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| | A while back I promised to try to post a bunch of lists. So far I have failed you all. Dealing with the shame is tearing me apart, so I decided to get to work. Here s a biggie. Favorite cartoons! As well all know all the best TV is animated... that cannot be disputed. However how you rank the best cartoons can... and will. So here s mine:
30. Chip and Dale s Rescue Rangers This wasn t a great cartoon, but I watched an awful lot of it in between lazy college afternoon naps. I still know the theme song by heart.
29. Mission Hill One of the many Adult Swim entries. Funny cartoon with subject matter that covers a disturbing range of topics.
28. Dr. Katz I really enjoyed this cartoon during it s run on Comedy Central. The show tried to emphasize the interactions with celebrities, while I thought that the best part of the show was the rapport between Dr. Katz and his son.
27. Darkwing Duck Darkwing Duck was worth it just for his new weekly appellation... "I am the terror that flaps in the night, I am the peanut butter that sticks to the roof of your mouth!"
26. Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures It made me sad that this brilliant Ralph Bakshi take on an old classic only lasted a couple of seasons... it was amazingly off the wall funny, which eventually spelled its doom... its strong cult adult following was worthless in a Satrday morning kid-centric target market.
25. Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law Another amazing Adult Swim toon. The great thing about Harvey Birdman is it doesn t give old characters new personas (a la Space Ghost, Brak) but instead explores all the seedy nuances of the original characters.
24. Ghostbusters This show was staggeringly popular while I was in middle school... I remember desperately wanting to be Egon.
23. He-man and the Masters of the Universe Despite the shows many flaws(horrible over-use of stock animations, the Clark Kent syndrome ie no one noticing that Prince Adam and He-Man looked exactly the same, etc) I still watched the show regularly. I suppose it was the weird combo of futuristic and fantasy themes that engrossed me so... that and Man-At-Arms was a bad ass mofo.
22. The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley I loved this cartoon. Way too odd ball to last, but it was fun while it lasted... the cartoon was actually a lot funnier than the original SNL skit... "I must say".
21. Duck Tales Know this theme song by heart too... Duck Takes! Woo-Ew!
20. Thundarr the Barbarian One of the earliest Saturday morning cartoons I remember falling in love with... again the appeal was probably more the setting than the show itself. Thundarr had a really cool sword and Ookla a really cool horse thing. Plus there was the added bonus of portenting the destruction of the earth in... 1994.
19. King of the Hill I really hated Beavis and Butthead, so I tried to resist this show for as long as I could... eventually I caved. It was just too good. Dale and Boomhauer alone make the show worth watching.
18. Rocko s Modern Life This was a great cartoon on Nick. Rocko was a hapless Kangaroo (with a vaguely Australian accent) who worked in comic book store and who best friend was a cow. It was near surreal and always hysterical.
17. Tiny Toon Adventures This was the highlight of many a lazy college afternoon. Far superior to its Warner Bros twin, Animaniacs. Witty references, clever puns, and They Might Be Giants... good stuff.
16. Thundercats Thundercats was a great action cartoon... the animation was superb for its time and genre. I also remember it being one of the first weekday afternoon cartoons I watched... when you were 10, not having to wait for Saturday to watch cartoons was like a celestial gift handed to you by God Himself. Oh yeah. It s true.
15. South Park Talk about ground breaking. Seems every show a new taboo is whimsically addressed. I have no idea how the majority of the episodes ever got past the sensors. But I m glad they did.
14. Transformers I m not sure if the obsession started with the toys and carried over to the cartoons or vice versa... either way Transformers rocked!
13. Dungeons and Dragons Another great Saturday morning cartoon. We loved D&D and would fight every recess over who got to be Bobby (the Barbarian) and who got to be Hank (the Ranger). No one ever wanted to be the stupid cavalier (remember, the guy with just a shield... why did he never pick up a friggin weapon? Why, God, why?). Anyway, the seeds of a life-long D&D obsession had rooted themselves in my maleable brain.
