Comic Review #93: Jughead’s Double Digest #1 (1989)

 

Well, It’s time to get back to the good stuff. Which is the stuff I started this blog with. I brought back the Final Episode, where I go over the Final Episode of some television show that started before the year, I dunno, 2002. That’s kinda when I stopped caring about a lot of new things. I like the past. It’s a warm comforting blanket. Anyway, I bring bad news… You see a thing from the PAST is seeming to come to some kind of end. They are now no longer selling Archie Digests. Yes, a 50 year old institution is coming to an end mostly because children today only enjoy Minecraft. A friend brought up a interesting thought today. Do children even have shared experiences anymore? Like I’m sure anyone over the age of 35 bought or had a Archie’s digest bought for them. It doesn’t matter what you think of Archie comics but I’m sure you read some of them before.

Personally, I like Archie. There’s something charming and fun about something being so squeaky clean wholesome in this society of ours. One that feels like it’s crumbling around all over the place. One that I don’t even know how to function in. Uh, I guess that’s too much information and also depressing thoughts for a review over Archie. It’s just that this world is weird and distressing and not like it was even twenty years ago. Uh, okay back to Archie. I chose Jughead’s Double Digest #1 because I felt like talking about a #1 issue because why not and also because Jughead is the best Archie comics character. I do not care what you think of Archie overall but Jughead fucking rules. The man does not give a shit about this teenage life but he sure as hell gives a shit about a hamburger. It’s kinda beautiful really. I’m not going to talk about every single story in this two hundred and fifty six page comic book. Just the ones that I was entertained by the most.

The first story involves Big Ethel. You know the giant goofy looking woman with the buck tooth who has the hots for Jughead, the man who cares not for any kind of sexual touch but just wants to eat hamburgers? Yes. This time she actually gets a date with him because……She’s dressed up as a Hot Dog! That’s right! However when the date comes she’s dressed up as someone else and Jughead is his normal “eh whatever” self. Until she then gets the Hot Dog costume and Jughead becomes horny as shit! They have a great time until it’s tomorrow when Jughead is like NO MORE DATES WITH THAT WOMAN until she comes out dressed as a BURGER! It’s corny, it’s cheesy but it’s a fun five page story and I love how Jughead is drawn running to Big Ethel in the end like a crazed maniac.

I think I now know the reason I hate the Flintstones. It’s because Fred Flintstone is such an asshole that he won’t give his fucking friend any of his cheap SHITTY STUPID GARBAGE cereal. Like the poor bastard has to pretend to be a woman or a priest or a dog or whatever just to get some. You call this man your best friend, Give him some fucking cereal you amazing jackoff. I’d give portnoyd some cereal and he’s a damn jerk! Anyway on to story #2: This is a simple story where Betty just comes out and asks Jughead why he hates girls and he’s like I just don’t like what they do to my best friend and we see Archie going gaga over Veronica. He wants to find a way to lure her away form Archie and Betty goes “how about using her because her favortie thing is herself” It really is true. Archie should go with Betty because Veronica is a shitty little hobgoblin. He talks about how there’s a club that no one can get into! No matter who they are! Which annoys Veronica so much that she goes to this club! Insulting Archie before doing so! Betty thinks she’ll get the date but does not because Archie now hates women apparently. Jughead then says she can’t get into the club because it’s not open yet! Hilarious. Veronica is a bitch.

Story #3 involves Jughead getting a job! As an Ice Cream salesman! Of course this Job is not one Jughead should keep for very long! He’s surly and rude to the customers and even drives away from them. He causes a giant crowd to form and it even gets on the news. He’s talking about how he’s going to fight anyone who wants ANY ice cream from him. They will get the ice cream out of his cold dead hands. Somehow the people love him and that gets him a bigger job at the ice cream factory which is now making more money by being jerks to customers. They ended up firing Jughead because he couldn’t stop smiling after seeing his first paycheck! I laughed for a minute at the panel of one guy having an ice cream after getting his ass kicked by Jughead. It’s just so goofy I couldn’t help myself.

Also this JUGHEAD DOUBLE DIGEST has too many ARCHIE and BETTY AND VERONICA stories in it. I made my mom put down two dollars for Jughead and Jughead only! I WANT JUGHEAD STORIES YOU FREAKS!!!! Anyway Story #4 and the last one I’m going to talk about has one of my favorite Archie characters. Moose. Moose is just a giant moron who loves Midge. However Midge thinks Moose is uncouth, a slob and a brute who’s too violent. Moose comes ot Jughead and tries to get him to help and Jugheads like nah until Moose mentions DINNER and this is how Moose and Jughead go out on a date. Archie and Reggie find out and are FREAKED OUT by the news. They run across Midge who finds out and then goes to them and literally goes like “I could take it if it was Betty or Veronica but NO ONE DUMPS ME FOR THIS” pointing at Jughead. Oh and then she beats the piss outta Moose. Wild.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I had a lot of fun reading these and it’s made me want to delve into the weirder Archie comics that they’ve put out so expect to see stuff like that around here sometimes maybe. Anyway I didn’t know where to put this but whenever I think of Archie I think of that scene from the Simpsons “Duhhh, Stay outta Riverdale”. I think Archie’s entire existence is worth that joke from the Simpsons!

