Thursday, January 20, 2005
With the cartoons, so goes society.
Speaking of cartoons; has anyone watched any network cartoons lately? No? I don't blame you. It's sad. I remember looking forward to getting up early on Saturday mornings, just so I didn't miss any of the cartoons. I loved those cartoons. They helped to mold me into the person I am today. My life was founded, in large part, on cartoons.

Judging from what I know of the rest of you, I'm not alone.

And I didn't have any fancy Cartoon Network or even Nikelodeon. I had ABC, CBS and I think Fox even made a late appearence. NBC had a few cartoons early on but they seemed to dissipate slowly and sports shows eventually took their place. NBC probably gave up after they ran that cartoon about Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird...anyway I think that was the three characters. Do you guys remember that? It was the three sports heros turned superheros and they fought evil people who didn't play fair! It was the laughing stock of the Saturday morning cartoon world.

Ryan recently took me back to that world when he bought a the COPS DVD. Remember them? I didn't until I saw the opener. This was long before the "bad boys", these gusy were "Fighting crime in a future time!" Whevever I see cartoons I used to watch when I was little, I expect that I won't like them. My taste in cartoons should have matured since I was eight. But that doesn't seem to be the case; COPS is still pretty cool.

The list of cartoons I've forgotten about is probably longer than the ones I remember. Does anyone remember Dinosaucers(sic) ? What about The Snorkels? James Bond Jr.? StuntDogs? (Or maybe it was Stuntdawgs) James Bond Jr. and StuntDogs were definately Fox. I watched them in the morning before I would go to school. They weren't the best, but they are way better than the shit Fox plays on weekday mornings today.

Just look at Fox's lineup.

Saturdays
7:00 am Digimon
7:30 am Shinzo
8:00 am Beyblade G Revolution
8:30 am Power Rangers Dino Thunder (Power Rangers S.P.D. Begins 2/5)
9:00 am Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!
9:30 am W.I.T.C.H.
10:00 am Digimon
10:30 am Dragon Booster
11:00 am Spider-man
11:30 am X-Men

Sundays
7:00 am Digimon
7:30 am Shinzo
8:00 am Beyblade G Revolution
8:30 am Power Rangers Dino Thunder (Power Rangers S.P.D. Begins 2/6)
9:00 am Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!
9:30 am W.I.T.C.H.
10:00 am Digimon
10:30 am Dragon Booster
11:00 am Power Rangers Generations
11:30 am Power Rangers Generations

Weekdays
7:00 am Digimon
7:30 am Digimon
8:00 am Power Rangers Generations
8:30 am Beyblade

This morning I watched Power Rangers Generations and the first two minutes of Beyblade. (These times must be Eastern)

The only reason I even stopped was because I saw a Ninja Turtle. And man did I love the shit out of those bastards! I liked Raphael because he wore the RED bandana, and red is the international color of badass!

So yeah, Ninja Turtle was on my TV screen and I was mesmurized. Especially since it wasn't a cartoon Ninja Turtle at all. This was a movie-style Ninja Turtle. Rubbery suit and all. And he was fighting these metallic-looking dudes wearing rocketeer helmets and wielding these big knifey things. It was great.

Until the fucking Power Rangers showed up and ruined the whole show.

What network genius thought that Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles would make a good mix? "They both know martial arts, they must have grown up together. Let's have them play!" Yeah, it had to be someone who works for Fox.

And then, out of morbid curiosity, I continued watching the show. I just wanted to see if it could get any more sqrewed up. And boy, I wasn't dissipointed. They did a close-up of one of the turtles and I thought something didn't look quite right about his torso. It only took a few seconds before I realized, "HOLY SHIT THAT TURTLE HAS TITS!"

Yep, Turtle tits.

At first I thought Leonardo got a sex change, but eventually they did a wide shot and I did a head count. 1-2-3-4-shit, yeah there's five. They added a female turtle. Proof that this women's lib thing has gone too far.

Finally that frankensteinian abomination ended, but I left the the TV on that channel. Not for long. Two minutes into Beyblade, I'd had enough.

I'm not even sure what Beyblade was about. From what I could tell, these little Pokemon-esque characters ran around screaming and throwing spinning tops at one another. Monsters would pop out of the tops and roar at one another. So there's lots of screaming and roaring and spinning. It was like I was watching a debate in the Senate!

Not surprisingly, the tops looked exactly like those toys where you pull a serrated plastic zipline and it would whip the top around way faster than your tiny, 8-year-old hands could ever manage. The have a sharp edge to make them look extreme, too. They were about five minutes worth of fun. Now this cartoon is pimping them out. There's gotta be a toy marketing angle on any network cartoon nowadays, didn'tcha know?

I haven't watched any Saturday morning cartoons in a long time, but after reading Fox's lineup I'm not sure if I would want to. I especially wanted to point out the title Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!. Animators are on crack, that's all I have to say.

Considering that I watched relatively normal cartoons when I was little and I still turned out messed up, imagine what the Yu-Gi-Oh! generation is going to end up like. Dave, please, graduate quickly so you can start making good cartoons. These kids need a good ol' fashioned episode of COPS, or maybe a half-hour dose of The Smurfs to straigten their twisted little minds out.

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