I love that so many of my favorite childhood cartoons have found their way onto cable TV. Me and Littledoo have been enjoying watching one of them in particular – my all-time favorite, Spider-man and his Amazing Friends.
I could not have been more obsessed with this show, which originally aired when I was five years old. I’m pretty sure it is what turned me on to the whole superhero thing in the first place.
I am sure that the whole reason that they are re-airing these chestnuts is in the hope that guys of my generation will watch them with their kids. Or, barring kids, watch them alone with a box of ding dongs and a six-pack. Whatever. I’m enjoying myself, and so is my three-year-old. He especially likes the part where Peter Parker gets bit by the spider.
Now if only I could manage to record that episode of the Smurfs where they are all biting each other in the butt… nobody else seems to remember this, and I am starting to think I made it up.
As I remember it, some weird fly or something bites one of the smurfs, which turns him purple and stupid. He then runs around yelling “Nyub! Nyub!” or something like that, and then passes along the condition by biting other smurfs in the butt, who in turn bite others, etc. etc. Actually, now that I think of it, it is basically a smurf zombie story. No wonder I liked it.
*****
Ha! I love the internet. I just found proof the episode exists.
Purple Zombie Smurfs - Click to see the whole episode!
Apparently I remembered it pretty much correctly, and it is from an episode in 1981 called “The Purple Smurfs.”
Anyway, I am about to watch Thundarr the Barbarian for the first time since 1984 or so. Can’t wait.
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Okay, Thundarr just started. Awesome post-apocalyptic mish-mash of Star Wars and Conan, with absolutely no effort made to hide the blatant ripoff of both. Thundarr looks exactly like He-Man, but he is basically Conan with a lightsaber. It is actually kind of dark for a kid’s show – post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery, kind of like Gene Wolfe. It actually reminds me a lot of The Book of the New Sun.
Watching this now, and rereading the first part of this post, I have come to the realization that Saturday morning cartoons totally shaped my adult interests. Everything I think is cool now, I was watching at age five (including Cubbie games on WGN all summer long) with a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. Weird. Either that stuff was super powerful, or I am seriously stunted. Or both.
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September 22, 2008 at 5:18 am
Space Nakji
I guess, then, I can at least partly attribute my fascination with fictional monsters to the spookalicious combo of Count Chocula cereal and the Groovie Goolies.
Saddest of all, though, is the fact that it’s taken me until now to actually locate the Groovie Goolies online, since during all those years spent trying to prove to others that the show really existed, I was misspelling it. Sux 2B mie, I guess.
Weep.
September 22, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Pedrobot
I was a big Groovie Goolies fan, although I was not allowed to watch it at home, due to my recurrent childhood nightmares (apparently the term for this is “night terrors”). My poor mom was trying her best, and also included Scooby-Doo on her banned list in an attempt to protect me from my fears (G.I.Joe was banned also, but just because of the violence).
This inevitably led me to watch all of these shows, especially the Goolies, with rapt attention every time I went to my grandmother’s house.
Of course, what my mom didn’t know was that my nightmares were almost universally inspired by things I picked up in private Christian school, and had nothing to do with my cartoon intake. I don’t remember what they told me in school to set me off, but I was having some seriously messed up dreams about being snatched up by the Devil. I remember each of them vividly to this day. And that one about the big scary brown Muppet. I hate that guy.