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Retroville: TMNT Cereal

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There are signs that let one know when they’ve truly arrived in the entertainment industry. Your franchise gets a big budgeted movie. A Saturday morning TV series. A line of clothing with your name on it. However, you know for certain that you’ve made your mark on Hollywood when your franchise comes out with it’s own cheesy breakfast cereal. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are no exception to this honor. Yes, the Ninja Turtles had their own breakfast cereal. We now present you with the glory that is the first TMNT cereal ad:

Is it just me, or did Michelangelo sound kind of stoned in that? Anyway, just a minor inquiry: Did the Shredder have some sort of grand master plan that involved the possession of this one particular box of cereal? Or was he just doing this to screw with the Turtles? Honestly, I don’t know what’s more embarrassing for Shredder; the fact that he’s been reduced to stealing breakfast cereal from a couple of kids, or the fact that he completely failed at accomplishing this task. This is right up there with the time when Shredder opened up a pizza restaurant and operated it for several weeks, possibly months, in the hopes that the Turtles would show up as customers. There’s a little thing called food poisoning. You might want to look into that.

At least the Ninja Turtles managed to escape from this mostly unscathed. This ad was hardly the most embarrassing career move for them. The following bit comes to mind:


I’m curious as to why an amphibious creature needs to travel by rowboat anyway? And what was that weird thing you were doing with your arms there, Leo?

“Listen, things were a little tight and I needed pizza money! The studio emptied a dump truck full of money in front of my door! I’m not made of stone! Stop looking at me!!!!!”

TV Special Tonight!: Hanna-Barbera’s All-Star Comedy Ice Revue

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Hello and welcome to a new segment on Twinsanity called TV Special Tonight!, where we look back at one-shot TV specials, those bonus funfests which would occasionally turn up in prime time as a treat to the kiddos at home and interrupt whatever shows their parents usually watched at that time. Today we’ll be checking out Hanna-Barbera’s All-Star Comedy Ice Revue, a 60-minute live-action/animated television special produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in association with deFaria Productions which aired on CBS on Friday, January 13, 1978 at 8:00 pm EST and was taped at the Bakersfield Civic Auditorium in Bakersfield, California in December 1977.

Into the WABAC machine….

Mr. Peabody: Greetings, friends. You are about to enter the dark and twisted era of 1970’s prime time variety. Some of what you see and hear may shock and disturb you. I humbly suggest that those of you with sensitive stomachs and weak constitutions stay behind in the safety of the present.
Sherman: Gosh, Mr. Peabody. I saw some of those shows on the Obscure Oldies Channel and I thought they were kinda funny!
Mr. Peabody: Yes, well you would, Sherman.
 *************************************
The year was 1978. You’ve just finished a heaping dinner of Big Macs, Screaming Yellow Zonkers and Drink Me Pop, and now you’re settling down in front of the Boob Tube for a night of good ol’ fashioned brain rot, when suddenly you find that the night’s usual programming has been pre-empted  for an hour because of this….
OK, Houston, right away we have a problem. That’s supposed to be revue, as in a musical show consisting of skits, songs, and dances, but it’s spelled review, as in a revisiting or restudying of subject matter. When the title card of your special contains a typo, you know you’re in for a rollicking night.
Review
“Typography fails. 2 Stars.”
 
