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Talkin’ Nerdy: The Kids’ WB Blues

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During my time of internet surfing, I came across this old Kids’ WB! promo advertising the network’s airing the reruns of Steven Spielberg’s Tiny Toon Adventures.

Ah, the dubbing. So bad….

What I find interesting about this particular promo (aside from wondering why only 2 singing voices were heard in the variation of the Tiny Toons theme song if the entire cast of TTA was supposed to be singing) is how it’s acts as though Animaniacs is the seasoned veteran series and the Tiny Toons characters are treated like the new kids on the block, when in reality. Tiny Toons started and stopped before Animaniacs. TTA ran from 1990 to 1995, while A! ran from 1993 to 1999. Yet, on Kids’ WB, Cartoon Network and later The Hub, A! was always acquired first, and TTA wasn’t acquired until after the A! reruns got decent ratings. These weren’t even new episodes of TTA; they were only “new” to Kids’ WB because they never aired on that network before. It must be somewhat grating for the TTA characters to have a series that they helped to create go on to surpass them in popularity. It’s kind of like your little brother or sister constantly getting picked for a team before you.

The Warners didn’t know it yet, but the Tiny Toons were only harbingers to the coming horror. A far greater threat to their security on the WB network was looming over the horizon. A threat that goes by the name of…

Pokemon logo

If the Warners think that having to share a network with the Tiny Toons is bad, wait until all of the comedy cartoons are forced to share a tiny cubicle.

Why Washu Hakubi is Awesome!

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It’s time for another segment of Why (blank) is Awesome. Today, we focus one of my favorite mad scientists, Washu Hakubi from Tenchi Muyo!

WHY WASHU HABUKI IS AWESOME!
  1. She describes her self as :”The greatest scientific genius in the universe!”
  2. She’s short. We short people have to stick together.
  3. The pink hair. You’ve got to love the pink hair.
  4. She has innate powers, but prefers to use reason and hi-tech to solve her problems.
  5. She’s one of the Chousen, three sister goddesses who created the universe.
  6. She created an inter-dimensional laboratory in the closet of the Masaki house. The folks on Home Makeover have got nothing on her!
  7. She altered her body to that of a teenage girl, but can return to adult form whenever she wants to. Who wouldn’t want to keep on looking young and hot?
  8. She built 2 little robot sidekicks who (literally) sing her praises.
  9. She’s invented devices which make Apple look like a flea market.
  10. She invented a device which could destroy the universe. Not that she ever would, but just in case…
And the geek shall inherit the earth!

The Retro Bin: Yo Yogi! (1991)

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It’s that time again! Time for another installment of The Retro Bin. Remember that great animated series that featured all new versions of those beloved classic cartoon characters that we grew up watching? The one that debuted in the early 1990s? The one that had all of those great jokes and well written stories? The one that gave us a reason to start watching cartoons again? That show was Steven Spielberg’s Tiny Toon Adventures, but we’re not going to be talking about that show today. Instead, we’ll be talking about a cheap Hanna-Barbera produced knockoff of that show. A Saturday morning “quickie” (as in quickly gone and forgotten) from 1991 titled Yo, Yogi!.

yo_yogi

When the shows’ title is a worn out buzzword, that’s not a good sign.

Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies begat The Flintstone Kids, which had sex with Tiny Toons to spawn this show. Yo, Yogi! was like Tiny Toon Adventures, only without the memorable characters, clever writing or funny jokes. Yo, Yogi! was one of the last Hanna-Barbera produced Saturday morning shows before NBC abandoned Saturday morning cartoons in favor of live action, teen-centric programming (i.e., Saved By the Bell clones) the alphabet networks did away with SatAM cartoons altogether. Yo, Yogi! ran for only a single season (1991) on NBC. Apparently, someone at H-B studios thought that shrinking Yogi Bear down to half of his height and dressing him up in a lime green puffy jacket and red hi-top sneakers would be a good idea.