The Final Episode #123: Quack Pack (1996)

 

Wow, now isn’t this a blast from the past….the past of almost two years ago. Yes. The last one of these I wrote was on Aladdin and I just stopped. I mean I would stop and start with this blog but as you can see from the number up there I wrote 121 of these things previously. I had blogs and websites that I wrote like 5 things for and gave up on. I mean these posts are thrown together nonsense for the most part but they are better put together thrown together nonsense that I used to write. Maybe by the time I turn 65 I’ll finally have written something that I could be proud of for more than 5 minutes.

So, I’m back to the blog stuff again. Hope to start reviewing and discussing things again. Just to keep myself from watching stupid conservative youtubers and twitter shit because I hate myself and want to keep myself angry so I read people getting angry over the dumbest shit. So I’ve decided to do what was actually fun about the internet in these days. Spend way too many words talking about an old tv show or movie or comic book and yelling at portnoyd for just shitting up my comments section with his FILTHY INCORRECTNESS.

So I come back with I believe, the second to last Disney Afternoon show I have to discuss, Quack Pack a not very good piece of animation from Disney. I know of this show and I honestly am not sure if I had ever seen an entire episode. I just saw COOL 1990S DUDE VERSIONS of Huey Dewey and Louie and even at eleven years old I was able to go “wow this is a messy pile of shit” and go do something else. Which was probably play Super Nintendo. So like when this happens I tend to review two episodes instead of one and not really being sure if I ever watched this show I watched two episodes of this show.

Before I get into the review, I want to do some history because I just fucking feel like it, ok? It’s my fucking blog and I can do what the hell I want with it. Anyway the character of Donald Duck was created ninety-one years ago in 1934. He became very popular very quickly. Carl Barks and Al Taliaferro. IMDb even gives Al Taliaferro credit for helping write these episodes even though he died in 1969! the characters would end up showing up in cartoons until 1967. They would return in 1983 for a Christmas special and 1987 for Disney’s third television cartoon DuckTales. I have talked about the Final Episode of DuckTales and it’s quite good.

The first episode we will be talking about today is the second to last episode. It was just easier to do it that way. It’s called Stunt Double or Nothing. It involves a new character who’s name I forget. Kent something. He’s a part of this series. Daisy Duck and Donald Duck work for him. He’s an egotistical blowhard who finds out that people like Daisy Duck more because she’s willing to do crazy shit t oget a story. Like get right up in the face of Gorillas and all kinds of shit. They bet that Kent could never do this and then he gets this Gorilla that was in Daisy’s newscast to uh pretend to be him. Yeah, the Gorilla is a big dummy and likes bananas. So this somehow doesn’t work for Kent and you could easily see that it was a Gorilla in one scene. Hubert, Dewford and Llewellyn Duck show up and erase the tape accidently. Oh no!

They did redo the tape because they think they have fucked up and will end up getting Daisy and Donald fired. So they start fighting with Gorillas and flying around a Volcano. Yeah. So they fix it all up just to get Daisy and Donald fired and then they find out Kent faked the shit. They then fix up a bunch of stunts that will make Kent look foolish on TV. Daisy and Donald get their jobs back and you can easily tell where I just gave up and stopped caring about writing about this episode. This was the episode that was trying to be funny and it wasn’t. Sorry.

Now we finally get into the Final Episode, Feats of Clay… just like the Batman: The Animated Series episode which was about forty times better than this one. This is a very bad episode. I very much did not enjoy it. I’ll get into why after I recap the whole thing for you. It starts with Huey getting horny as shit for an Asian girl as they are somewhere in the far east today. the Mysterious far east as Daisy Duck said. Some youtuber would probably spend 10 minutes going on about how that was an outdated stereotype and I’d be like yeah you’re talking about something that’s almost thirty fucking years old my man. It happens a lot in old media. Anyway after annoying her enough that she starts talking to him (yeah what?) she gives him a marble and says “Nothing is what it seems!!!” Oh man. I wonder what that means (it means she’s the bad guy of this episode OH WOW)

Louie and Dewey annoy him and they all end up at an archaeological dig of some old clay statues. Also Huey is badmouthing archaeologists and WHOA the girl is also one of them! a junior archaeologist or some shit. I don’t know what they said exactly and I’m not re-watching the episode to find out. So eat shit. So they are recording clay statues and other treasure shit in something that really does not look like an actual dig. It’s just a bunch of stuff in a warehouse. I mean they are antiques but they are in a warehouse. Huey learns that they will leave after taping this stuff so he ruins the tape. Huey does this because he wants to hug and kiss the Asian girl. I do not remember her name. So they go to the museum where they move all of the stuff to. I guess they are just showing off a Asian museum now not an archaeological dig. I don’t know. I don’t care.

The clay statues come to life and scare the shit out of Huey! Oh no! Huey then meets up with The Asian Girl and woah she tells him Mr Woo is a bad guy and Huey just believes her. He then follows a clay statue man to Mr Woo just to find out that the Asian Girl is a bad guy!!! OH MAN!!! WHAT A SHOCK!!!!! It’s not actually a shock. Uh, where was I? oh yeah. They fight the clay statues and then Huey has to fight a dragon that was once a place to sit. Woo. You can clearly tell I’ve given up and am using the last fuck I have to finish this post. The Asian Girl is arrested after the crown she was wearing was destroyed and she lost the fight. I do not know why she didn’t just run off with the giant amount of treasure she already had but she just HAD to do something with Mr. Woo. A reason the episode never actually gives. Yep.

