Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers - Chocolate Chips

In dedication on how my first blog post was something from a particular weekday afternoon block from my childhood, I'm going to do yet another Disney Afternoon cartoon. They're easy to do, fun to write, and best of all, I get to mercilessly put shows that I had once found sacred and perfect into the unforgiving grinder of sarcasm and snark. Also, this one show is the one that, if possible, has even more fans than Darkwing Duck. And what a scary big rabid fandom it is. So if I get angry e-mails from this particular blog post, I only have myself to blame.

Quick Disclaimer for the Rescue Rangers Fans: Even though all of these blog posts horrifically rip apart whatever I'm watching, most of time I actually enjoy the show and are poking fun of it because I would spot these weird little logical fallacies even as a kid. The only time I really mean it is if the show is bad, and let's be honest, I'm pretty sure you can tell when a show is bad just by the way I write the post. No one read the Street Sharks post and thought "Oh shut up, that's an awesome show!"

...but moving on. If I could describe this show's premise in one sentence, I would do it like this:

The Premise of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Some talking vermin solve crimes.

Tada!

I'll be honest, but when I watched this show as a kid, I can't really say I was a big fan of it. I like the show, don't get me wrong, but out of the Disney Afternoon, this ranked slightly higher than DuckTales (because it didn't have Webbie and that annoying caveduck), but lower than Gummi Bears, because Gummi Bears kicked ass. It was somewhere in the middle of enjoyment, which is better than my opinion on Shnookums and Meat.

For this show, I chose an episode through the complicated scientific process known as "randomly picking an episode off my Chip and Dale DVD box set because, unlike Darkwing Duck, I never really built a preference for episodes". I went with this one because I guess I was currently in the mood for some confectioneries.

Have some crimes that just keep slipping through the cracks? Have a case that people dismissed as either too big or too small? Well, if you need help, just eat some...

Chocolate Chips

Captain Planet and the Planeteers - Tree of Life

Since I've decided recently that I hate both my eyes and the people following this, I'm going to watch another episode of Captain Planet.

Well okay, the real reason is that I realize that the last episode I did just lacked that Captain Planet spirit to it. Oh, sure, it had deforestation (Ted Turner's favorite thing to cry about) and some jerkoff who loves the dying coughs of all the animals he runs over with his giant bulldozer of evil, but mostly it was about Skumm and his sick little rat fetish than anything pollution-themed.

I think the main problem was that it had Verminous Skumm. Sir Skumm always got the short end of the stick when it came to episodes. It's like the writers knew that crime and disease are in that grey area of "Is it really an environmental issue?" so he ended up getting weird episodes like an episode where he steals an artifact from a museum (because the theft of archaeological finds is exactly what I picture when I think Captain Planet) or that really embarrassing AIDS episode where Skumm is kind of a dick to this one HIV-positive kid for no reason.

So just to be fair, I'm covering a Captain Planet that's more in your face with its environmentalism. For starters, this episode has Dr. Blight in it, and man does she love the smell and feel of freshly cut wood from a rare, endangered forest. She's also voiced by Meg Ryan, which means that there are gentlemen (and the occasional lady, I won't discriminate) who watched this episode and now have the deep, penetrating shame that is being turned on by a Captain Planet cartoon.

Should you decide to stick around, this is the episode that James Cameron watched and decided "Hey, you know what this needs? Cat people from outer space!". This is...

Tree of Life

Loonatics Unleashed - Going Underground

Okay, I've been making fun of DIC Entertainment for way too long. Time to make fun of yet another product from the animation company renowned for making some of the best shows in the 90's, Warner Bros. Animation.

No, Batman fans. This logo isn't going to turn into a police helicopter with
headlights shining down on Gotham City.

I don't think even Disney can really touch the versatility the Warner Brothers Animation brand has. I've seen a lot more people say they hate or love everything Disney stands for than their lead competitor just because of the level of variation in Warner Bros. On one hand, they're responsible for Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, and Tiny Toons. On the other hand, they're responsible for Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island, Johnny Test, and Baby Looney Tunes. It's really hard to say what my opinion is with Warner Bros. because they brought me both intense joy and intense sorrow. They can do it for the art and then whore off their characters in the very same breath.

So thus, instead of ripping into the really obvious bad cartoons Warner Bros. is responsible for, I want to first make fun of their show that honestly can't decide whether it's a bad cartoon and a good one, a cartoon that, like Captain Planet, everyone's heard of and laughed at but never actually sat down and watched it.

So thus, the punchline for every joke about trying to make aging cartoon characters more relevant for today's audience, Loonatics Unleashed.