Anycrap, Hanna-Barbera’s All-Star Comedy Ice Review..er, um…Revue, was a celebration for Fred Flintstone on his 48th birthday (or to be more accurate, his 65,000,000, 048th birthday) featuring a bunch of otherwise unemployed actors in giant felt mascot costumes of Yogi Bear, Jabberjaw, Huckleberry Hound, Scooby-Doo, The Banana Splits, Hong Kong Phooey, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss and The Hair Bear Bunch, assembled together as a celebrity roast of sorts, on a giant ice rink. Keep in mind this was the 1970’s, where ice skating rinks and swimming pools were a staple of variety shows and specials (Donny & Marie and the Brady Bunch each had swimming pools on their variety show stage sets), which were themselves a fixture of TV at the time. Don’t ask me why so many 70’s variety shows contained water as a fixture, I guess it was a side effect of it being the Age of Aquarius.
The show was hosted by Hee-Haw country crooner Roy Clark and Bonnie Franklin, who played divorced mom Ann Romano on CBS’s One Day at a Time, ’cause whenever I think of the funtastic world of Hanna-Barbera, the first 2 names that always pop into my mind are Roy Clark and Bonnie Franklin. The special guest stars were The Sylvers (a 70’s knockoff band who usually got all the gigs that the Jackson 5ive turned down) and featuring Course & Young (a comedy duo whom you’ve never heard of), the Fentons, Sashi Kuchiki, the Ice Capettes and a special appearance by The Skatebirds. (The latter group wasn’t hard to round up since they also had a Saturday morning series on the same network at the time.)
As if all that weren’t spectacular enough, we were also saddled with a plot, sort of: it turns out that the guest of honor, ol’ Fredso himself, isn’t at the gala, but rather just chillaxing at home in front of the tube in Bedrock. Fred was under the misunderstanding that the special was scheduled for the following night, and so he and Barney Rubble have to get up from watching the special on their Stone-A-Vision to scramble to get to the studio in time (“Get Him to the Geek!”). They spend the bulk of this telecast just trying to get there, all the while watching the events unfold via a portable TV that they bring along with them.
Wait, what?
OK. Riddle me this…….
….how is any of this possible? How are Fred and Barney even watching a TV broadcast from millions of years in the future? And how are they supposed to drive to the present?? For that matter, how are Roy, Bonnie and the gang able to hold a TV special for someone who existed 65 million years previous? Is there a time/space vortex somewhere in the middle of Interstate 25? Does Fred know a guy with a TARDIS?
“Actually, I’d say it’s more of a TARPIT: Time And Relative Plotholes In Television.”
 
OK, enough nitpicking. This isn’t Talkin’ Nerdy. It’s probably best to just write this all off as a product of Hollywood, Land of No Reality and move on.
Anyshtick, with Fred M.I.A., the hosts are forced to stall for time until the guest of honor arrives. Meanwhile, it would appear that hours before shooting started, someone must have conked the dude in the Jabberjaw costume on the head hard, knocking him barely conscious, and as he was coming to, convinced him that he was Rowdy Roddy Piper and that Fred was Hulk Hogan. Ol’ Jaws spends much of the special drunk on Haterade, snarking on Fred and loudly suggesting that with the cave guy in absentia, that HE should be the guest of honor. Some examples of Jabber’s “wit”:
  • Jabber presents a gift he’s bought for Fred, a baseball bat with a hole in it. When asked why there’s a hole in the bat, Jabber replies “It matches the hole in Fred’s head!”

HATER IN DA HOUSE!!!

  • When Roy informs Jabber that they’re not honoring him because unlike Fred, it’s not his birthday and he’s not loved by all, Jabber eats him SNL Land Shark style, prompting Roy to add, “Plus, you’ve got really bad breath!”
MAMA SAID KNOCK YOU OUT!!
  • Later, Jabber admits that he’s having a lot of fun at Fred’s roast, “‘Cause he’s not here!”
U MAD, BRO’???
  • Roy Clark even laments that they’re stuck with “a shark who thinks he’s Don Rickles!”
DUDE WITH A ‘TUDE!
It’s never explained why Jabberjaw has this mad-on for Fred, he just does. After the 3rd of 4th shticky put-down, I half expected the hosts to ask, “Seriously, dude, what’s your damage?! Did Fred key the side of your underwater car? Did he sell you out to some whalers? What??” Perhaps Jabberjaw was lashing out because Fred had his then current voice actor, Henry Corden, while Jabber had to be voiced by Don Messick instead of his usual voice actor, Frank Welker. Maybe Mr. Welker got a gander of the script and quit.
HATERS GONNA HATE!