I can’t give a full review of the entire show but I can say this show is not something I want to return to. I will give three reasons why: 1.) I do not like the 1990s-ification of Huey, Dewey and Louie. It was like they looked at the success of Goof Troop and was like do that again. Except they forget to make them charcters instead of just WOO IN YOUR FACE 1990S DUDES MAN WOOOAH. I mean yeah Max could be a in your face 1990s dude but he still had some character beside that. It just feels very lazy and forced in this show.

2.) This show does not know what it wants to be. The two episodes I watched feel like they were from two different shows. One show that wants to be a comedy goof off (and isn’t good at it) and the other was from another show that wanted to be an action adventure show (and isn’t good at it).

3.) It’s really boring. I get the feeling from this show that the writers just didn’t care. Like with writing you get jobs that you are like “Holy hell I get to write for this show YES!” and other shows you’re like “oh shit this is about as fun as a detention assignment from Mr. Collins”. This is the Mr. Collins job.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I think you can tell what I thought about all this without me giving you yet another paragraph. This is probably going to be on the bottom 5 of Final Episodes thats for sure.

Box Office Bombs! Let’s Discuss!

 

It’s time for an interesting group of discussion because I kinda feel bad for some Box Office Bombs. Some of them deserve didn’t to be a failure. So I think over the next little while we will end up discussing box office bombs. I think a lot of them don’t even get watched by many people, just they decide they aren’t any good because they didn’t make the money. I dunno. I just felt like I REALLY had to discuss one of these movies so let’s get to it. I dont like to rate a movie out of anything so I’m just going to say, Highly Recommended, Somewhat Recommended and Not Recommended.

This was the one of the movies I decided that I HAD to talk about because really this might just may be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I’m talking about the one of the 25th worst ever film. And you know that’s something when I willingly stick up for a LOT of films that no one cares about. A LOT of them. This is the remake of the 1975 film starring James Caan I don’t remember much about it because I haven’t seen it in almost twenty years, but I do know that there’s no way that it could be as bad at this movie. This movie literally was edited so badly that It’s taken away every put every thing the movie was trying to do, to the point where you just got a weird mess of a movie. Some shit in this movie makes no sense. Some thrown together garbage that you can’t even blame Chris Klein, even though he’s very boring as an actor, because clearly everything was edited from R-rated to not R-Rated that makes the entire thing a pointless thing to watch. I mean I doubt that this movie was going to be all that good even if it wasn’t edited to shit because really it was clearly “we don’t really care about this movie at all we are just making it because it was popular enough in 1975 and we had the rights to do it”. This is completely unwatchable shit that I hope no one bothers to watch. If I cannot stick up for it I do not think any one could and that’s really saying something. The one point about this movie is that it’s nice to see Rebecca Romjin naked. Not recommended. In fact never watch this.

Another movie that made about 32 dollars and 12 cents but really should hade made more because people who made this movie seemed to care about it. the directors and writers and actors at least seemed to care about this movie. It’s weird and out there but it’s still got a lot of charm and entertainment. There’s nothing much else I really can say about either of this movies I’m going to be talk about except that I was amused by the comedy within both. I just had to say something about Rollerball and you can tell this is the worst post I’ve made in the entire time I’ve made these comments. I really don’t know what else to say. I will say this regardless of what you feel about this movie that effort was put into it and it wasn’t edited to the point it felt like everything that makes a story a story was removed. Still I think this movie could have been made to be funnier but it’s still enjoyable to watch. I’d rate it Somewhat Recommended.

This movie was pretty unique honestly. It was half animated and half live action. Bill Murray plays a guy named Frank who gets sick and a white blood cell lives within side him played by Chris Rock. He teams up with a pill named Drix voiced by Niles from Fraiser. The biggest problem with this movie is that I really think it could have been a funnier movie. I mean this is made by the guys who did Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary and this is kinda should have been made to be funnier. It’s still an entertaining enough little piece of cinema but there’s not much to say about it. Somewhat Recommended

That’s it. Go away.

Let’s Talk About Some Old Comic Book Movies Because I’m Really Bored.

 Oh hey, It’s me posting on my blog again. Hopefully I’ll post more on this blog again because it’s literally the only thing that I find fun related to the internet these days but I always forget about this shit. Anyway, I’ve found myself watching some comic book movies, but not from the 1970s or 1980s when they first started happening. No, it’s that weird moment in time from 1998 when Blade came out to 2008 when Iron Man really really changed the game. This was a pretty Marvel centric era (not much different than today ho ho ho) but it felt for the most part the people who made these movies never touched a comic book in their lives, despite having Kevin Feige as a producer on several of them. Not to ruin the fun but I will ruin this blog post because I think the MCU even at it’s worst, is still (mostly) better than the majority of the movies from this era, and we will see why.

