go back and forth on which is my favorite. The Thundarr intro is awesome. The cracked moon, the end of the world (earthquakes! floods!), freaky scifi and fantasy monsters, kick-ass music, and Ookla throwing a VW bug just for the hell of it!

I really enjoyed Thundarr back in the day. I was a college student at the time, and I forced myself to get up on Saturdays mornings just to watch it. I didn't have a tv in my room, but there was one downstairs next to the laundry room. So I did laundry while watching Thundarr.

One of my friends bought a Thundarr dvd in 2003. We watched a few episodes, and they were pretty awful. It was jarring to reconcile my fond memories with the crap we saw on the screen. The shattered moon is awesome, and so were some of the other visuals, but the episodes were very formulaic and so disappointing for their lack of genuine violence. I understand the restrictions they were under, but better writing would have helped a lot.

That old Japanese mecha series where the chick robot launched her BOOBS out as rockets so the male robot could grab them and fly around, THAT is the most AT show ever!

Sexy, sexist, and WTF? all in one.

But really, we all know it is G.I. Joe that wins.

jason10mm wrote: That old Japanese mecha series where the chick robot launched her BOOBS out as rockets so the male robot could grab them and fly around, THAT is the most AT show ever!

Sexy, sexist, and WTF? all in one.

But really, we all know it is G.I. Joe that wins.

Manzinger Z. Oh.....God. I thought I blotted that show out.

Not a cartoon, but kind of related:

I just finished finished watching the original pilot episode of Thunderbirds (1964). I was riveted. It's like the cool, early episodes of Thomas & Friends, but with explosions, and the puppets are sexier. Magnificent television; it's visually spectacular, with great voice acting, taut writing, and suspenseful adventure.

I didn't grow up with it, so its appeal to me is not based in nostalgia. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would have hated it when I was a kid.

But as of right now it's kickass.

Thunderbirds is awesome. Period. Anything coming out from under a swimming pool is awesome. That includes a robot whose partner female robot shoots breast missiles.