Among this special other “highlights”:
  • A bizarre comedy bit by the aforementioned Coarse and Young, involving one of them attempting to sing a song while the other, playing a janitor, constantly disrupts his performance by hitting him with a mop, biting him on the leg and eventually blowing him up. Your guess is as good as mine.
  • Bonnie dons a polar bear’s skin (which must’ve thrilled the poor bear!) and sings “You Are My Lucky Star” while the Ice Capettes skate around the rink while signing “We’re in the Money” Huh?
  • The Sylvers perform “Disco Showdown” while the assorted dancers and costumed mascots shake their collective groove thangs on the rink.
WAVE YO’ HANDS IN THE AIR LIKE YOU JUST DON’T CARE WHERE YOUR CAREERS ARE HEADED!!
  • Roy sings a song from Love Story while strumming on the guitar. Kids, this might be a good time to go to the bathroom.
  • Sasha Kuchiki juggles flaming torches shirtless.
  • Your parents get an eyeful of what they missed by not waking up early to watch The Skatebirds on SatAM, as the titular birds performed some live-action comedy bits. For those who don’t know, The Skatebirds were the bastard cousins of the Banana Splits, 3 guys in giant bird costumes on roller skates (Knock-Knock the woodpecker, Satchel the pelican and Scooter the penguin, respectively) whose shtick largely consisted of them being chased around by someone in a cat costume on roller skates (Scat Cat, voiced by Scatman Crothers). Their show also featured cartoon segments, the most notable of which being a show starring animated versions of the Three Stooges as robotic superheroes, a legendary must-see.
Finally, after some more bits (including one involving 4 identical Wally Gators skating around while Bubi Bear of the Hair Bear Bunch chases after them with a fly swatter–what did these guys use to stir their coffee back then?), a large cake is brought onto the stage and at long last, Fred finally arrives, just in time to see the credits roll.

Comedy routine or hookah-induced trip? You decide.

HBASCIR Fred

He’s finally here! So what happened to Barney??

So, uh, Fred’s a costumed character now? So, is it only live-action inside the studio? If Bonnie or Roy stepped outside of the studio, would they be cartoons too?? This special just went from ‘Huh?’ to ‘Whaaaaaaat?’
Some people have said that Hanna-Barbera’s All-Star Comedy Ice Revue is H-B’s equivalent to George Lucas’ Star Wars Holiday Special. That’s debatable, but at least the Star Wars special had Jefferson Starship performing “Light the Sky on Fire”, while this one gave us rollerskating dudes in bird costumes, skating on ice.
I can’t sum it up any better than one of the great philosophers of our time, Mr. Yakko Warner:
“If you can’t say anything nice, you’re probably at the Ice Capades!”

To Sheldon, aka The Art of Sheldoning

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Twinsanity’s Suburban Dictionary (we’re not cool and hip enough to have an Urban Dictionary) defines Sheldoning as “the practice of agonizing and nitpicking over a tiny, insignificant detail and harping on said detail whenever someone uses it incorrectly”. It’s named after Sheldon Cooper, everyone’s favorite anal retentive nutbag genius on The Big Bang Theory.

Now it’s not something we’re proud of, but we’ve been known to Sheldon about things from time to time ourselves. Here’s a little list of some of things which grind our gears, which niggle our collective noggles and as a result we’ve been known to Sheldon about:
  • When people mistake ‘telepathy’ for ‘telekinesis’ and vice versa. Example: “Man, I’m tired. I wish I didn’t have to reach for the remote, I wish I could just summon it to me telepathically.” No, you don’t,’cause that’s not telepathy. Telepathy is the ability to read minds, telekinesis is the ability to move and manipulate objects with the power of one’s mind. So unless you’re planning to read the remote’s mind and non-verbally command it to come to you, you mean summon it to you telekinetically.
  • When people say “I could care less”. Ah, no. The expression is “I couldn’t care less”, as in “I couldn’t possibly care any less than I do now”. To say you could care less means that you could care more.
  • The way nobody uses the word “thrice”. Thrice is a great word, yet people insist on saying “three times”, which takes longer to say. English created a word that specifically means ‘three times’ (ex: once, twice, thrice), so why don’t people use it? We’re personally on a campaign to bring the word thrice back into everyday usage. So next time you’re about to say something like “I’ve washed this shirt three times and I still can’t get that pesky grease stain out!”, stop yourself and say “thrice” instead.
  • The expression “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”. Incorrect. Here I have my cake…
chocolate-avocado-cake

 