“DUDE! The green jacket and rd hi-top are so 90s! It’s AWESOME!!”

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Anyway, here’s the premise:Yo, Yogi! takes place in Jellystone Town (so it’s a town now?). Yogi Bear, along with his sidekick Boo-Boo and their pals Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss and Cindy Bear (voiced this time around by Kath Soucie) have been de-aged into 14-year-old teenagers. The characters hung out at Jellystone Mall (which appeared to be patterned after the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota) owned by “Diamond” Doggie Daddy with Augie Doggie as his heir to the mall business. Yogi and the gang work at an agency called L.A.F. (short for Lost and Found – The initials spell out LAF, as in ‘Laugh’, get it?) where they act as detectives trying to solve mysteries under the supervision of the mall’s security guard Officer Smith. Dick , or “Dickie” Dastardly as he was called here (doing his best Montana Max impression) and his sidekick Muttley would cause trouble for Yogi and his gang. New character Roxie Bear was a teenager who was causing trouble with Dick Dastardly and she was Cindy’s rival and Yogi’s competitor. The characters were never seen at home or school. Some other H-B characters were also turned into teenagers, such as Top Cat, Wally Gator and Hardy-Har-Har, while other characters such as Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole, were featured as young children. Magilla Gorilla appeared in 1 episode as a famous rapper named Magilla Ice (groan!)
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Here’s the shows’ opening:

A lot of this show didn’t make much sense to me. First, if this series is supposed to take place before the old shorts, does that mean that Jellystone started out as a mega mall and was later torn down to make room for a national park? Second, why did Yogi and his friends wear more clothing as teenagers than they do as adults? And why was Dick Dastardly always trying to mess with the L.A.F. Squad anyway? What did he get out of it? At least in DD’s previous incarnations, he had clear motivations. In both Wacky Races and Fender Bender 500, he wanted to win the race, and he preferred cheating to achieve this goal. In Yogi’s Treasure Hunt, Dick wanted followed Yogi’s Gang around so that if they found any treasure, he could ambush them and claim the treasure for himself without having to do any actual work. Here, he just meddled in the gang’s affairs simply because he seemed to have nothing better to do. And like in his previous appearances, if he didn’t devote so much of his time to trying to screw over the good guys, he’d probably do all right for himself. And it didn’t make sense how some characters were de-aged for the show, while others weren’t. If Yogi and company all hung out with Auggie Doggie and Doggie Daddy in the present, how is it that Auggie and his dad are still the same age here? Unless the Auggie Doggie on Yo, Yogi! is actually Doggie Daddy as a puppy and the Doggie Daddy on this show is his father, who’s also called Doggie Daddy…

Sorry. Didn’t mean to blow your mind. I think that it’s best to think of Yo, Yogi! as an alternate reality rather than a flashback, as that would make a tad more sense. Tiny Toon Adventures was one of the best written TV shows of the 1990s. Yo, Yogi! didn’t seem written at all.

The main problem that I had with Yo, Yogi! was the entire mentality of the show’s supposed appeal smacked too much of this:

Steve Buscemi - How Do You Do Fellow Kids

Or to put it another way, if anyone remembers that one episode of The Simpsons titled “The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show”, the worst thing about Yo, Yogi! was that the whole series was a “Poochie”; a soulless by-product of committee thinking. It was based on the premise that kids would be more willing to watch a show with established cartoon characters from several decades earlier if they were remade to be “cool”, and it seemed like the entire series was concocted in board room by executives who don’t have a creative bone in their collective bodies. I doubt that the producers of Yo, Yogi! even knew what a writer was. The shows’ producers and writers tried to make Yo, Yogi! like Tiny Toon Adventures without realizing what is was that made TTA so great. Quite frankly, if taking established characters and trying to update them for younger audiences by making them desperately cool and hip is the only way to get them back on the air, then I think it’s better that they stay buried.

