Thirty
years ago I was ten years old, which means I was still at optimal
receptiveness for the things that would in 2016 evoke fond memories
and feelings of nostalgia. I got the idea for this post from the
first Dragon Con panel I was a part of – 1982: Best Sci-Fi Movie
Year Ever? (or some such thing). We had a great discussion about the
movies that came out that year. Sadly nobody recorded it, but I
thoroughly enjoyed having a topic that was both broad and focused. It
was only 1982 sci-fi movies, but there were plenty to discuss!
It
turns out I have so much more to discuss about 1986 than could have
ever been covered in a single post. Initially I wrote about the toy
lines of 1986,
then 1986
movies,
television,
and last week music.
I was foolish to think that the few cartoons I mentioned in the toy
post would be enough. I had planned to cover more in the TV post, but
there turned out to be so many sitcoms and whatnot to cover that
there wasn’t room for cartoon talk.
It
also turns out that there were more than enough cartoon happenings in
1986 for a full post. HUGE happenings.
I
had the same one as Mouth from The
Goonies.
I didn’t have that awesome Purple
Rain
shirt, though.
(Filmation’s)
Ghostbusters
Let’s
start with this controversial little gem.
Filmation
had a show called Ghost
Busters
back in the 70s.
Columbia
Pictures licensed the name “Ghostbusters” from them for the 1984
movie, but Filmation still had the right to use the name.
Ghostbusters
was a phenomenal success.
Filmation
got wind that a cartoon based on the movie was in the works and put
together their own cartoon based on the original show’s mythology.
They called it Ghostbusters
because they could.
The
one based on the successful movie called itself The
Real Ghostbusters
to differentiate from Filmation’s product.
Filmation’s
show – and I say this as someone that truly loves and respects so
much of what Filmation did – was terrible. Today it is almost
unwatchable. But that’s just my opinion. I’m sure there are
plenty of people who love it. And I will admit that it had some
fantastic character designs. Filmation was always great with that.
The
Real Ghostbusters
I
talked about this in the toy post, but it’s worth noting again that
this show still holds up today and is one of the best cartoon series
to come out of the 80s. It pretty much fell off when it became Slimer
and The Real Ghostbusters.
But we still had 91 episodes of expert storytelling that was a worthy
follow-up to the movie.
SilverHawks
In
the wake of the massive success of ThunderCats
came a number of other shows featuring humanoids with animalistic
qualities. SilverHawks
was probably the best and most famous of these, though I preferred
1987’s short-lived TigerSharks,
also from Rankin-Bass Productions. I just like aquatic stuff.
SilverHawks
was about a team of space police that wore bird armor. Despite being
from the same production company as ThunderCats
and certainly being inspired by that show’s success, the bird
people show was fairly different. I haven’t seen it in years –
possibly since it was on the air then – but I remember it feeling a
bit more formulaic than the cat people show.
The
designs were fantastic. Each character was very unique and the
villains were all awesome. There was a space minotaur and a guy with
buzz-saw hands, so it had everything I needed from villains. I never
had any of the Kenner toys, but I wanted them.
This
was a syndicated cartoon and not a Saturday morning selection. I feel
like it switched time slots often or was just hard to catch because I
know I haven’t seen a ton of episodes (more than I did TigerSharks,
though). The show is available in various forms from Amazon,
including streaming through Prime!
Pee-Wee’s
Playhouse
This
is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the greatest and most unique
children’s shows ever produced. It mixed elements of every kind of
children’s programming ever broadcast into an intelligent,
inspiring, and heartfelt show. Each episode skillfully wove lessons
on how to be a good person and live in the world into some of the
most bizarre and surreal segments I’ve ever seen.
Pee-Wee
was our pal and our guide to this strange playhouse world. He taught
us the straight and narrow, but was also relatable and human because
sometimes he would make mistakes or behave poorly, realizing the
error of his ways at the end of the episode. The Playhouse had a
magical genie head that could grant Pee-Wee’s wildest dreams, but
he always used his daily wish to bring joy to others and right
wrongs.
From
Chairy to Magic Screen to the Puppet Band to Pterry, all of the
inhabitants of the Playhouse were fully realized characters with
their own points of view and distinct lifestyles. We didn’t know
it, but we were watching a diverse community in action.
Also,
I found the Traveling Salesman more than a little unnerving.