…And now (nom nom nom nom nom) I am eating it. What you can’t do is eat your cake and have it too.
  • When people type the name of super-heroine Wonder Woman as ‘Wonder Women”. It’s Wonder WOMAN. Singular. As in just one. Where did you get the idea that there’s more than 1 Amazon super-lady with a magic lasso and a transparent plane in the Justice League??
  • When people type the name of the cable channel Cartoon Network as ‘Cartoonnetwork’. It’s Cartoon Network. 2 words. Not 1. When has anyone ever seen the name of this channel spelled like just 1 word? When has this ever happened?
  • When people refer to all Warner Brothers cartoons as “Bugs Bunny cartoons” or the theme music for the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts as “Bugs Bunny”. Bugs Bunny wasn’t featured in every single WB short, in fact the character didn’t make his first ‘true’ appearance until Tex Avery’s A Wild Hare in 1940. FTR, the Merrie Melodies theme is titled “Merrily We Roll Along”, while the title of the Looney Tunes signature theme is “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down”.
  • When people try to separate anime from cartoons (EX: “I don’t watch cartoons. I only watch anime!” or “List your favorite cartoons and anime”). It boils my blood when people try to separate cartoons from anime when they’re the same diggity-dang thing! Anime IS cartoons! Just cartoons from Japan. Being from Japan doesn’t make it any less a cartoon. This practice is especially pointless when one considers that in Japan the term “anime” refers to ANYTHING that’s animated, regardless of its country of origin. In Japan, Popeye is just as much an anime as Tenchi Muyo! is. That’s right; it just means “cartoon”, so drop the pretentiousness and just call them cartoons.
  • When people type LOL after everything all the time (ex: “Looks like I’m first to comment LOL”, “I had no idea LOL”, “I just saw this last week LOL”, “The Nostalgia Critic reviewed this already LOL”). This bugs me for 2 reasons: One, if what you were saying was truly funny, then you wouldn’t have to provide your own laughs. Two, every single thing you see, hear or read shouldn’t be making you laugh out loud; if it is, then check yourself into a rubber room, ’cause you’re clearly crazy.
  • When people refer to the entirety of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic‘s fan base as “Bronies”. Can we please stop calling ALL MLP fans Bronies, please? Being a Pony fan doesn’t automatically make you a Brony; they’re not the same thing. All Bronies are Pony fans, but not all Pony fans are Bronies. Only the adult male Pony fans are Bronies, as the MLP franchise is tailored specifically towards young girls. Little girls who like MLP are not Bronies. Women who like MLP are not Bronies. For that matter, little boys who like MLP aren’t Bronies either. Only adult men (i.e., bros) who like MLP fit the definition of Brony. Everyone else are just Pony fans. What do the first 3 letters in the word spell? There ya go.
  • When people call puppets who aren’t the creations of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop ‘Muppets”. All Muppets are puppets, but not all puppets are Muppets, dig? The Henson Company is King of the Puppetry Hill, but they’re not the only puppet making studio on the planet.
  • When people write or type Spider-Man’s name as ‘Spiderman’ or Iron Man’s name as ‘Ironman’  or Wonder Woman’s name as ‘Wonderwoman’. The former’s a 2-word name with a dash in the middle and the latter are 2-word names. They’re not John Spiderman from Accounting or Bill Ironman from Human Resources or Irene Wonderwoman from Legal. Similarly, it bugs when people type the names Superman, Batman and Starfire as 2 words (EX: Super Man, Bat Man, Star Fire or StarFire). Ah, no. Those are just 1 word names, not 2.
  • When people write or more commonly type (’cause let’s face it, who writes anymore?) about the characters of Lois Lane or Lois Griffin and call them “Louis”. It’s LOIS. LOUIS is a man’s name. THIS is a Louis:

 

Louis Armstrong

 