NEVER FORGET

Beware the Backlash

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It’s Autumn again, and so begins many of the Autumn traditions; raking the leaves, harvest festivals, pumpkin chunkin’, and Cartoon Network seems to be partaking in what would seem to be a fall tradition of their own: suddenly pulling a series on the network’s DC Nation program block from it’s schedule.

Yes, that’s right. This week, Toon has removed DC Nation’s latest animated series, Beware the Batman from the lineup, just like it did last year with Green Lantern: TAS and Young Justice. Toon claims that BtB will return to the lineup in January, but I think that we all know what this means.

In Beware the Batman‘s absence, Toon will be filling the now vacant half hour with another episode of Teen Titans GO!, thus making TTGO! the only thing airing on the block outside of the shorts. Not surprisingly the internet message boards have since lit up like Christmas trees by fans expressing their disgust over Toon’s decision. As always, I’ve seen the inevitable post claiming that “Cartoon Network hates its fans!” “CN has so much contempt for us!” To this, I say , to borrow a catchphrase from ESPN, “C’mon, man!” Does anyone honestly believe that Cartoon Network’s executives are a bunch of melodrama villains with black silk top hats and handlebar moustaches who clasp their hands in fiendish glee as they yank off TV shows just to make the fans at home cry?
“Nyeh-heh-heh! That’ll give those couch potatoes something to chew on besides their breakfast cereal!”
Dick Dastardly
“Yes! Score another point for Team Evil!”
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I don’t believe that Cartoon Network does what they do out of spite. However, at the same time, I can’t deny that Toon does indeed treat it’s comedy cartoons better, primarily because they get higher ratings and don’t cost as much to produce than the action cartoons do. Case in point, let’s take a look at Teen Titans GO! as opposed to the other shows that have aired on DC Nation. TTGO! doesn’t premiere on Saturday mornings; it premieres on Tuesday evenings along with Toon’s comedy premieres and gets encores throughout the week, again not as part of DC Nation. Beware the Batman, Green Lantern: TAS and Young Justice, by contrast, had no encores and were not so heavily promoted by the network. And now, with DC Nation airing 2 back-to-back airings of TTGO!, the block now looks like a joke. Why even run TTGO! as part of DC Nation at all? I personally like the idea of the shows on a particular program being exclusive to said block.
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Much of the logistics and reasoning behind Toon’s indifference to action cartoons we’ve already covered back in earlier article, “Bringing Action Back”, so there’s no need to repeat myself here. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I feel I must once again state how I feel that a large part of the problem lies with Toon only getting 2 hours of prime time before morphing into Adult Swim at 10 PM. 9 PM weeknights could easily be devoted to action cartoons, if Toon would just push AS back to 10 PM or even 11 PM.
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I can understand why fans are up in arms about this latest development, but as for myself, I really can’t feel too bad about Beware the Batman going on hiatus because I saw it, and when all is said and done, BtB was just another Batman cartoon. BtB wasn’t terrible, but it was nothing to write home about either. Honestly, I liked Batman: The Brave and the Bold more, and even though Toon didn’t treat TB&TB very well, that series at least got a couple of seasons. I mean, we’re long overdue for a Wonder Woman animated series (and a movie also, for that matter), and we’re currently in the wake of Man of Steel and right on the verge of Superman’s 75th Anniversary and Warner Brothers Animation makes yet another flippin’ Batman cartoon? What the what?!?
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So what’s next for DC Nation? No plans have been revealed just yet, but fans have been pretty vocal about that as well. One poster on a message board suggested sarcastically
Fanboy

“Next they’ll make a wacky, kiddie sitcom version of the Super Friends! Ha-ha!”

