My Childhood In Cartoon Form
I’m prefacing this post by telling you that growing up I didn’t watch a single entire episode of Sesame Street, and while I can appreciate the need for a great cardigan or twenty, to this day I find Mr. Rogers undeniably creepy, and did I mention I sort of hate puppets as much as I hate clowns?
Lest you think I was deprived of good, old-fashioned illustrated fun, here’s a fairly comprehensive (see also: long, but entertaining!) list of the shows I did watch as a kid:
Does anyone else remember this show? PLEASE tell me you remember the little elven-like people who are little (yes!) and wear buttons on their overalls because…buttons are little too! (Umm…) I can’t for the life of me remember what the show was about per se; I think oftentimes it’s just them, The Littles, running from cats and trying not to end up on the underside of some human’s exceedingly large sneaker. And I’ll be honest in admitting that looking at that picture now is making me think that maybe The Littles were a little creepier than I remember them being. Apparently one of those guys up there is named “Dinky.” Yeah. I have no idea.
I do remember once trying to explain this show to someone who clearly had not seen it, without being able to remember they were called The Littles, and without visual aides, and blurting out, “You know, the show with the little people who wear buttons!”
*blank stare*
*crickets*
*buttons*
Oh, how I loved Inspector Gadget. And Penny! And the way Chief Quimby would pop out of the most random places (like trashcans!) to deliver important crime-related messages to Inspector Gadget because (GET THIS) this was before email even existed! I know, right? How did we LIVE?
The better question is how would Chief Quimby’s typed or hand-written notes always self-destruct after Gadget read them? Flecks of dynamite in the ruled paper? Radioactive ink? Detective magic? (Oh hi, welcome to my brain!) It’s a mystery. But rest assured that moments after this scene depicted below, Gadget throws the crumpled note back in the trashcan and KABOOM! Chief Quimby is on fire! No, literally. Oh, but wait, now he just looks burnt. And a maybe little annoyed. Not on fire though, so, there’s that.
This show was like the original Mission: Impossible. But with gadgets! And villains with monikers like Sven Vinceton and Pierre LaChop! (Also: Rattlesnake Bart! This show was GENIUS, I tell you.)
It was also where I’m assuming Mike Myers concocted his much beloved Dr. Evil character (Is Dr. Evil much beloved? I seem to remember that movie being quoted quite a bit), as evidenced (to me) by the following visual representation of Dr. Claw, who is Gadget’s primary nemesis and works for an evil organization called M.A.D. (Not to be confused with M.A.D.D.)
My favorite gadget of Gadget’s? Probably Go-Go-Gadget ‘Copter, followed closely by Go-Go-Gadget Ears.
I had such fond memories of this show before Google searching, memories of oh so hip hair, and of hot pink star-laden makeup, and microphones, and the sheer power possessed by the fearless women of rock n’ roll, and then: “Wait. Why does Jem look like Barbie on ecstasy?”
“And wait, how old were these girls supposed to be?”
And then I stumbled on a picture of the Misfits, Jem’s arch nemeses in girl band form, and remembered without Wikipedia’s help that the girl on the left in the picture below (Stormer!) was my favorite character on the show because she’s the nice, super sensitive girl stuck with the mean girls, and I loved her white hair, and…
…she played the keytar. Awwh, yeah.
I mean, those names alone still kill me. I can’t think or read or say “She-Ra” without overly emphasizing the “Ra” like you would while round-house-kicking or judo-chopping someone, as in: “Hi-yah!” “She-Rah!”
Add the fact that they’re twin siblings from the planet Eternia, a planet whose primary power source originates from Castle Greyskull (“By the power of Greyskull,” anyone?) and you have the framework for an epic children’s cartoon with the girliest looking superhero ever.
“Tremble before my super chic bob!”
She-Ra(h!) also had fabulous hair.
Though her outfit? Downright ridiculous for fighting villains. Speaking of villains! He-Man and She-Ra definitely topped the creep charts with their bad guy.
Dear Skeletor: You still scare me. And why is your staff topped with a ram’s skull? Um. Never mind. Have a nice day, Skeletor!