12. Power Puff Girls This show is what sold me on Cartoon Network. PPG is one of those rare shows that works on two entirely different levels... one to the amusement of kids and the second to the delight of adults. Its consistently brilliant writing has brought us one of the all time great villians- MoJo JoJo as well as homages to The Big Lebowski, South Park and many others.
11. The Critic Absurdly funny show. No icon was safe. The highlight of the show though had to be Franklin Sherman, Jay s lunatic upperclass twit father:
Franklin: "All these years of support and I ve never asked the Republican Party for anything."
George H. Bush: "You asked to be made Secratary of Balloon Doggies."
Franklin: "I didn t ask to be Secratary of Balloon Doggies, the balloon doggies demanded it!"
10. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Speaking of absurdly funny... 15 minutes of non-stop laughter. The show is so disjointed and pointless, yet it works on so many levels. Every character is brilliant. You really have to see every episode a couple of times as you always miss jokes due to the overwhelming peels of laughter.
9. SeaLab 2021 Again, disturbingly funny. I ve made comments about SeaLab before. I m certain the writers for SeaLab do a lot of drugs... I mean a lot of drugs.
8. The Tick The Tick comic has always been wonderful and the cartoon was a pretty faithful reproduction. The cast of characters really made the show too... Sewer Urchin, the Evil Midnight Bomber, Die Flatermaus etc. And of course the Tick himself was always profound - "One does not eat crackers in the bed of one s destiny, lest one gets all... scratchy."
7. Samurai Jack I ve espoused the wonders of Samurai Jack numerous times, so I won t belabour the point except to say the style and art direction of this show may be the greatest of any program ever.
6. Invader Zim Jhonen Vasquez is a god. We all know that. We all accept it. I just wanna know why Nick cancelled the show despite the hordes of loyal fans and success of Zim based merchandise. Guess it wasn t appealing to their target audience. Hurrumph.
5. Home Movies This is the best of the newer Adult Swims. Not as absurd and over the top as Aqua Teen or SeaLab, but the dialog and exchanges between characters are so incredibly well done. It s the same people that did Dr. Katz, but with a focus on the brilliant (aforementioned) dialog. Great stuff, and Coach McGurk is the icing on the cake.
4. Space Ghost Coast to Coast Of course Space Ghost started it all. Without SGC2C Adult Swim would never have existed. It was a pure stroke of genius that led to the creation of the show, spawning a whole new genre of cartoons. I remember the summer we discovered Space Ghost... we worshipped the show like our new found god. It was great.
3. GI Joe: The Real American Hero I couldn t even begin to estimate the number of days I raced off the school bus to the TV for fear of missing a minute of GI Joe. GI Joe was the be all and end all of cartoons when I was a kid. We ate slept and breathed Joe. If you think I m kidding, say the phrase "Well now I know" around any roughly Gen X aged male, and you will always, without fail get, "And knowing is half the battle" in response. It s like some secret handshake a whole generation of TV raised men share. A true icon of the 80s. Yo Joe, man. Yo Jo.
2. Family Guy Another truly brilliant cartoon. The depth and scope of the this show was amazing-- movie parodies, pop icon deconstructions, self deprecation, cultural interspection, and just plain absurdism-- it had it all. Twas a sad day indeed when Rupert Murdoch and his army of evil imps cancelled the show. Thankfully I ve been able to downloaded a ton of episodes off of the internet so the sublime genius of the show can be perserved digitally for posterity.
1. The Simpsons Was there ever any question? Easily the best television show of all time. No show has ever done it as well or as long as the The Simpson s have, and none probably ever will. The quotes, the characters, the pure genius. I don t think I have to go any further... Matt Groening is our messiah.
Well, that s it. Awfully long I know (representing three days of work) but for a subject so near and dear to my heart I felt it appropriate. Let me know what you guys think. There s probably some greats that I m missing.