This movie is one hell of a mixed bag, but I’m going to ruin this blog post a bit by saying……….This is the only one of these four movies that I enjoyed watching. No, it’s not perfect. The Hulk Dogs are fucking hilarious. The movie starts pretty slow and doesn’t really start getting entertaining until they show up. Nick Nolte I think is starring in an entirely different movie and giving one hell of an unhinged performance. I love it. His performance is the best part of these movie. He is amazing in this film. He is the bad guy of the picture. The Absorbing Man, he’s also the Hulks dad and killed his mom. This is a big problem with a lot of these movies as they seemed to feel like they needed to jam EVERYTHING into one movie. Still I did enjoy this one. It’s nothing amazing but I would watch it again, if only for Nick Nolte. The worst part is probably Eric Bana as Eddie Nort and Markie Ruff are better at playing the character.

Speaking of overstuffed this movie decides to shove in Daredevil’s origin story, Elektra, Bullseye, people finding out who the Kingpin is and his downfall, AND a courtroom case and man it feels like they had ideas for an entire tv show season but they had to shove it into one movie. It does not work. The biggest thing is that I don’t think the people making it really got most of these characters. Bullseye is played for some kind of terrible joke character. It’s very annoying. Ben Affleck tries but I don’t think he’s cut out for playing superheroes. I know people complain about race swapping characters now (and if you care about my opinion is that I don’t really care who plays a character in live action as long as they don’t change the comics. Leave them separate. Which means I’m in the middle of a dumb internet argument and no one likes nuance on the internet these days) but Michael Clarke Duncan is literally one of two reasons why you should check this bloated mess of a movie out. The other is for some of the weirdest cameos ever. Kane Hodder, Kevin Smith and COOLIO show up in this movie. Just wild. Anyway, I did not much care for this movie and would not watch it again.

You know how sometimes you can tell when an actor does not want to be making the movie they are making. Yeah this is one of the times here. Jennifer Gardner does not want to be making this motion picture. It is so 100% obvious in every single scene. I’m pretty sure she did what she could to make it so every single scene was done in one take. This makes for one really really boring and terrible movie to watch. I mean when the star does not want to be there can you really make the audience care? It’s neat to see Terrence Stamp actually be one of the people who played a DC character and a Marvel character (having played General Zod in the old Superman movies) but for the most part this is a forgettable mess.

Hooo boy, we got ourselves a stinker here. Superman is in the news again with the newest movie which people again argue about because everyone argues about new movies on the internet now. Just with a weird political bent because again everything has to be about politics on Shitty Internet. The Internet used to be so good and now it’s so bad. Anyway this movie takes it self way too seriously. I don’t even know if Bryan Singer even saw the old Superman movies from the 1970s and 1980s because they were pretty damn goofy and yes I’m including the first two in there too. They were delightful and entertaining though, even when they got Cannon Movie Group’d. Yes, I’d rather watch Superman IV The Quest for Peace instead of this movie. This movie took itself too seriously and really should have just restarted the character in movie form, but whatever. It’s still better than Man of Steel and this version of Superman likes to stalk Lois Lane and her boyfriend and son. Yes, it’s very weird. This movie does have a good point and that’s Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. Yes, I know I’m now supposed to retroactively think everything someone who’s been accused of crimes did was bad and awful but fuck that, the movie comes to LIFE when the man is on screen. It also has a dog eat another dog. This movie is weird and unpleasant.

Maybe I’ll come back and review another four movies no one cares about anymore. Probably, why the hell not. Anyway, I hope portnoyd’s terrible comment doesn’t annoy me to much.

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

The 80s Cartoon Project Thing #6: Disney Cartoons.

 Well, it’s finally time to come back to this after eleven days. Whoa!!! That’s pretty good on my scale! I’ve trying to keep this thing grouped up into themes. Like last time was Ruby Spears and such. There’s still a few more companies I can go through before getting into some other wild stuff. Anyway, I decided to pick a company that gets a lot of discussion and hate (some of it very valid, some of it not), which is Disney. Disney was founded in like 1923 by Walt Disney and he took the FUCKING WORLD BY STORM. For decades this dude was popular as shit. Strange they never tried to do televised animation before the 1980s but Disney was in a bad spot after Walt died in 1966. It actually took a lot of time for them to get back in the top spot. Anyway, they finally started to do Televised animation in 1985.

Their first try was an original creation known as the Wuzzles. It uh, involved a group of wuzzles, which are uh, two animals smushed together for some reason. Stop telling me smushed is not a word auto correct!!! Anyway, this is me cheating a little bit, one because I’m lazy and two because I’m getting over a cold. I didn’t rewatch any Wuzzles for this here, because I’ve seen the show recently enough to remember that I didn’t like it. It felt like they were trying to hard and none of the characters were all that remarkable or memorable. It was just stock plots told in the least memorable or enjoyable way they could be done. This will be going far down the end of the list because I had to literally really think about who the bad guys were and I’m pretty sure it was a crocodile or an aligator. I don’t care enough to look it up and I am tired of talking about The Wuzzles.