  • When people type the word ‘lose’ with 2 ‘o”s, as in “The Miz is going to loose at WrestleMania tonight!”. ‘Loose’ doesn’t mean the same thing as ‘lose’. If you think it does, I know where you can get a dictionary cheap.
  • When people put the word “the” in shows’ titles where it doesn’t belong. EX: The Rugrats or The Animaniacs. No, it’s just Rugrats and just Animaniacs, dammit! Incidentally, The Warner Brothers and their sister Dot aren’t the Animaniacs that the shows’ title refers to. Rather, the title Animaniacs refers to the unhinged nature of the show itself (I’m just nitpicking now).
  • When people refer to the DC comics character Captain Marvel as SHAZAM!, which is the name of the wizard who gave 12-year-old Billy Batson his powers and also is an acronym of the powers that Captain Marvel has: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury. Even DC in recent years has began calling the super hero by the name SHAZAM in order to avoid confusion with Marvel comics’ Captain Marvel. I don’t know why DC thinks that naming the hero after the wizard who gave him his powers would somehow be less confusing.
  • When people refer to the DC company as “DC Comics”. DC stands for Detective Comics, so when you say “DC Comics”, you’re saying “Detective Comics Comics”. Don’t do that.
  • When people refer to The Simpsons as “Bart Simpson” or just “Bart”. Mind you, this hasn’t happened much, if at all, since the shows’ writers shifted the central focus from Bart to Homer.
  • When people call the Ninja Turtle Raphael by the nickname “Ralph”. Wha? It’s RAPH. Where are these people getting the extra ‘l’ from? His name isn’t RaLphael, it’s Raphael. The Ninja Turtle with the red headband is Raph. Ralph is this guy:
  • When people, when asked to name their favorite shows from a particular network, cite 3rd party acquisitions as their choices (EX: “Among my favorite Cartoon Network shows are Dragon Ball Z and Rouroni Kenshin” or “My favorite Nicktoons of all time were Tiny Toon Adventures, Beetlejuice and Inspector Gadget“.). Invariably, when you point out that those shows aren’t first-run originals from their respective networks and therefore can’t or shouldn’t be counted, these people usually come back with, “I first saw Inspector Gadget, Beetlejuice and Tiny Toons on Nickelodeon, so I consider them Nicktoons”. Yeah, both Tiny Toons and Beetlejuice have also aired on Cartoon Network, so following that logic, that would also make them Cartoon-Cartoons.
  • When people say “irregardless”. That’s not a word. You mean to say “regardless”. While we’re on the subject, “I seen” is also incorrect; it’s either “I saw” or  “I have seen”.
  • When people refer to the 2003 Cartoon Network Teen Titans series as “the original Teen Titans show” or “the first Teen Titans cartoon”. That’s incorrect. The very first animated adaptation of Teen Titans was in fact the Filmation animated shorts which aired in the 1960’s and starred Wonder Girl, Speedy, Kid Flash and Aqualad (but not Robin, since he was appearing in the Filmation Batman shorts around the same time). By the same card, it bugs me when these same people refer to the team from the 2003 cartoon as “the original team”. No, that’s not the original team; the original Teen Titans were the then sidekicks of various Justice League members: Robin, Speedy, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Kid Flash. The team consisting of Starfire, Cyborg et al was a TV version of the New Teen Titans comics from the 1980’s, written and illustrated largely by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. I have to remind myself that most of the 2003 Teen Titans‘ fan base consisted of kids (at the time) who have never picked up a comic book in their lives; heck, some of them didn’t even know that Teen Titans was a comic book long before it was a TV show!
  • When people type questions and then punctuate them with a period (.). Why deprive the question mark of it’s only job?
  • When people pronounce the main character of Street Fighter Ryu’s name as “Rye-you”. It’s “Rhee-u”.
  • When people pronounce Super Mario’s name as “Mary-o”.
  • When people refer to half hour prime time TV specials as “movies”. If it’s under 90 minutes long and was made for television, it’s a TV special, not a movie!
  • When people refer to any and all forms of CGI animated projects as “3D”, as in “I prefer 2D animation over 3D!”. CGI and 3D are not the same thing! Even animation that’s rendered by computer graphics are still shown in only 2 dimensions, one for each eye. An example of 3 dimensional perspective would be video games such as Super Mario 64, where the player is able to move in several different directions, not just from left to right. 3D is a visual perspective, not an animation style. What you mean to say is you prefer hand drawn animation over CG.
  • When people say “Two twins”, as in “Look! There are 2 twins!”. Incorrect. The word “twin” by definition suggests 2, therefore “two twins” would be 4, which would then be quadruplets. What you mean to say is “One set or one pair of twins”.