Ah, yes. That remark is so sharp that you run the risk of cutting yourself, but I have to say this: If DC and WBA were to actually make a show like this and if said series were well written, well executed, entertaining and funny, I would definitely watch it. First, Cartoon Network’s target audience is kids 6-14, and kids love wackiness. They eat it up like free pizza. A comedy focused take on the Super Friends would completely fit in with the audience that the network is targeting right now. Second, like The Brave and the Bold before it, such a series could be an effective way of introducing the less celebrated characters from the DC universe, the ones who aren’t nearly popular enough to get their own series, to younger viewers. And the more learned viewers would likely be curious and research these characters in order to know more about them. This could conceivably be a good strategy for the studio and for the network. I would watch the heck out of a show like that if was done well. Just putting that out there.
“That would actually be a good idea, so sarcastic remark fail!”

Beyond the Background: Rick Raccoon, The Forgotten Shirt Tale

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Welcome to a new segment on Twinsanity titled Beyond the Background, where we give obscure, forgotten or less celebrated characters a moment in the spotlight. In this edition, we’ll be going back to Saturday mornings in the 1980s. Do you remember the Shirt Tales? In case you don’t, the Shirt Tales was a SatAM cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera that ran from 1982 to 1984 and was based on characters from a line of popular greeting cards, not unlike the Care Bears. In fact, the Shirt Tales were quite a bit like the Care Bears, except that the Shirt Tales all wore T-shirts with cutesy messages on them instead of having symbols on their stomachs and the Shirt Tales used high tech to right wrongs and help kids and animals with their personal problems instead of using magic and sappy songs. Fans of the Shirt Tales cartoon undoubtedly remember the main team’s various members: Pammy Panda, Bogey the Orangutan, Tyg Tiger (with his signature “TOING!”- Seriously, what was up with that anyway?) and Digger Mole, but there’s 1 member of the team who seems to have slipped from some fans’ memories. I’m talking about the one time leader of the main Shirt Tales Rick Raccoon.

rick-raccoon-shirt-tales-3.74

“Remember me? The creators of Robot Chicken obviously don’t!”
 
During the shows’ first season, the Shirt Tales were like a well oiled machine. Tyg provided the muscle. Digger had his talent for, well, digging. Bogey provided the Humphrey Bogart impression shtick and Pammy provided the femininity. Rick, meanwhile, was the brains. The team leader, and also the only one permitted to drive the Shirt Tales Super Sonic Transport (STSST).

But between season 1 and season 2,something happened. In the shows’ 2nd (and last) season, Rick suddenly went from being the acknowledged leader of the team to having almost nothing to do. He was even forced to hand over the keys to the STSST. The leadership position was given to Pammy, while Tyg now drove the STSST. They would have let Pammy drive, but, you know, women drivers.

No official reason was ever given for Rick’s demotion. One source claims that between seasons, Rick was seen selling secrets to the Critter Sitters, but this is as yet unconfirmed.

During Shirt Tales’ season 2 episodes, Rick would usually have a very small role or be altogether missing. Rick’s friends, in an attempt to justify Rick’s still earning a paycheck to the higher-ups, tried to find things for him to do him to do, such as monitoring the team’s  missions, but Rick spent most of his time chillaxing in the team’s tree house HQ watching that hot new cutting edge MTV channel (this was 1984, you have to remember) and getting fat off of walnuts.  The Shirt Tales were even forced to bring in a 6th member, Kip Kangaroo, claiming that they wanted a new member to train and to pave the way for future generations, but actually, they just need someone else to chip in for the rent.

Kip Kangaroo

“Rent?!? Hey, man, no one told me about this! I’m just an intern!”
 
After the series ended, Rick tried to go freelance and head his own team, The Short Tales, just like the Shirt Tales, only they wore shorts, but this venture wasn’t nearly as successful. Somehow, people just weren’t keen on the idea of cute animals displaying messages across their asses. Of course, there’s always the chance that Rick can get his old job back if the Shirt Tales series is ever revived or rebooted. Hey, if Biker Mice From Mars can a reboot, anything’s possible!