This however is a incredible upgrade in quality from The Wuzzles. The second time they tried they really did a great little job. They got people who would work on other cartoons and even create a few for them. Like Tad Stones (still the coolest name in history) and Alan Zaslove. Again they might have worked on the Wuzzles but I don’t want to know if they did because I like to think they always did great work and are cool guys even though I don’t know them as people and never will. Uh, where was I? Oh, this is a show about a magical group of bears that are well called Gummi Bears and they fight off an evil Duke guy who’s a giant jerk. The have a formula that makes you bounce call the Gummi Beary Juice which the Duke wants. I wonder how hard it was for some writers to come up with a use for that stuff in EVERY story. “Damnit I just don’t want them to jump over the guy again!!!” but it probably happened. Despite being a better show than the Wuzzles, this is a cartoon I forget about constantly. Weird, isn’t it? Anyway, this has some pretty great voice acting, animation and I’ll be very glad in the future to one day sit my lazy ass down and watch every episode. It’s good enough for that.

Now we are getting to the cartoon that will dethrone Inspector Gadget! Yes! that’s right! Based on the old Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge/Donald Duck comics gets you (so far) the best cartoon that I’ve talked about. I don’t know if it will stay #1, but I don’t doubt that it really has that possibility. This was a cartoon that pretty much cemented Disney staying and doing many many many other cartoons. This cartoon is about a miserly old Duck named Scrooge McDuck who literally has a fucking money bin that is filled to the brim with coins and gold and all kinds of shit that he swims in like a crazy man. He still wants more money. He and his family (his grand-nephews, Huey, Dewey and Lewey), a goofball pilot, a screwball inventor, a nanny and her niece go ALL over the damn world getting into crazy adventures for all to enjoy. They go up against the Beagle Boys (and their mother) and Flintheart Golmgold, the second richest Duck in the world. Anyway, this is a very fun cartoon and I think that the reason it works better than The Adventures of the Gummi Bears is the setting. The middle ages are a fun setting but they can end up being limiting. You put it in 1987 DuckBerg and have the goofy inventor create a time machine and bam you got your story about knights and kings and witches! Anyway this show ran for 100 episodes and most of them are still a fun watch!

I’m taking a little jump out of historical accuracy to talk about this 1980s Disney cartoon because I don’t really want to talk about the last one, but this cartoon was the last one they made before 1990. It was created by Tad Stones and Alan Zaslove because they created like all of the early Disney animated shows for TV. Either them or a guy named Jymn Magon, or Alans son Mark. Anyway this cartoon also goes back to Disney’s past again and refixes some old characters for the audiences enjoyment. This time it’s Chip N Dale who get the refix treatment. They bring in some really fun new characters. Fat Cat, Dr. Nimnul, Gadget, Zipper and Monterey Jack. I really quite enjoy this cartoon and thats the end of that.

The one cartoon I didn’t really want to talk about is this one. The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. First off, can we find a different title than that. I mean these adventures are NEVER going to continue being new! They will get old! This cartoon is 37 years old this year. Which makes me feel like that gif of Matt Damon from that movie I never saw. Anyway my hot take. A very hot take is that Winnie the Pooh is very, very, very boring. I thought this as a child and I think this now. There are things that have a slow pace (like say Peanuts specials and shows) that I do enjoy but there’s things like Winnie the Pooh which is just BORING AS FUCK. The characters are just uninteresting and uningaging to me. I just never liked Winnie the Pooh and my uh subjective ranking of every 80s cartoon will have him at the bottom. At least the Gary Coleman Show had some WTF factor to it. Winnie the Pooh has nothing, except an excellent voice cast. They were all very good at the voice acting but that’s all I can really say about this one.

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. Camp Candy
13. Turbo Teen
14. Goldie Gold and Action Jack
15. Rubix the Amazing Cube
16. Care Bears
17. Pac Man
18. The Gary Coleman Show
19. The Wuzzles
20. The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Ranking and Reviewing Every 80s Cartoon Until I have No More To Review, Part 5: Cartoons based on Real People!

 Oh hello again! Welcome back! I say this because apparently people are liking this blog but not commenting! Comments! That’s what I want! I see you Dirty SciFiBuddha! I want to know what you think about the fucking Rubik’s Cube cartoon GOD DAMNIT! Anyway, this time we are talking about the most respected members of our society, at least our society as it was in the 1980s. If you didn’t get a cartoon then you should have tried harder to earn our respect. We gave it out to….four men! I don’t know where this attempt at comedy (it feels very unfair to call this a joke) went but I think we should stop it and uh, let’s just talk about cartoons that were based around well actors that were popular at the time.

Mister T was incredibly fucking popular in his day. He was a wrestler. He was a tv star (The A-Team) he was a movie star (Rocky III, D.C. Cab) and yes, we loved him enough that we decided to make him a cartoon superstar! Ruby Spears decided to do one of their gang cartoons. You know the type. A group of people (or you know a gang) come together to solve mysteries. This time the gang is a bunch of gymnastics students, a child who likes being Mr T (listening ot this kid try to sound gruff like Mr. T was fucking funny as hell) and a dog (with a mohawk, of course). Just add in Mr. T grumbling and mumbling and you have youself one hell of a fine piece of CHEESE. I really should have added CHEESE as one of the rankings I did in the first part but not really afterwards because I forgot, because This isn’t as good as say Inspector Gadget but the CHEESE factor of this cartoon really is high and makes it a lot of fun to watch. I bet this cartoon was a lot of fun to write. Just come up with crazy shit for Mr. T to say and come up with some random Mystery involving like the Pyramids or Ninjas or some shit. Oh, a fun moment in this cartoon was when the redhead girl was all like THE NINJA HAS TO BE MR. YAKAMOTO because he’s Japanese and the Japanese girl was like “BITCH YOU KNOW IM JAPANESE TOO YOU FUCKIN RACIST SHIT” well not really but still.