This wasn’t a T.V. series, but it was one of my favorite animated movies as a kid, and if you have never seen this movie (and thus have no idea why I’m professing to be fond of anything chipmunk-related), I’m going to herein suggest you stop what you’re doing and head to YouTube, where I’ve selected a few clips to make my points about why this movie still makes me as happy as it did when I first watched it so many years ago.
Chipmunk Rationale, The First: The Girls of Rock N’ Roll
Did you watch the video? Did you laugh? I can’t stop laughing when I watch that video (Theodore exclaiming, “But my cous-cous!” at the beginning is probably my favorite part), and the rest of the movie is much the same: The girls having a sing-off with the boys in some exotic locale while they collect dolls they have no idea are filled with either diamonds or cash. (Kids, don’t try this at home! Wherein “this” mostly means “smuggling.”)
Aside: Could Brittany (the sassy one in pink) wear some more clothes and maybe shop shaking her booty like Beyonce? (Or, does Beyonce shake her booty like Brittany; aha!) Because hi, I think she’s supposed to be like 10. Also, hi, SHE’S A CHIPMUNK.
Chipmunk Rationale, The Second: Wooly Bully
“Worry Burry!” says Chief Man Boobs.
In conclusion, this movie has around-the-world action, chipmunk karaoke, and characters as hilarious as the idea that three pint-sized chipmunk “boys” or “girls” could operate hot air balloons by themselves.
My Little Ponies were toys first, a T.V. series second, and a movie third, and yes, I am herein stating for the record that I loved all three.
I mean, really, how can you go wrong with talking (and flying!) magical horses with names like Whizzer, Masquerade, Magic Star, and Cherries Jubilee?
My personal favorite pony? Lickety-split, of course.
And does anyone remember the biggest evil in Ponyland? I give you, the Smooze:
Think The Blob + Hexxus + purple = the ponies will stop the smooze with sparkles!
Rainbow Brite
Did I mention I had a thing for horses as a girl? As in, I wanted to watch shows about them, and collect figurines of them, and learn to ride them, and give them awesome names, and braid their rainbow-colored manes, etcetera etcetera and on and on, until I finally had to learn to stop being so obsessive about equestrian-related everything.
Rainbow Brite’s horse (Starlite!) was not only way too big for Rainbow’s wee frame, but he was (metro-sexual, OK, fine, and) BEAUTIFUL, and had a STAR on his forehead (as all of you with eyes probably already noticed) and yeah, I JUST LIKED HORSES, OK?
I also liked the Color Kids (one for each color of the rainbow; are you seeing a theme here?), friends Rainbow rescued once upon a time and who are now in charge of all of the world’s colors.
Patty O’Green was definitely my favorite Color Kid, and not just because of my fondness for the (admittedly awful) Patio O’Furniture St. Patrick’s Day joke I somewhat recently shared via Twitter.
But wait, it gets better. The resident bad guy in Rainbow Land? MURKY DISMAL.
“My name’s Murky. Yes, that’s right: Murky Dismal. Anyway, I’m here to steal diamonds gold power your soul THE WORLD’S COLOR SPECTRUM.”
As much as I myself love to exclaim, I’m admittedly twitchy about that exclamation point in the title of the my favorite and longest-running cartoon featuring ghosts who aren’t really ghosts, even when they clearly must be ghosts. A question mark would appear to be the proper punctuation of choice for a question like, “Where are you?” but apparently the writers were just too excited to care.
Everyone knows Scooby-Doo, right? And the lovable albeit clueless and perpetually famished Shaggy? (Come to think of it, Shaggy and Scooby might also be a metaphor for legalizing marijuana.)
They were my favorite for many reasons, not the least of which being their ability to find ginormous sub sandwiches and various condiments in every single fridge in every haunted house they visited. I’m pretty sure one time they even found pancakes.
And of course my favorite character that’s not really a character at all, but is a big, green, hippie crime-fighting machine: The Mystery Machine!
Sweet ride, Fred.
“You mean this van is a tad effeminate and will probably ensure none of us have intimate relationships until we’re thirty?”
(No, not the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Who do you think I am?) (And I just realized: chipmunks again! Hmm…quite suspect, I will agree. But these chipmunks wear fedoras, bomber jackets, and Hawaiian shirts so…)
OK, fine. I can’t really explain why I loved this show, but there was a plane! And adventure! And an Australian mouse named Monterey Jack!