They're tiny, they're toony, they're all a little-wait, wrong show.

I don't really have much to say about Loonatics Unleashed's sordid history, other than it had two seasons with 26 episodes and was cancelled after the second season on account Warner Brothers realized that everyone was making fun of this show and hopefully, by cancelling it, they can never speak of it again. It was one of those shows that suffered from a bad case of Multiple Personality Syndrome.

And ironically the fact that it was tied to Looney Tunes is probably what hurt it the most. Why? Because if it wasn't tied to the Looney Tunes brand and if the characters were not reimagined Looney Tunes characters, this would just be another superhero cartoon where a band of heroes with different personalities fight against a varied rogue gallery and people would've ate it right up. The 90's was ALL ABOUT the superhero cartoons, after all.

The people who made Animaniacs made this.

I'm going with this episode first because to be frank, loads of people covered this show's first episode before in other blogs (usually in blogs much snarkier than this one) and I don't want to do "Weathering Heights" until after I do The Mask: The Animated Series's "Rain on Terror" on account the plots are exactly the same.

So yeah, now that I talked about the show, let's talk about an episode that honestly has nothing to do with the Merrie Melodies shorts at all because it involves chinese food, earthquakes, and a mad scientist who turned half-rock (yeah, really) and therefore, of course, wants revenge on the entire world. Witness this unfold in an episode that the writers couldn't even think of a good name pun for, because this is...

Going Underground

Felix the Cat: The Movie - Part 3

Part 1.
Part 2.

Time to revisit this movie again. I don't like leaving things unfinished, especially if they're nonsensical blog posts where I, someone who's over 20, decide to watch a film about talking cats and try to invoke some form of deep commentary on it.

That, and it's just too easy to point and laugh at the fact that the movie makers thought that any of these plot developments were a good idea. I mean, sure, I guess you can give them points for creativity by having the princess rescue plot take place in a circus filled with tap-dancing mice hybrids, a giant spacelizard who honestly outstages the actual villain, and radioactive interdimensional mud mutants, but yeah, so far my opinion on this movie is that it's crazy but poorly animated movie that would have some great ideas if it wasn't attached to a brand name that it's not doing any justice to.

And it's only going to get crazier and even more badly animated from here on out. The good news is that I have only one or two more parts to do of this movie, but the bad news is that I'm getting to the parts where the movie starts to lose momentum and, if possible, get even worse. I have to wonder if this movie was on a tight "don't spend ANY money at all!" budget once we leave the circus portion because it really shows. The animation starts to drop in quality (even more than before), the plot starts to fall apart onscreen, characters stop being characters and just meander on the screen just to exist, and well...okay, perhaps I'm giving too much away.

This part of the movie, unlike the previous part I just did, actually has the princess and the Duke of Zill. And you'll see why this is a bad thing once we dive into the glittery, badly-animated mushiness that is...

Felix the Cat: The Movie Part 3!

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog - Blank-Headed Eagle

Okay, like the 3D Sonic titles, this show is just way too fun to make fun of. Today I'm going to put on my IGN hat and once again make fun of Sonic the Hedgehog!

I'm going to do yet another episode of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. When talking about this show in particular, I personally want to get the episodes that I would watch on VHSs back when I was a kid out of the way, just because I've seen those dang episodes on there so many times that I swear the people at the local Blockbuster were pretty close to just giving me the stupid tapes just so the creepy child would leave them alone.

So yes, this means that later on down the road, I will cover "Sonic's Song", "Grounder the Genius", "Best Hedgehog", "Sloooow Going", "Robotnik Express", "Tails's New Home", "Over the Hill Hero", "Sonic Breakout", and the one episode where Sonic gets hypnotized.

...oh crap, what am I getting myself into watching all of that Sonic...

I went with this episode first for a couple reasons, but the main reason is because this is a Scratch-themed episode. Yes, that's right, occasionally the animators would toss the robot-loving people in the audience a bone and give us episodes where Scratch and Grounder were the bigger stars. There was even a VHS tape that had a Grounder-themed episode (Grounder the Genius) followed by this exact Scratch-themed episode, as if the creators realized that they made Sonic an unlikeable, invincible prick and it was the robots everyone was actually rooting for.

By the way, here's the VHS in question:

Man, remember when it was a big thing to have a VHS with TWO whole episodes on it?
Those giant DVD box sets have spoiled us all.

And this glorious piece of cinematic gold wrapped in a scrumptious hedgehog-shaped burrito has tons of Scratch. He flies an aircraft, he becomes a hero, and he actually falls in love in this episode. This is Scratch's "shining pinnacle of greatness" episode.