Now, we get to discuss Mr. Carlos Ray Norris, known better as Chuck Norris. I just like to type the name Ray as much as a I can. Ray, ray ray. Lazer Ray, Ray Gun. Ray. Okay, I got it out of my system. Anyway if you wanted an action movie from the late 1970s until like 1986. You got a choice of……Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson. With a little bit of Sylvester Stallone in the mix too. You didn’t get Arnold until like Commando made big bucks and he became the king of the Action Movie. Chuck Norris WAS the action guy of the 1980s, even if I like Charles Bronson more (nothing again Chuck Norris, I dig his movies too but I just like hearing Bronson go “no dice, pally”) and thus he got himself a cartoon series, or I should say mini series. This is only five episodes. I don’t know if they were testing the waters. or if thats all Chuck could commit too. A Rumor online had it that fuddy duddy parents who had nothing better to do with their time except to ruin fun thought it was too action packed, because apparently we had to watch boring cartoons that taught us math. Anyway it’s a shame really because this was a really fun watch and I would have watched a 65 episode season of this. It’s like a gang cartoon (Chuck Norris has a gang that consists of a samurai, a sumo, a random scientist guy, a goofy child, a girl, and a teenage boy) meets GI Joe (they go up against a giant Cobra like organization ran by The Claw and SUPER NINJA). I enjoyed this but I have to admit it makes me sad that I only have four more episodes to watch.

DiC Animation, Saban Entertainment and Worldvision Enterprises, in the late 1980s (1989 to be exact) decided to work with comedian John Candy and created Camp Candy. I really liked John Candy and I miss him a lot. Just imagine the things he could have done. I really enjoyed pretty much all of the things he did and yes that does include Camp Candy. At least the little bit of it that I was able to see. This is a show that really should be on some streaming service in nice HD or something. I dunno. AnywaJohn Candy owns a camp with your usuaual assortment of kids. The nerdy one, the cool one, the rich piece of shit asshole one, you’ve seen this exact same group of kids before. They have to keep the Camp away from evil Rex DeForest III who wants to turn it into condos. This has a pretty wild voice cast. John Candy voices himself and yo uget guest appearances from Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin! Babu Bhatt from Seinfeld voices a character!!! The father of all of the Arquette children, Lewis voices a character!!! RODDY MCDOWELL from Planet of the Apes voices a character!!!!!!!!

This could have gone under the Cartoons that were based on movies part of this whole damn thing but I just realized that halfway after watching an episode of this crap. This is based off the TV Movie The Kid With the Broken Halo made in 1982. It starred Gary Coleman and it wowed Hanna Barbera SO much that they just HAD to make a very very boring and bland cartoon out of it. Seriously though this feels like them just going to a xeroxing machine and using plots that they used 10,000 times before. This show has Gary Coleman as an angel and he’s being taught by some tall redhead and a demon with a goatee and a purple coat trying to stop him for reasons. Oh and in the SAME episode (this was one of those cartoons that were cut into two 11 minute episodes) involved them chasing after some kind of bird while the Hornswaggle (yes the bad guy is named Hornswaggle) pretends to be the tall redhead. They mention her name but I forgot it. The second episode is pretty much the same damn plot as they chase after a lost dog! The xerox machine got a lot of work at Hanna Barbera.

I’m happy this show exists though just for this anecdote or however you spell that word. I told the gang in the chatroom about this show and then Portnoyd said Gary Coleman was Webster and I got to yell at him! That was Emmanuelle Lewis you RACIST SHIT. There’s only like two damn famous black midgets that look like they are children despite being 50 (and also dead). This also showed up on adult swim and that means I get to say that it’s better than Tim and Eric (which it is) and bother port that way! Anyway The Gary Coleman Show is dull and literally takes the bottom spot in this whole list.

The List:

1. Inspector Gadget
2. Spider Man and his Amazing Friends
3. The Incredible Hulk
4. The Smurfs
5. Go Bots
6. Mister T
7. Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos
8. Spider Man (1981)
9. Camp Candy
10. Turbo Teen
11. Goldie Gold and Action Jack
12. Rubik the Amazing Cube
13. Care Bears
14. Pac Man
15. Yogi’s Treasure Hunt
16. The Gary Coleman Show

Ranking and Reviewing Every 80s Cartoon Until I get sick of it all, Part 4: Ruby Spears, Baby!

