A Geek History of Time - Episode 90 - Cartoons That Deserved More Part II

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

So first thing foremost, I think being the addition of pant leggings is really when you start to see your heroes get watered down. The ability to go straight man, that one. Which is a good argument for absolute girls. Everybody is going to get behind me though, and I support numbers with those who love me. When you hang out with the hero, it doesn't go well for you. Grandfather took the cob and just slid right through the bar. Oh god, Bob. Okay.

And that became the dominant way our family did it. Okay. And so, both of my marriages, they were treated to that. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, rage, I could. How do you imagine the rubber chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you always had this sexual revolution.

It might have just been a Canadian standoff. We're gonna go back to 9-11. Oh, do we get over it? And I don't understand the book, it's a school. Agra has no business being that thick. With the cultists, it's when real people... This is a geek history of time. We can actually do the real world.

My name is Edmund Mark. I'm a real history teacher who also dattles in remedial reading and for the last several months since I've said repeatedly I'm doing it through the magic of the interwebs and on a personal note I realized earlier today that my two-year-old son turns into a mump it when he gets excited. We went to the park. Smashes his hands together and opens his mouth a lot and dances.

Yeah, well, yes, that too. But we went to the park. So I mentioned in our last episode, we were in quarantine because he tested positive for COVID. His mother and I both tested negative. We got retested today. We're waiting, it's going to be a tense three days when we get our results back.

And we went to the park because he went several days without getting any time outside at all. And we had a really rough night, a couple of nights ago, where it took close to three hours to get him to go to sleep, because he was just, it was bad. And he was, he was just, kind of, his heart breaking. He was just so unhappy like all day. And so we've made a point of making sure to get him outside, get him some fresh air, and I took him to the park earlier, we were we were blowing bubbles

We were way well away from anybody else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was It was 50 some degrees outside. It was hardly anybody outside. So but we went to the park And we're blowing bubbles and he just got so excited and he started making At first I thought it was like the first analogy came in mind was Ewok noises first I thought it was like the first analogy came in mind was Ewok noises. And then I said that to my wife after we got home, I said yeah, he made Ewok noises. And of course my wife is not a geek by birth, she's a geek by marriage. So she didn't immediately get Ewok noises, I'd say like Ewoks from the turn of the Jedi. She went, Oh, yeah And I said, well, okay, maybe it's more like muppet noises and she got that more quickly. Sure sure

But you know how how very little kids Pottlers will just make Kind of noises expressions of joy. Yeah, yeah, he was he was just so apt and Kind of noise expressions of joy. Yeah. Yeah, he was he was just so amped and Even thinking about it right now is is yeah, this is why people have kids like for those of you who are child-free Congratulations on all the extra money you have in your bank accounts and the and the expensive hobbies you're able to maintain Sleep that you get and the sweet The sex that you can have. Oh my God, the sleep in the sex. God Almighty, I miss it. Not having to choose between the two. Not having one with the reason. Be the reason why you don't get the other.

Yeah, you know, but with all of that being said, it was it was one of the ones where I went, right, this is why we did this. Yeah. This is why we were almost really, really sad when we thought we weren't going to be able to do this. This is, okay, I got it now. I remember now. Reminded. So yeah, that's that's what I got going on. How about you, sir? Who are you?

Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher from up here in Northern California. I am a father of two who just got kittens. And I'm not saying that like like very frequently, I'll hear somebody say, oh, they had, oh, yeah, no, when you found out he had kittens. Like as a kind of old time year expression of like going hermatile. Right. That's not you mean here. No, no, I in fact mean that we our household has increased its four legids by triple what it had. And this time of the feline variety, not the canine variety. Okay, I'm going to mathematically quibble a little bit. You've had one for foot, you now have three.

Right, so you've increased it. Okay, so you increased by 200%. The total is 300% of what it used to be. Yeah, it's 300% of 100%. That's triple. Yes, but the increase was a 200% increase. You had one plus 200% of one is 300%. Yeah. I'm being mathematically panatic. No, that's fine, but 300 is still triple 100. Yeah, okay. Anyway, you tripled. You wound up with triple, you're, yeah, okay.

Yeah, that makes sense. All right. All right, so anyway, yeah, I've got two cats and a dog now. He barely notices them, which is cute. But the cats are the most opposite extremes of personality types as you could hope for from a cat. One, I have yet to pet and so have my kids the other Just snuggles and cuddles and all kinds of stuff the one comes out and plays briefly