Side
Note: I know that Pee-Wee’s
Playhouse
isn’t a cartoon, but it came on Saturday mornings and was one of
the only live action shows that I found acceptable. Towards noon
cartoons would start vanishing and shows starring human actors would
start coming on and I hated
that. But Pee-Wee was okay. More than okay – he was awesome.
Teen
Wolf
Right
alongside Pee-Wee’s
Playhouse
on Saturday mornings on CBS was this adaptation of a movie about
puberty.
Like
many of the shows in this post I haven’t seen Teen
Wolf
since it was on the air, but I seem to remember liking it more than
the movie. My adult brain tells me the animation might have been kind
of shitty, but I know that I loved
this cartoon. We were trained for the big cartoon moments – Popeye
eating his spinach, Adam using the Power Sword to transform into
He-Man, and Lion-O holding the Sword of Omens up and becoming less of
a pussy (so to speak). Heck, even live action shows like The
Incredible Hulk
had kickass transformations scenes. With every episode of Teen
Wolf, I
could not wait for Scott Howard to Wolf Out.
I’ve
mentioned before that I was obsessed with werewolves when I was
younger, so the animated adventures of the Howard family were right
up my alley.
Unlike
Ghostbusters,
I think I might have actually seen the movie version of Teen
Wolf when
the cartoon aired. I seem to remember my mom being bothered that
Scott’s female friend was named “Boof”.
Defenders
of the Earth
The
1980 Flash
Gordon
movie was one of my favorites when I was a kid and still is to this
day. When a cartoon starring Flash alongside a magician and… some
weird purple jungle guy… started up in ’86, I was stoked. I
didn’t know anything about King Features at the time (and still
couldn’t tell you much other than “Slam Evil” is a terrible but
memorable tagline and that the current King’s
Quest
comic book frustrates me to no end every single month when I see it
in Previews
and it takes me a minute to realize that it is not based on the
Sierra game), but any continuation of the adventures of Flash Gordon
was more than welcome.
I
know I loved the show, but I haven’t seen it in years. Again –
probably since it aired. It did feature the recurring trope that was
the bane of my existence when I was a kid – kids. I hated the kids
on each and every show that I watched. I know they were supposed to
be the POV characters, but I thought they were the worst. I never
related to kids in cartoons and I never wanted to. Who the heck
wanted to be the little weenie that rode around on his robot friend
and got kidnapped all the time?
Fortunately
the heroes’ kids on Defenders
skewed slightly older. I could deal with teenagers a little better,
especially when they were actually kind of cool like Rick Gordon.
Rambo:
The Force of Freedom/Chuck Norris’ Karate Kommandos
I
mention these only because they were both cartoons cashing in on
completely inappropriate things and they both had toy lines that were
better than they had any right to be. I know I watched both shows.
I
have just had a major revelation and I am going to share it with you
now.
For
years now I’ve been talking about how my parents let me collect one
toy line at a time for the most part, but I had a few figures from
other lines here and there. That’s still mostly true, but I had a
bunch of figures from both of these toy lines and I didn’t realize
it until just now when I looked up Rambo on Action
Figure Archive
to see what the one I had was called. It turns out I had ten of the
Rambo figures and several of the weapons sets (no surprise given my
dad’s military proclivities – I almost wonder if he just bought a
pile of Rambo stuff on a lark like I do for Phantom Jr. sometimes). I
also had a few Chuck Norris figures, most notably Kimo, who was my
favorite because of his bamboo kickpads:
Laugh
if you will, but I bet getting kicked in the face – or anywhere –
by bamboo kickpads would ruin a fella’s day.
As
for the main guys, I had “Chuck Norris (Kung Fu Training Gi)” and
“Rambo”. I seem to remember plain Rambo was tough to find but you
could get stupid blue jeans and wife beater Rambo everywhere. Lest
this turn into another toy post, let’s move on.
ThunderCats,
Ho!
ThunderCats
debuted in 1985, but in 1986 something really weird and also amazing
happened. We didn’t get a full new season of the show, which was
massively disappointing. I don’t know the story behind that, but
I’m sure money was involved.
What
we did get was feature-length story cut up into a miniseries, which
was always a huge deal back then. It’s how many of my favorite
cartoons started. We were always ready for a new miniseries and it
tended to be even more exciting when it was part of a show that had
already been established. Introductory miniseries always had a lot of
setup, but when one came in the midst of a show, that meant the
creators had a story so big, so (Third)earth-shattering,
that they needed a whole
week
(five episodes) to tell it.