And again, they all look crazy in retrospect! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
The Smurfs
This list could never be complete without the Smurfs, or les Schtroumpfs in French (thanks! Wikipedia), the much beloved cartoon commune of blue creatures “three apples tall” who skip to and from their daily tasks while singing “tra la la la la la, tra la la laaaa.” Also, they are probably a metaphor for legalizing marijuana.
Again, the plot of the show? Pretty non-existent from what I can remember, but I do love Wikipedia’s (completely unbiased) reporting on Smurf language:
A characteristic of the Smurf language is the frequent use of the word “smurf” and its derivatives in a variety of meanings. The Smurfs replace enough nouns and verbs in everyday speech with “smurf” as to make their conversations barely understandable: “We’re going smurfing on the River Smurf today.”
These snorkel-propelled underwater sea creatures were pretty much just aquatic rip-offs of the aforementioned Smurfs, but with characters sporting names like Governor Wellington Wetworth and Dr. Gallio Seaworthy and a “supporting villain” (Oh, Wikipedia, I really do love you) named The Great Snork Nork, I’m discovering a renewed desire to remember what all the snorking was about.
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OK, so now it’s your turn. What were your favorite cartoons as a kid? Someone PLEASE tell me they’ve heard of The Littles. PLEASE, for the sake of buttons.
Oh, and if you need me, I’ll be over here smurfing on the River Smurf.
DUDE, THIS IS AMAZING. I was sort of petrified by The Littles, but Jem is a staple and so was that rendition of Wooly Bully.
Walk down memory lane. Love it.
I LOVED The Littles! Also, every other show you’ve listed.
I forgot that we are different ages until seeing this! I have no idea who most of these are. Except I do remember my little brother watching some of these programs, so I guess that makes you my little sis. :)
OH MY WORD. You seriously captured my entire childhood in a single post. I had the Smurf’s “All Star Show” record (RECORD) and still remember the songs.
Also! Did you know that one of She-Ra’s sidekicks was a girl named Angella WITH TWO L’S? I had the doll. Also, the big pink castle.
Also x 2! My kids LOVE Scooby Doo. Hooray for Teletoon Retro!
I vaguely rmeember the Littles. But, I was really hoping you’d mention the Snorks b/c every time I mention that show people act like I made it up. Please, people, my made up show would be way weirder than underwater snorkle alien thingies. Geez!
1. Never heard of the Littles! What is wrong with me?
2. Loved the rest of the shows with a passion.
3. Was there really a villain named Pierre LaChop in Inspector Gadget? That is TOTALLY my new band name.
4. DUDE. What about Fraggle Rock? And Strawberry Shortcake? Did you collect the Strawberry Shortcake dolls? Damn, they smelled good.
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1. The Littles were so! bizarre. I really have no idea how I found them and/or why I started watching the show.
2. There was totally! a villain named Pierre LaChop in Inspector Gadget (one more reason to love Wikipedia), and I started laughing SO hard when I read and then remembered that. The character names in all of these shows were so strange//hilarious/clearly written by a bunch of people dropping acid.
3. I’ve never seen a single episode of Fraggle Rock (they are like Muppets, and The Muppets scared me!), but I did collect Strawberry Shortcake dolls. And while I can’t stop laughing at clips of The Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak (http://is.gd/bB66I), I never really watched the television show as a kid.
I watched The Littles too! And LOVED My Little Pony. Do you remember The Gnomes? They were on in the mid 80s as well, I think.
I didn’t watch the Rescue Rangers, but all of those other ones were regulars in my cartoon schedule. I loved the Smurfs. LOVED them. And uh…. I dressed up as Pizzazz from the Misfits on Jem & the Holograms for Halloween one year! I wish I could find a picture of that!
While I’m a much bigger fan of The Snorks and Jem, I have indeed seen The Littles. And all of the rest of these cartoons, for that matter, heh. I may have watched too much TV as a child. :P
I also liked The Wuzzles, Popples, David the Gnome, Pound Puppies, Care Bears, and last but certainly not least, I watched many MANY hours of Muppet Babies!
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I can’t believe I left The Care Bears off this list. The movie was one of my favorites. “Care Bear stare!”
Doo dee doo dee doo, Inspector Gadget…now the theme song is in my head!