 

It’s time for me to talk about another three (or sometimes even more!) cartoons that crossed TV screens from 1980 to 1989. And in case of cartoons that had 65 or more episodes got reran into the 1990s and 2000s. However the cartoons I’m gonna be talking about today ran for one season each and were all made by Ruby-Spears. Ruby Spears was created by Joe Ruby and Kenneth Spears in 1973 after splitting from Hanna Barbera (where they had created Scooby Doo for the company.) Ruby Spears lasted from 1973 to the early 1990s. I believe the last cartoons they made were Mega Man and something called Sky Warriors or some shit. I’ll get to them when I decide that I’m sad enough to start ranking and reviewing every 90s cartoon, which might just happen. You never know! The thing about Ruby Spears was they made some REALLY FUCKING WEIRD cartoons and all three of these are pretty weird, we will start from the least weird to the most weird but man I’m gonna get sick of typing the word weird by the end of this. Weird.

Created by Steve Gerber with character designs from Jack Kirby! Steve Gerber created Howard the Duck and Jack Kirby WAS JACK FUCKING KIRBY! Yes, the both of them worked at Ruby Gold and there are like at least 14 unused Jack Kirby ideas that I WISH were made into crazy ass cheeseball cartoons like this one. Goldie Gold is about an incredibly rich woman named well Goldie Gold who teams up with Action Jack to find newspaper stories for her newspaper the Gold Street News! They go one crazy fucking adventures because Goldie Gold has like 7053 trillion dollars. She has her own fucking Space Mansion! And an Under the Sea Mansion! Under the Sea dome things are always fucking cool. I don’t give a shit who you are that is cool as fuck. This cartoon was a lot of fun to watch and I’m willing to watch the other eleven episodes. I would have enjoyed another season of this wild ass nonsense. She also has a dog named Nugget! Every action cartoon made between 1968 and 1981 needed a animal sidekick.

Yes, if you ever needed to know how much cocaine was used in the 1980s the answer is way too much because the people who made this had to be high as shit to think a Rubik Cube cartoon was a good idea. Some things can work as cartoons and some things cannot, no matter how hard you try. A Rubik (I swear it was called Rubix but I guess I was wrong. or it’s one of them Mandela Effect things). Even if you make it magical and have it voiced by Horshack of Welcome Back Kotter fame. It’s never going to be a good idea that could have lasted longer than a season but it did. That’s the magic of the 1980s. And also cocaine. Anyway this cartoon is incredibly cheesy and while the concept is really really stupid. It’s still a lot of fun to sit back and enjoy. Rubik is like the most over powered character probably ever. The only thing that stops him from taking over the entire universe is that he’s not a bad guy and also if you drop him and his colors get all messed up he gets stuck inside the cube. It’s weird. Also the theme song was done by Menudo and the man who was the story editor Mark Jones went on to make Leprechaun, Leprechaun 2 and Rumpelstiltskin. Truly Mark Jones is a gentleman and a scholar!

The weirdest of the three cartoons we are going to talk about today is Turbo Teen. It involves a teenager named Brett who during a stormy night crashes into a government lab in his car, flying into a laser beam that changes molecules and BAM you got yourself the cheesiest damn cartoon ever. At least of the 1980s. Whenever he gets too warm he turns into his car and has to cool down. He fights the Dark Rider (a big foot truck!!!!) (voiced by Frank Welker who I really should have done a count for. I’m curious to see how many cartoons Frankie boy showed up in). Also can streaming services like try to find these old shows and put them on there so I don’t have to watch decaying old VHS rips? I know I’m the only person who wants to sit down and watch all 13 episodes of this show but I can’t even do that. Why can’t we try to find all of old media before we go LETS REMAKE IT WOHAA RREBOOT GLGAFLDSFLAS STREAMING REBOOTS WOO WOWOWWOOO. You can really tell I’ve grown tired of writing about this stuff for today. Anyway Turbo Teen is fucking goofy and it’s fucking weird but it’s also a hoot to watch.

I actually really had fun with these cartoons. Some people on YouTube made videos on these cartoons and I’m sure they are just ripping off the Angry Video Game Nerd and going POOPY CACA DOODIE MY ASSHOLE FART instead of any insightful or funny commentary on these cartoons. Say what you want about these shows but I’d rather watch every episode of them before I watch a single one of those AVGN ripoffs.

Anyway, here’s the list!

1. Inspector Gadget
2. Spider Man and His Amazing Friends
3. The Incredible Hulk
4. The Smurfs
5. Go Bots
6. Spider Man
7. Turbo Teen
8. Goldie Gold and Action Jack
9. Rubik the Amazing Cube
10. Spider Man
11. Care Bears
12. Pac Man
13. Yogi’s Treasure Hunt

Random Thoughts Again, why not YEAH!

 Well, It’s time for another group of random thoughts.

I’m watching a video on old Saturday morning cartoons and the host first talks about the history of Saturday Morning cartoons and all the stuff that ended up killing them. The funniest thing to me is how parents were like OH MAN THIS STUFF HAS TO BE EDUCATIONAL!!!!! EDUCATIONAL!!!!! for like decades, not realizing we wanted to spend some time away from fucking learning things. We did that for five damn days a week. We just wanted to watch burly men punch things and rabbits to blow up ducks with dynamite. That’s it. The other funny as hell thing about Educational stuff is how I barely watched any of it. Seriously, I watched stuff like Mr Rogers and Mr Dressup which I guess I learned stuff from but they went hog wild over this stuff from the 1970s to the 1990s to get educational stuff on the television just for me to go “OH FUCK THIS” and change the channel. I doubt I was the only one.