Oh, and I guess Sonic also does some stuff too, because he has to deal with the...

Blank-Headed Eagle

Tak and the Power of Juju - Shrink a Dink

Time to talk about the big Nicktoon sensation that never happened, Tak and the Power of Juju.

Back in the early 2000's, Nickelodeon had been releasing a series of video games based on their then-upcoming show that was being produced in-house at that actual Nickelodeon studio. The games were decent (I've played the first two, and while not amazing, were a lot better than you would expect a Nickelodeon game to be) but they were all building up for something huge. Every single one of those games was teasing the upcoming release of the next big Nicktoon, the next big Rugrats, Nickelodeon's first fully CGI animated show, their 30th Nicktoon, and generally supposedly their biggest, most awesome idea for this decade.

...and no one watched it when it came on and now Nick knows not to hype their cartoons so much anymore. A valuable lesson.

But hey, it had more fans than Mr. Meaty at least.

The show never found an audience and was quietly cancelled after one 26 episode season. Now, no one really remembers this show's actual existence and it's extremely hard to find this show now. Now, normally a lot of the shows or movies I watch can be easily found on Youtube or, occasionally, on some Russian site located off of Google video. Not this show. Currently, the only way to see this show for free is to either do some shady backdoor Internet dealings with people who own fuzzy, video camera recordings off a TV screen of the show or to hunt down clips on the actual Nickelodeon website.

...course, there's also Amazon Instant Stream and a small DVD of the show, but I don't exactly want to plunk down money on a show that I've never actually seen.

This show's episodes were in two 11 minute segments an episode format, and after some hunting down, I finally found an entire episode. Instead of doing one of the earlier episodes like I try to do whenever I talk about a show, the episode I managed to find was a part of one of the last episodes aired before the show got axed.

So with that being said, let's see how this show ended its forgotten run with its strange tale of Spiffles, Phobia Jujus, and Grongo Snakes. And, if you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, then that makes two of us. Watch the strangeness unfold and nearly wreck existence in...

Shrink a Dink

Street Sharks- Sharkbait

There are some shows that just immediately open themselves up to mockery, immediately date themselves, and remain as testaments of bad ideas, of creative depravity, and just an overall willingness to piggyback off the success of others.

As you can probably guess from the fact that I'm opening this blog post with that kind of description, this show is one of them. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce one of the many TMNT knockoffs of the 90's, Street Sharks.

Produced by DIC Entertainment (who I noticed is appearing A LOT in this blog), it basically answered the question no person asked; "Hey, what if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles weren't ninjas and they were sharks?". It even had a toyline in an attempt to compete with the TMNT toyline. Problem is, the fact that it was trying to compete with TMNT, a show that, at the peak of its popularity, had more merchandise and more fans than Pokemon (I'm dead serious, the TMNT craze was HUGE), Street Sharks was the equivalent of bringing a knife to an atomic bomb and planet-sized space station fight. It had 40 episodes but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who cared about this show.

Needless to say, it's now a show the TMNT fans point and laugh at, because frankly it deserves the laughter. To call it stupid would be an insult to other stupid shows like Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. See, that Sonic show was fun stupid. This is just stupid stupid.

I went with this show because, in some bizarre twist of fate, I actually watched this show and somehow didn't watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the show it was ripping off from. It wasn't until I was in college that I watched the 1987 version of TMNT and realized that wow, I was missing out on one of the most cracktastic awesome shows of all time and a part of my childhood was wasted watching pale knockoffs.

Yeah, they didn't even hide the fact that they're were stealing ideas from TMNT.

Okay, it'd be unfair to write this show completely as a knock-off. It did some things differently. For example, instead of the main villain having two dim-witted half-animal minions trying to capture or kill the main heroes, the main villain has three dim-witted half-animal minions. And instead of having an Archie series that lasted for a pretty long time, the Archie comic tie-in lasted like 6 issues. And the covers made this show look waaaaaay more badass than it really was.

In the actual show, the guy with the exosuit is a joke.

I figure the best way to cover this show would be to look at the first episode, which is, as always, the origin episode of the show. So grab a pizza burger, shout "Cowabunga!" "Jawsome!", and cheer for your favorite turtle shark, because this is...

Sharkbait

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog - Super Special Sonic Search & Smash Squad

Well, I learned that the title at the top of each blog can actually stretch. Thank you, Sonic, for teaching me a valuable lesson. But we'll get to that later.