In
this case, ThunderCats
– Ho!
would be one of the few afternoon cartoon events that actually did
change the status quo of the program. Even if it did take a year to
find that out.
This
movie/miniseries is where we were introduced to new Thunderians. This
blew my mind.
The ThunderCats had basically the same origin as
Superman – they were escaping from their exploding home planet of
Thundera. We were led to believe that the seven original Thunderians
were the last of their kind. It was so exciting and unbelievable that
there could be more
of these awesome characters. And not only were there more, they were
so much
cooler
than the existing ThunderCats.
I
know that might be blasphemy to some, but I immediately liked the new
characters more. Well, not more than Panthro, who is still my
favorite, but Pumyra replaced Cheetara as my unnatural furry crush
and Bengali was cooler than Lion-O or Tygra. I was never a fan of
Jaga because he just looked like a human to me, so Lynx-O was
obviously way better. Plus he had the “Blind Master” gimmick
going on. WilyKit, WilyKat, and Snarf do not factor because they were
all demonstrably terrible (though they were all redeemed in the 2011
cartoon).
Not
only did this story introduce new Thunderians, it also introduced a
third faction of warriors (and you know I LOVE that) – the
Lunataks! They had the same sort of story as the Masters of the
Universe Snake Men, but were much cooler.
Okay,
maybe not. But they were even more exciting new characters that
changed the dynamic of the show. They were enemies of both the
Thunderians and the Mutants.
Also,
Mumm-Ra dies!
Except
not really because they brought him back when the regular show
returned the following year. But for almost an entire year – until
the second season debuted with the spoilery-titled episode “Mumm-Ra
Lives!” – we thought Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living was no more. Which
was silly, because it’s right there in his name.
GI
Joe: A Real American Hero
I
started these posts with GI Joe and I’m going to close them the
same way.
We
didn’t have the internet back then. Nobody cared to inform kids of
what was going on with their favorite shows. We found out our
cartoons were cancelled the day we realized we hadn’t seen a new
one in a year. We waited and waited and eventually it just became
clear that the shows and characters we loved and looked forward to
watching every day were just… gone.
A
Real American Hero
came back strong in 1986 for its second season with the “Arise,
Serpentor, Arise!” miniseries.
Lots
of exclamation points back then, if you hadn’t noticed.
Twenty-five
more episodes trickled out over the course of the year – thirty
less than the prior season. I didn’t have these numbers when I was
a kid and I didn’t know anything about syndication or that magic
“100” that shows aspire to, but I knew there felt like there was
less Joe.
Technically
A Real
American Hero
didn’t die until after The
Movie
in 1987 (with which they hit their magic 100 episodes by dividing it
up into five parts) and super-technically
it didn’t die until 1992(!) when DIC’s follow-up cartoon ended.
But looking back, my favorite cartoon ever was dealt its death blow
in 1986.
By
The
Transformers: The Movie.
Hasbro
sunk a ton of capital into the theatrical debut of the Robots in
Disguise, hiring known actors and marketing the heck out of it. But
when the movie came out, it redefined the word “flop”. Between
this and the poor performance of My
Little Pony: The Movie,
Hasbro lost faith in its properties’ ability to draw audiences to
theaters. They repurposed GI
Joe: The Movie
into a direct-to-video release and simply dropped plans for a Jem
and the Holograms
flick.
To
be fair, if the Joe movie we have now had been released to theaters
it would have certainly killed the franchise anyway, possibly even
preventing the DIC follow-up. I have a sentimental fondness for it,
but it isn’t particularly good and certainly isn’t as epic as The
Transformers: The Movie.
The Cybertronians’ big screen debut feels like an organic
progression of the storylines from the show. The Joe movie is
organic, but not at all in the same way. And certainly not in a good
way. I love Cobra-La for the Lovecraftian weirdness they are and I’ve
often pointed out that they’re no more bizarre than any other plot
element from Sunbow’s cartoon, but they’re no Unicron. And the
story just isn’t smooth.
But
more on that next year, when I talk about 1987!
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sure to
join the Needless
Things Podcast Facebook Group
and share your own memories of 1986 – one of the greatest pop
culture years of all time!
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