Now he’s talking about the Dungeon’s and Dragons cartoon and mentions the game and man people got angry and pissy over the dumbest shit. No, I’m sorry lady but this silly nerd game that I don’t even know how to play had your child kill himself. It’s not Satanic you weirdos. Jesus people have nothing better to do but piss me off. Even over things that existed before I was even born.

You know what I think Hollywood should do but will not. Just let something like say Transformers and Ghostbusters go into hibernation for a while. It would actually make a return to these things exciting again. I know that they will be beaten to death like some kind of horse because they are so fucking scared of new ideas. Just the whole missing something for a like a decade. Something something makes the heart grow fonder or some shit. I dunno the damn line. Shut up.

Another thing about the return of just about everything is how people you know age. they are making a Spinal Tap II this year, one of the men in that movie is 80 years old. I’m not saying he can’t act but it kinda feels sad that he has to be acting and trying to be cool nad hip. I dunno. Who knows.

I hope you enjoy this really bad post. Probably the worst one I’ve done. I should have talked about Dungeons and Dragons cartoon or something instead. That was a cool cartoon.

Ranking and Reviewing Every 1980s Cartoon Because I have Nothing Else Better To Do, Part 3: Hanna Barbera Productions

 

Well you knew it had to happen. I just had to talk about them. I mean I’m going to try to talk about every 80s cartoon that I can find an episode of two to watch. Hanna Barbera was all over the decade. It was all over every single decade of animation in the 20th damn century, for the most part. They started their partnership in 1939. They made Tom and Jerry for like twenty years until in 1957 they created their own TV Production for cartoons. They made tons upon tons of cartoons and well people either seem to love them or hate them. Personally I love them. Just something charming about the cartoons. I mean not all of them, they did after all make like 139403243029420492049230492041.6 cartoons between 1957 and like 2001.

The first cartoon I planned on watching was The Little Rascals, but I could not find a complete episode to even watch. Yes, Hanna Barbera was that out of date that they decided to make a Little Rascals cartoon in 1981 or thereabouts. It lasted longer than I thought but still that’s uh some out of date stuff right there. Hanna Barbera never had their finger on the PULSE OF THE NATION’S YOUTH. I then decided on a different cartoon but I realized that I could put that and a few others together in a “wtf is this shit?” starring actual real people just as uh cartoons thing. You can guess what cartoon I thought of right here. Anyway this cartoon had Top Cat (yes despite being called Yogi’s Treasure Hunt, Top Cat apparently leads the gang. I don’t get it either) So the origin of this is Ronald Reagan that horrible monster who was president in the 1980s (You’d think with them thinking Little Rascals was still popular they would have made the president in this Calvin Coolidge or something) talks about how America’s treasure is missing and the gang of Yogi Bear, Snagglepuss, Auggie Doggie and Huckleberry Hound (among others including the leader Top Cat) all have to find out that the treasure is actually Brotherhood. Yeah, this makes no fucking sense even for a goofy cartoon. Anyway this also has Dick Dastardly in it and I laughed at some of the very very corny dad jokes in this cartoon. I liked the comedy but uh they need to work on the actual stories a bit harder. I mean I know this is 1980s cartoons where most episodes were just THE COOLEST YET DUMBEST SHIT YOU EVER SAW jammed into some kind of plot but yeah. Portnoyd will have a field day with this cartoon. He really will. I do want to watch the several episodes done by Tom Reugger I thus far cannot give this cartoon more than Bad. It’s probably at the bottom of the list thus far.

I feel bad for the Go Bots. They remind me of Heathcliff. Heathcliff, alongside Go Bots actually premiered first however another thing very similar to them came out and just beat them in popularity, in this case being Garfield and Transformers. This is another one of me just going on memories because I’m lazy and I’m doing this just to kill time, but I did see a good few GoBots episodes and yes it’s not as good as the Transformers but it’s still quite a bit of fun to watch. I mean I do plan to go back and watch the other episodes of the show which is more than I can say for some other shows. So I’ll rate this show GOOD.

The Smurfs! This was THE most popular thing Hanna Barbera had anything to do with in the 1980s. It lasted pretty much the ENTIRE decade. It had two hundred and fifty six fucking episodes. That was four hundred and seventeen segements of smurfy goodness! Anyway I like the Smurfs, they are just charming little guys. Gargamel is a great villain (and Hank Azaria playing him in the live action movies were the only good part of them and yes I watched them because I’m that sad.) and tons of fun. The Smurfs started in 1958 as a comic from Belgium (I really should read said comic) and is still going today. I mean yet another really really really bad Smurfs live action movie coming out soon is not a good thing really but still it’s popular enough that the CORPORATIONS want to squeeze more money out of it. However that doesn’t really mean anything when THE CORPORATIONS tried to make a sequel series to Head of the Class, without Howard Hesseman! How can you do that to the Hesseman!!!!! Anyway the Smurfs is pretty GOOD and I like them. Portnoyd will probably be a jerk about them.

THE LIST:

1. Inspector Gadget
2. Spider Man and His Amazing Friends
3. The Incredible Hulk
4. The Smurfs
5. Go Bots
6. Spider-Man
7. Care Bears
8. Pac Man
9. Yogi’s Treasure Hunt