I would go to a friend’s house once in a while (I didn’t have a TV growing up) and I think I saw at least one episode of each of these.
Oh, and thank you – Mr. Rogers is seriously creepy. No one believes me!
Oh man, I loved The Littles so much, that my friends and I would pretend we had Littles living in our house…
The one I always try to get people to remember is Kidd Video – which has a hilarious opening, but that I was so infatuated with as a kid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQS1cgsEdU
This post totally sums up my childhood! HEE! I was nodding along to everything you said.
Some other favourites as a child were Mr. Dressup, Punky Brewster (I even had Punky high-tops), Care Bears and the Popples. Man, I could go on and on. The 80′s were a fantastic time to be a kid! :)
I LOVE Rainbow Brite! I can still sing the song!
yes. I love the Littles. I also loved this post. I may borrow it for inspiration. yay. cartoons!
How is it that I lived in the same house with you and don’t remember half of these cartoons? And no shout out for Darkwing Duck? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ (Korean online symbol for giggling)
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It’s funny, because I would never! have remembered Darkwing Duck until you just said that. But I almost put DuckTales on the list! The list was just getting sooo long.
I have the worst memory, ever, but I do recall The Littles. I was really into Strawberry Shortcake, The Smurfs and My Little Pony, but don’t remember watching the shows that much. I just know I had a lot of dolls and lunchboxes and stickers with the characters on them.
The only cartoons you listed that I’ve never seen are Jem and the Snorkels.
When I was in college, I watched a ton of Animaniacs. I use to schedule my classes around it.
The only things missing are the transformers, fraggle rock, and the gummi bears.
Also, my girls think hexxus is horrible and want to visit fern gully.
I definitely remember The Littles! The best, though, was The Littles dollhouse. I fracking loved this thing. http://www.inthe80s.com/toys/thelittles0.shtml
And what the hell, am I the only person who remembers Shirt Tails?
I LOVED THE LITTLES!
I had forgotten about them until this post. Hurray! :-) I also watched a lot of Smurfs and Scooby Doo and that one about the Justice League and the Wonder Twins.
Oh and I am with Whoorl. I l-o-v-e-d Strawberry Shortcake and collected ALL the dolls. I even had a SS sleeping bag!
I totally watched Jem. And thinking back, how was it ok for Jem and Jerica to have the same boyfriend? He didn’t know they were the same person!
Also huge Care Bears, Rainbow Bright, Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers fan. I also watched Muppet Babies and Fraggle Rock. I may have watched cartoons way later than I should have.
I don’t remember The Littles though. I did enjoy me some Barbie and The Rockers also.
You aren’t alone. I watched every single one of these cartoons growing up. Yes, even The Littles. I loved their little pet turtle!
What wonderful memories of some of these cartoons! I used to love Inspector Gadget… such a great show. And that theme song! I’m humming it right now…
To this day, I cannot hear or read outrageous without mentally adding “truly, truly, truly”. I am certainly with you on Scooby Doo (quality of show and upsettingness of punctuation), The Smurfs and Inspector Gadget. But I don’t know if I was aware that there was a cartoon of My Little Pony. I played with them. And while I never saw one episode of Rainbow Brite, I had a Rainbow Brite sweatshirt that I always wore rollerskating at the Skatin’ Place. I don’t know why.
Did you ever watch Heathcliff and Riff Raff? I do remember Shirt Tales and Muppet Babies that were mentioned in the comments. I remember the Get Along Gang theme song, but not much else about it. And since I had an older brother, I watched a lot of GI Joe and Transformers.
Oh, and we had a Littles book. I had read it before I ever saw the cartoon, so I guess I always assumed the book came first. Maybe not though.
My little ponies and Rainbow Brite were my favorite shows when I was a kid. That and care bears. Seriously, at one point I had every my little pony and care bear.
Dude, She-Ra and Rainbow Brite ftw! My sister and I not only watched, but we played make-believe in those worlds too.
But hey, where’s the Thundercats love?!
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I never watched Thundercats! Shameful, I know. What’s funny is that I wasn’t really a girly little girl growing up, though my cartoon choices would suggest otherwise.
Were there also Littles books? Because I remember those, but not so much the cartoon. Also, I’m just over here at work, smurfing up some website copy!