-bampf |
| 3/28/2003 2:40:13 PM Cartoons | I've seen exactly 3 of your top 30:
19. King of the Hill
15. South Park
1. The Simpsons
I'm partial to the three I grew up with:
1. Scooby Doo
2. Jetsons
3. Flintstones
TGM
| | 3/28/2003 4:04:22 PM Dated | Consider yourself dated....
-b | | 3/28/2003 5:03:17 PM Stick Figure Theater | I would add Stick Figure Theater that aired on Liquid Television back in the mid-90's. The S.F.T. characters helped mould my designs when I cartooned for the Gettysburgian.
Bampf, remember the single-panel cartoon we co-created with the Brain in a food fight? ...good times.
grm | | 3/30/2003 2:04:38 PM The Brain | I considered some of the Liquid TV cartoons for inclusion (SFT, Aeon Flux) but decided as shorts they didn t really qualify.
Ah, Brain... silly little mutant. I need to compile a list of names we gave people in college. That d be sweet.
-b | | 3/30/2003 5:51:35 PM Names | Can your college names compete with the nicknames of my past internet women?
TGM | | 3/30/2003 6:59:19 PM my top | I'd have to agree with the simpsons, king of the hill, and south park. It does seem like you forgot: Scooby Doo, The Smurfs, and the gummy bears. Oh and if you parents were rich enough to have hbo, Fragle Rock!
-Dover | | 3/31/2003 9:06:48 AM Scooby? | Nah, never cared for Scooby. Every episode was so... the same. Plus that abomination Scrappy Doo will forever taint the Scooby legacy. As for the Smurfs, they kind of annoyed me. I d always end up rooting for Gargamel to eat one just to see what the big deal was. I never watched Gummi Bears although I hear it was a quality toon. HBO? I didn t even have cable yet when Fraggle Rock was around let alone HBO.
And TGM... we had some pretty good college nicknames. Many of them every bit as unsavory as say WPOS or as recondite as say Wings.
-b | | 5/26/2003 11:07:48 PM Missed one of the greats | Clearly I add stuff late since I read the B-Log so sporradically, but you missed one of the big ones...
Voltron. Let me say it again. VOLTRON.
Not the one with 2 thousand shitty little cars, I mean the big freakin metal cats that breathe fire and shit. Rock on.
Svengar | | 5/30/2003 11:06:12 AM Better Late... | Thanks for the belated input from the Aesir. Voltron was good, but I never had a chance to get into it. It was always part of the Hanna-Barbara Hour or some such nonesense, which meant it was often pre-empted by lame-ass H-B fodder like Dastardly & Muttley or Secret Squirrel... shudder.
As another after thought I did omit another great toon that should have made the list (weighing in around 20-25)... Duckman! Great cartoon. I m pleased to see that Comedy Central syndicates Duckman late at night these days.
-b | | 11/12/2003 6:36:20 AM | | No StarBlazers? | | 1/29/2004 2:09:35 PM Starblazers... | Never saw an episode... was it a cable thing? As I mentioned before we didn t get cable till about '91. Friggin boondock livin.
-b | | 2/4/2004 5:50:37 PM FOOL! | How could you possibly discount the awsome nature of the Animaniacs? They incorporated Tom Leher songs for christs sake!
Regardless, what about the following:
Muppet Babies
Robotech
Cowboy Bebop
-Rob- | | 1/11/2006 9:02:02 AM Animaniacs | | Major deficiency in your list. If you haven't seen them, do yourself the favor! | | 4/17/2007 9:28:26 AM Cartoons | How-about??
Beavis and Butthead
Battle of the Planets, (same time frame as Star Blazers.)
I could go on with alot more from my childhood, but I'm a tad older then the "Teaming Masses" that hang out on this Blog.
Hell, I'll put a few up from years gone by.
Astro Boy
Speed Racer
Prince Planet
8th Man
Gigantor, not the remake either
I used to watch all these on channel 17 from Philly, on the "Wee Willy Weber Show." Damn, that was a long time ago!! 1969-1972!!!!
- Sum |
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