The 80s Cartoon Project Thing #7: DiC Animation

 

Now we’re getting to the wild shit! Yeah! This is a one hell of an animation company honestly. It started in 1971 and was created by a man named Jean Chalopin for French audiences. He ended up creating cartoons for America in the 1980s. The first one was a show called Uylesses 31. Then came Inspector Gadget which we already talked about. I like to group things together so today I’ve decided to write about 3 random DiC cartoons that come from the 1980s, but this company lasted until at least the mid 2000s which makes it one of the longer lasting companies! This is the worst opening I ever wrote! Let’s hope we can dig it out of this cesspool!

The Littles is something that I legit remember from my childhood despite being born in 1985. I do not know if this is even true but I swear I remember this shit. I remember that I didn’t like it all that much! I dunno, maybe I saw the movie (yes the Littles is up there with The Transformers and GI Joe as 80s cartoon shows that got movies!) but I don’t know why I didn’t like it, I guess I’m just more easy to entertain these days as a sad adult. I dunno. Just give me something somewhat entertaining from the final decades of the 20th Century and I’ll probably gleam some entertainment from it. Anyway this show was made in 1983 and ran until 1986. It was based on a series of books about weird mice people. They literally have adventures with a human sized child named Henry. They keep themselves hidden from Dr. Hunter…..a regular human sized man. Seriously. I know he can crush them but every other show had so many unique and crazy villains in this decade you just give these guys a regular person. And his henchmen……..whose an older man. Not the most exciting villains. Still the heroic characters are memorable and this makes me want to see the movie. Anyway this is a pretty okay animated series and I’d probably watch more episodes.

Here’s a weird one. It was based on a series of toys for girls. Maxie. Maxie feels like the dollar store Barbie. It makes sense because this show feels like a dollar store 80s cartoon. Everything is there that a story you know needs, characters, conflict. Stuff like that. However it is just missing the heart of it all. It just feels like they put it out to put it out. No one really seemed to care. Strange because the people who made this did work on other things. Better things. This was clearly just a job where they write some stuff and get paid. I mean there ALL jobs but I get the feeling that this was just, Yeah, whatever. You can tell when that happens when you watch the project and this is literally the most “Yeah, whatever” cartoon of all time. I would like to say more but there’s not much there to do so.

Hey, Popples! Popples were a neat toy. They were a bear of some sort that you could hide away in a pouch in its stomach. I at least thought they were neat! Hey, back in the day that’s all you really needed for a damn toy! I’m amazed this cartoon did not get shown on YTV up here in Canada. It was voice acted by Canadians and I swear it was animated by Nelvana, just put out by DiC. That would cause it to be good enough to be considered Canadian Content which all Canadian channels have to have some of. To the best of my knowledge it did not air here in reruns on YTV. I am too lazy to find out for sure so we will never know. Anyway this is not a very exicting cartoon. It’s very laid back but I can at least say that it feels people cared a little bit behind the scenes. It feels like an actual thing and not a Dollar Store Thing. It also feels a LOT like Care Bears where it involves Popples helping (and sometimes causing trouble for) children. It’s nothing exicting and I wasn’t exactly wowed by it, nor will I watch any more but again it’s vastly better than Maxie’s World. I think anything is better than that.

Anyway, that’s todays blog post. Go away.

THE LIST:

1. DuckTales
2. Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers
3. Inspector Gadget
4. Spider Man and his Amazing Friends
5. The Incredible Hulk
6. The Smurfs
7. Go Bots
8. Adventures of the Gummi Bears
9. Mister T
10. Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos
11. Spider Man (1981)
12. The Littles
13. Camp Candy
14. Turbo Teen
15. Goldie Gold and Action Jack
16. Rubix the Amazing Cube
17. Care Bears
18. Pac Man
19. Popples
20. The Gary Coleman Show
21. The Wuzzles
22. The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
23. Maxie’s World