Okay, let's talk about hedgehogs for a moment now. Back in the 90's, there were not one, not two, but THREE different Sonic cartoons produced by DIC Entertainment (aka the cartoon studio that will probably make the most appearances in this blog just because of the insanity they've wrecked on an unsuspecting public). If you ask anyone, they'll usually say that out of the three Sonic cartoons, there was one good one, one that was actually worth watching.

Was this the Sonic cartoon that would be considered the good Sonic cartoon? Ahahahaha hell no, that would be Sonic the Hedgehog (aka SatAM). People's opinions of this show tend to fluctuate between "Get this crap away from me" to "It's so bad that I can garner some enjoyment out of it".

Nice TM hiding in the title there, guys.

Course, I'd be lying if I said that I hate this cartoon. Back when I had a Sega Genesis, I used to rent the four AoStH VHSs over and over and over again from the local Blockbuster. I had also rented the SatAM one once, but at the time, I really didn't like how grim and dark Sonic's universe was and preferred the kiddy, bright one on account it more closely resembled the games I would play. To hell with you, gritty storylines and fleshed out characters, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog actually had Casino Night Zone!

But now that I'm over twenty and now realize that the grimmer, darker Sonic cartoon was also the better made one, will looking back at this cause irreversible damage to my retinas or will I still find something salvageable? Let's see what the pilot of this has to say about that.

So let's take a look at this cartoon's attempt at telling us, the viewers, just what the hell is going on in this strange universe, all while showing us the many ways a robot shaped like a chicken can get demolished by Urkel. This is...

Super Special Sonic Search & Smash Squad

Felix the Cat: The Movie - Part 2

Part 1 of Felix the Cat: The Movie.

I covered Part 1, so here's Part 2 of this wonderfully insane film known as Felix the Cat: the Movie. So far we've run into magic talking bodily secretions squirted out princessy tear ducts, fish with boobs, friendly swamp-traveling miners that like to talk about intelligent bubbles, and a kingdom that is just totally okay with their ruler disbanding the entire army. Will Part 2 be just as acid-tripping crazy as the first part?

The answer to that question is "Definitely yes", because we're heading into my favorite part. This part has a little bit of everything and is arguably the one part where the script writers temporarily got out of their drunken stupors and wrote something that makes some lick of sense.

Unfortunately, in Felix the Cat: The Movie's universe, the part where the movie starts to make sense is when Felix the Cat has to entertain a giant space lizard's circus while he shares a dorm room with some mice/lizard hybrids and gives stand-up comedy to aliens. This bears repeating. The part where the movie makes sense is at a giant space lizard's circus. It's not too late to bail.

But if you choose to stick around, it's time for...

Felix the Cat: The Movie Part 2!

Captain Planet and the Planeteers - Skumm Lord

So guys, it turns out they're making a live-action Captain Planet movie. My brain's still trying to decide if this is merely just a bad idea or if this is a so bad it's good kind of an idea. What's even sadder is that a small part of me, the horrid part of me that remembers watching this show as a kid, wants to actually see this train wreck unfold on screen at least once. Mostly because I want to see how modern CGI would render out Captain Planet's mullet.

So to celebrate bad ideas with big budgets, I'm going to do a Captain Planet episode. Pray for my soul, gentle readers because this will be painful.

The perfect test to see if someone lived in the 90's; if they flinch
when they see these faces, then they grew up in that era.

Choosing a Captain Planet episode is sort of like a grim game of Russian Roulette. Sometimes you'll pick an episode that has something you can laugh at, or sometimes you'll pick an episode that's just barbarous preaching and "save the planet!" for about 20 minutes. There are episodes that everyone can relate to, like the illegal dumping of garbage into the ocean, and there are episodes that skew a little too far into the far left to be comfortable, like the episode that says that people who have more than two kids are killing the environment. It's rather telling that I know a couple people in my college that couldn't see this show as a kid because their parents thought it was liberal propaganda, it's THAT bad.

Luckily there's one such episode that I can deprive some form of enjoyment out of because of a couple things. For one, the environmentalism takes a back seat in this episode (or at least as far as it could get to the backseat, seeing as this is Captain Planet) and becomes more like a science fiction horror mixed in with some sort of medical drama than anything. Another, it's got Jeff Goldblum as a giant rat. Yes, this is a Verminous Skumm episode and this was back when DIC Entertainment could afford Jeff Goldblum to voice for their cartoon. Maybe they should've saved some of that money for some of their other shows, especially considering how cheaply animated the Super Mario Bros. Super Show was.

My friends, I'm going to show you an episode of Captain Planet where everyone in Brazil turns into hideous rat creatures. I'm going to show you...

Skumm Lord