 

Now, we know what many of you are thinking right about now, so before you post it in the comments, we’ll do it for you:

"Reviews On the Run" is Back!…Sort Of

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Hey, guys.

As those who have been following us know, as of this year we decided to no longer post reviews of current shows, thus retiring our Reviews On the Run segments. Well, today we’re pleased to announce that RotR will be returning to The Twin Factor!

But we’re still done posting reviews of current TV shows.

Instead, we’ll be using RotR to review the weirdest, kookiest and campiest one-and-done TV specials, something we’ve been wanting to tackle for a little while here. (Since RotR’s subject matter will be getting more specific, I considered changing the segment’s name, to ‘A Very Special Special’ or something similar, but I kind of like the name Reviews On the Run, so we’ll be sticking to that for now.) We’ll be starting with our snarky review of Hanna-Barbera’s “masterpiece”, Hanna-Barbera’s All-Star Comedy Ice Review. Expect this and other TV special riffs coming soon.

Reviews On the Run is back, babeh!

5 Stars!

Let the 1990s Go, Already!

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Hey, remember the 1990’s?

Duuuuude! The 90’s were AWESOME! Cartoons like X-Men, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Doug, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy and the Disney Afternoon were TOTALLY RADICAL TO THE MAX!!!
 
Yeah, that was a pretty great decade for cartoons, wasn’t it? But let me clue you in on a little secret about the 1990’s. SPOILERS…..
……..They’re over now.
Today, Twinsanity would like to speak to all of the 90’s Kids out there. Those folks who, when asked how channels like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel can improve themselves, inevitably pipe in with “They should just cancel all of that new crap and bring back the 90’s shows!” and make ranting YouTube videos shouting “I want my Nickelodeon back!” or “We want old Cartoon Network back!” To these individuals, we offer this little piece of advice. Five simple words which we feel will be beneficial to you yourselves, but to everyone around you and the TV networks you love as well:
LET THE 1990’S GO ALREADY!

We’re continually amazed when we hear or read teens and young adults saying that kids’ channels (most notably Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network) should abandon all of their current programming and only air the shows from their 1990’s schedules.

“Seriously? An’ people say I’M goofy! A-hyuk!”
 
These fans don’t seem to realize just how wacky that idea sounds. The very idea that a 24/7 cable channel could survive in today’s market by staying locked in a single era for all eternity is laughably absurd. How are Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon supposed to evolve and succeed if you waste their time slots and waste space with shows that have been run countless times, literally everyone knows about, everyone has seen at least a zillion times, everyone can buy on DVD or Blu-ray and everyone can watch on a different channel or online? The television/entertainment medium is a fast moving industry that slows down for no-one. What these people don’t seem to realize is that networks like Nickelodeon, CN, Disney Channel and The Hub are tailored for kids, not adult nostalgia buffs. What they also fail to realize is that in order to move forward ad keep success going, new and original content is necessary. Statements such as “I want my old (fill-in-the-blank channel) back!” or “Only air the 90s shows!” annoy me, because doing so would be ratings suicide because today’s kids are more interested in their shows, which is not to suggest that some kids wouldn’t watch them, but the kids’ demos have always been stronger for the current shows over the canceled reruns. Network executives know that a current airing of Phineas & Ferb will put more butts into seats than a 30 year old rerun of Gummi Bears would.
**************************************************
And what sort of egotistical, delusional butt head would say something like this un-ironically?
“The only reason why kids prefer their shows is because they haven’t seen the good ones. If kids saw the older cartoons, they’d like them more.”
 