OMG, this is so effing awesome! THE LITTLES! I LOVED THE LITTLES! They lived under the stairs, right? I kind of have the theme song in my head, but all I remember is “We are The Littles…”
This is the best post ever! Add Tom & Jerry, Heathcliff, Top Cat, The Flinstones and George of the Jungle, and that was my childhood. (My dad loved old time cartoons.)
It makes me so happy that my niece and nephew LOVE Scooby Doo! We always watch it together!
we totally could have been BFFs. that was my childhood. all of it.
my bro and i would get up EARLY to watch usa cartoon express. sigh.
Great compilation. I liked the Littles, too! I’m just happy that my children like the old school cartoons just as much as the new ones.
oh my god i love this, i watched ALL of those. as i was scrolling down, i was just waiting for you to mention gummybears. did you not watch that too? lol it was one of my faves :)
thanks for the memories.
and i had a jem doll.
We grew up watching IDENTICAL cartoons. And I hella remember The Littles.
Also, I feel like I’m living the dream: when I was little I wanted computer watches like Brain and Penny had and now I feel like I have that in the form of the iPhone.
Anthony and I sometimes replace ‘Snork’ for different adjectives and verbs a la that cartoon. It sounds fantastically dirty.
OMG…I TOTALLY watched ALL these shows & probably a few more. LOVED the littles, it was soooo good, but I also loved, Gummi Bears, The Smoggies and Captain planet, I know looking back I can’t figure out what it was that drew me in, but just loved them & they’re still hilarious to watch. Also did anyone else pick up on the INSANE “save the planet” theme going on through out the shows of our childhood?!?! lol. AWESOME LIST though!!! :D
I remember all of these faintly, but She-Ra and Jem were like my all time favs!! (She-Ra and He-Man are now on Qubo really late!) Just one thing in your post about Jem, Stormer was the one with blue hair. I had all of the dolls, still do, and had recently dl’d some episodes for my 7 y/o daughter. We watched together. The one with white hair was Roxy! Don’t forget Jema! The British bad girl with black sparkly hair!!!
Totally awesome! Yes, I remember the Littles. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. One show I LOVED was the “Fraggles”, which became a world-wide hit. The fraggles lived underground and occasionally snuck up to earth but had to skillfully avoid the Giants who were to fraggles like humans are to mice. Sometimes they gleaned wisdom from the talking Trash Heap and from the old man who talked to his dog, Scruffie (I think that’s his name). Underground, life was busy as the potato bugs constructed major cities fit for a potato bugs life. The theme song captured the opposite values which the potato bugs and the fraggles faced (thanks You-Tube). Fraggles sang,”Dance your cares away, Worry’s for another day. Let the music play, Down at Fraggle Rock” while the bugs sang, “Work your cares away, Dancing’s for another day.”
Once again, Wikipedia rescues us with some historical analysis: “Creating this allegorical world allowed the program to entertain and amuse while seriously exploring complex issues of prejudice, spirituality, personal identity, environment, and social conflict.Fraggle Rock generally refused to over-simplify any individual issue, instead simply illustrating the consequences and inherent difficulties of different actions and relationships.”
And although it’s not a cartoon, I adored the movie “Never-Ending Story”. In fact, I bought it again as an adult, watched it, and then shared with my ever-appreciative friends.
Thanks for this fun rememberance! I am going to share it with friends on Facebook.
Smurf Out,
Frances
Holla, what about ‘Yogi Bear’?
Ah, The Littles. Loved that show. If you want to tell someone what it’s about, maybe you should say it’s something like the movie The Borrowers (which is also about a family of mini people living beneath the floor boards). The basic premise of The Littles is that they generally avoid being seen by humans (whom they refer to as Bigs). To children from the Littles family get discovered by young boy. How vows to protect the Littles from being discovered by other humans, particularly a nosy scientists bent on becoming famous by proving that the Littles exist.
Let’s see, my favorite cartoons as a kid. Wow, I gotta sweep the cobwebs a bit to come up with some. It’s been a while. Well, not including the up and coming anime back then, there was the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, the Bionic Six, and C.O.P.S. (Central Organization of Police Specialists).
Those are the ones that really stick with me. You can pretty much find them on YouTube these days.