if-my-calculations-are-correct-youre-an-idiot
 
 
Do you have a source for this claim? I mean, besides the ass that you pulled it out of? Using this logic, then the shows from your parents’ time are automatically better than they shows that you grew up with. Honestly, the “old shows = good, new shows = bad” argument doesn’t make sense to me at all, because every era has/had good shows and bad shows. A TV show isn’t automatically bad because it’s new, nor was every TV show from the past automatically a classic. Some TV shows were either forgettable or were garbage even when they were first run, and said shows haven’t improved any 2 or 3 decades later. Waynehead wasn’t a good show when it debuted on Kids’ WB back in 1996, and even now, the worst episode of Regular Show is still better than the best episode of Waynehead.
Another thing people who make statements like the above fail to take into account is that today’s kids actually like today’s cartoons. Imagine if the 90’s Kids got their wish and the Big Four kids’ cable networks did remove all of their current shows and only ran the 90’s stuff all day:
 *************************************************
Kid: Hey, what happened to Sanjay and Craig?
Parents: Oh, we went out to Nickelodeon Studios with picket signs and sent them angry emails and boycotted their network until they promised to get rid of all of those new shows. Now Nick only carries Doug, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, Clarissa Explains it All and Hey, Dude all day. Enjoy!
Kid: But I liked Sanjay and Craig! That was my favorite show!
Parents: Kill that noise! Sanjay and Craig is a terrible show! It wasn’t on when we were kids, so it obviously sucks! Now you’ll watch the 8-hour Doug marathon and like it!!
 ****************************************************
Are you seriously so narcissistic that you honestly believe that kids would instantly glom onto the 20+ year old shows that you grew up with and think that they’re better than the shows that they enjoy watching now? To be fair, some might like them almost as much, or just as much, but most of them would still want the Breadwinners, Clarence, Finn and Jake, Mordecai and Rigby, Uncle Grandpa, Blythe Baxter, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Phineas and Ferb and the gang from Gravity Falls back. While some kids do indeed have some appreciation for older shows, by and large kids generally prefer the current stuff of their generation to the stuff of previous generations.
**************************************************
There’s another little detail that these nostalgiatards seem to be overlooking: that 20 years ago, there were people who were saying the exact same things about their generation of cartoons that they’re saying about the current one. Back in the 90’s, there were folks nerd-raging about how Cartoon Network needed to get rid of the Craptoon-Craptoons like that gawdawful Johnny Bravo, that ghastly Cow & Chicken, those repulsive Eds, those stupid Powerpuff Girls and that immoral, hedonistic Toonami trash and go back to the “good ole days” of being the Hanna-Barbera Reruns channel and just showing Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, Bugs and Daffy all day like God and nature intended. This is precisely why I don’t take stock in nostalgic fan-wanking: most nostalgia boils down to: “(This current show) is so stupid! It’s nowhere near as good as (this other older show which was just as stupid but I love it because it was a part of my childhood)!”
****************************************************
Then there’s this statement that I read regarding Warner Brothers animation:
“Maybe Steven Spielberg should come back”
 ********************************************************
Nice thought, but it’s both short-sighted and unrealistic. First, there were many talented people responsible for Warner Brothers’ Silver Age: Tom Ruegger, Paul Dini, Paul Rugg, Sherri Stoner, Deanna Oliver, Bruce Timm, James Tucker, the late Dwayne MacDuffie, to name only a few, so it’s illogical to credit only one person as being responsible for an entire era of programming. Second, love your optimism, but you’re not going to invite Steven Spielberg to work with WB again and suddenly everything is going to magically return to the way that it was in 1991. I enjoyed the Silver Age WB shows also, but that era is over, and nothing can resurrect it. The above notion is just as realistic as suggesting that Quincy Jones return to Motown so that studio can go back to the way it was in the 1960s. One can’t make another Silver Age any more than one could make another Woodstock* (by which I mean the 3 day music festival of 1969, not Snoopy’s bird pal).
*And before anyone points this out, I’m aware that a Woodstock II was tried a couple of decades ago, but while the original Woodstock was the bringing together of an entire generation, Woodstock II was nothing more than a pathetic cash grab that came and went with barely a thought and you’ll also notice that to date there hasn’t been a Woodstock III.
You can’t artificially re-create a Golden or Silver Age. They just happen, and lightning rarely strikes twice. You can’t just go to Liverpool, round up 4 guys, give them mop-top hairdos, teach them how to sing and play instruments, ship them over to America and declare them the new Beatles. There will never be another Beatles. There may be other successful British bands, some may even possess huge talent, but they still won’t be the Beatles. Only the Beatles will ever be the Beatles. Hollywood tried to create New Monkees once, and we all saw how that turned out:
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Young Cutup on the Street: I think the New Monkees should be a heavy metal Monkee, a New Wave Monkee, a dentist Monkee and a Rabbi Monkee. Yuk-yuk!
MTV Reporter: Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m out. (Tosses aside his mike and walks away)
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Another tired practice which needs to cease is the nonstop whining to bring all of the 90’s shows back with new episodes. “Bring back Johnny Bravo!” “Bring back Powerpuff Girls!” “Bring back Hey, Arnold!!” “Bring back Jimmy Neutron!” Guess what? Rob Paulsen is working again: he’s currently the voice of Donatello on Nick’s new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. And guess what else? Warner Bros. is working on a new animated series starring Bugs Bunny titled Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production. You’d think the 90’s kids would be happy about these things, but nooooooo! All we hear in response is “NO! WB should be reviving Animaniacs and Rob should be voicing Yakko and Pinky again! I don’t care about Wabbit unless Buster and Babs and Taz’s family from Taz-Mania are going to be in it! Where’s our new Animaniacs revival? Where are our new Tiny Toons episodes? Where’s that mega-Animaniacs/Tiny Toons crossover show that WB never actually said they’d make, but we’ve all concocted in our heads and have declared on the internet that they must make??!?” Do you honestly think that WB can just say, “Dude, we’re getting the band back together!” and round up all of those same voice actors, writers, producers, directors and animators from all of the separate lives and projects that they’re working on now and just resume the show and it’ll be exactly as it was before? I think a more feasible solution would be to take just some of those characters, like just the Warners or just Slappy Squirrel or just Rita and Runt and spin them off into separate individual series.

But let’s play devil’s advocate here for a second and assume that WB did decide to make a new Animaniacs. I can guarantee that all of the same people who were crying to get the show back would within weeks, days, be ranting on the internet about how much the new A! sucks, how it’s not the same as before and how WB ruined their childhoods. Do you know how I know this would be the case? Because it’s the same thing that happened when CN revived Dexter’s Lab with different art and animation, no Genndy Tartakovsky, Candi Milo replacing Christine Cavanaugh (who retired from voice acting) as Dexter and a bunch of Mandark, Mom and Dad cartoons. It’s the same thing that happened when Xiaolin Showdown was brought back as Xiaolin Chronicles, with nearly all of the characters having different voices and the addition of the character Ping-Pong, aka the Cousin Oliver of the Xiaolin Showdown franchise. It’s the same thing that happened when Teen Titans was brought back as Teen Titans GO!, with the same voice actors as the original but completely different in tone and visual style. It’s the same thing that happened when CN gave you those 2 post-cancellation Powerpuff Girls specials (the 2nd one of which was minus creator Craig McCracken) that everybody complained were too fast-paced and looked and sounded too different from the original show. Well, guess what? YOU wanted all of those shows back and they gave them to you. Like the old Toyota commercials used to say: You asked for it, you got it. Now choke on it!

 “I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. Now go eh-way or I shall taunt yew a second time!”
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And then there are requests like the following:

“I think that Warner Brothers and DC Animation should make another season of Teen Titans. Just one more season, to wrap things up.”

C'mon Man!

Haven’t you had enough? Teen Titans was supposed to end after 4 seasons, but due to fans’ requests, you got 5 seasons and a made for TV movie! And I don’t want to hear some WB executive say “Well, we were going to make a new Superman animated series, as well as a Super Best Friends Forever animated series, but titanfan 4 eva11!!! wanted a 6th season of Teen Titans, so the aforementioned DC animated projects have been pushed back to late 2016.” If you just want to see TT’s loose ends tied up (whatever those “loose ends” might happen to be), then a Teen Titans: TAS comic book series, prime-time special or a DTV would be a better idea, I think.

To sum up: were the ‘toons of the 90’s awesome? Yes, of course they were. No doubt. But does that mean that we should try to ram the 90’s cartoons down the throats of today’s youth and scream to them that our cartoons were better and theirs aren’t worth jack? No, dude, just no. It’s a simple equation, folks: we should just let this generation enjoy what they enjoy, while we enjoy what we enjoy. Is that so unreasonable?