While I can see it and then all night long the two of them just play and have a great time The other plays all day. I'm day And then sleeps and then waits for his brother to come out basically. So it's been really cool because I you know they say that you buy kids a pet to teach them responsibility. You don't. You buy kids a pet to teach them compassion and through compassion comes responsibility. That's why you get responsible is. Okay. I can't say that. They have to learn how to differentiate and hold back like their enthusiasm because it's like, hey, if you do that, you will never see this cat. Okay. And just to clarify, because I'm a cat person. And you know, my, my

family has three sets of four lines, all of the feline. Mm-hmm. Um, and I just, I need to, I need to say this. So are you okay with giving out the cat's names? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Because we, if I remember right, nipper is the

one that you are able to pet right now. No, that would be sacks Saxon right yeah, Saxon Brian And and Kipper Thomas. Yeah, yeah So so Kipper is the is the shy one yes, and Kipper is the tuxedo cat. Yes Okay, this is by the way guys. This this is all on Facebook. If you find Damien there, you can see the pictures because he's become just as obnoxious as the rest of us cat people are in the last few days. That's what to say as as your friend. I just want really entertaining. Yeah, I bet. And kind of affirming that, oh, no, it's not just me. Yeah. No, it's, okay, once you get a cat,

this is just the thing that happens. Is your feed fills up with pictures of your cats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so Saxon is the love bug. He is, he is, and he cuddles on scurra, my dog, all the time. And he sits with my kids when they read, and it's cool because I'm teaching the kids

I'm like, if you're calm, he'll come to you. And he absolutely does. And Kipper is, if you're calm, you'll get to see him at the end of the day. And you just need to be more patient with him because he will not be as forthcoming with his affections. What I'm gonna say, as a long time cat owner. Yes. And with some experience, with rescue cats in particular.

with some experience with rescue cats in particular. If you are able to give him that space for long enough, I'm not going to say it's going to happen, but I'm going to say it is entirely possible that he may wind up becoming truly the love bug. That's what I thought. Oh, over, over time, once he gets comfortable, he may wind up becoming an even bigger, lovy-dovey than sex. Yes, entirely possible. So like we were asking back earlier this year, we, in our case, our motivation was not as noble as yours. Our

motivation was entirely that my wife was getting very, very sad about the fact she didn't have a baby anymore. Robbie was getting too big. He was turning into into a little boy as opposed to a baby anymore. And I really put my foot down that we're living in an apartment. There's no way we're getting a dog. Like no, like it would it would not be fair to a dog. Right. Have a dog in our living circumstances. And up until I want to say year before last, we had three cats, two ginger but heads and a long haired main cone. You know, you don't actually have to say but head. You could just say gingers and get the same idea across.

Yeah, well, they both deserve it. Same, same is my boy, I love him dearly, but he's about head. And so, you know, and and orgyl was 17 when when we wound up having to having to put him put him asleep, because he was he he was just becoming two people. Its quality of life had fallen too far. And so he had been Leanne's little gentleman. He was really her cat. And so then we went for about a year and a half to years

and she needed a baby. So we went to the animal shelter here in Sacramento and we found a black and white little girl kitten. And it was important it had to be a girl. Because she said, no, no, I've got you. I've got our little boy. And I've got her two male cats. I'm surrounded by testosterone.

I said, well, you know, the two male cats are both fixed. And she said, yeah, so are you. And I said, no, no, no, I got to keep mine. They just don't work anymore. They work fine. They just don't leave. They just don't eat anything. They're just not up to anything.

But that's a conversation for another time. Sometimes, let me tell you about the conversation we had when we went to the fair last summer and not this past summer, but summer of 2019, of course, before the dark times, before COVID. Have you found yourself talking like the little kid refugees from Thunderdome? Talking about the bulky clips Okay, so in the before times you went to the fair conversation when we went to the fair and we were looking at longhorn cattle and saw a steer and she went Oh, hey babe, you can talk to him. I Like your wife a lot. I don't know if she knows that but please let her know she she does know And I kind of hate both of you a little bit. Um, I'm going to love you dearly, but God damn it.

Um, I'm not as new to it. So it's so anyway. So yeah, so anyway. Uh, so, so we wound up, we wound up getting a, getting a female black and white cat named Luna. Uh, who, who fits really well with our younger ginger butt head named Ron. So yeah, because we took him home. Yeah, when we took, we took him home a couple of years ago and he was, you know, a ginger and showed a great many very powerful personality. We were like, well, okay, clearly he has to be a wheezy.

Right. And so he became Ron. And then Luna actually came with her name, which I don't think was intended to be Luna love good, but she is in fact, batshit crazy. So it kind of fits. Sure. And she's also much smarter than Ronald.

So that fits. And the funny thing is the two of them, at first, he was scared to death of her. Oh wow, really fits. Oh yeah, however, they have now gotten to the point where they are very clearly Brother brother sister nice they they falsely bun each other. It's adorable nice And and our oldest cat Sammy is just like how ever brother you shut up get off my lawn Well, I will have we

Yeah, I was gonna say I will share with you briefly the The way in which we named our cats. I had the kids, my daughter loves being a chronicler. So I had her split the white board and our hallway on half and right down names, just, you know, Tuxedo, Tavvy. And then any name, no matter how bad or how dumb it was, you throw it up there. So everybody just throws names up there

and we had just two lists, one for the Tuxedo, one for the tabby. And at first I was like, all right, put your initials next to the ones that you like. Three initials are your favorite, two is your second favorite, one is your least favorite. And then all the rest, you know, the problem is we came up with so many names that there was no overlap. I was like, well, fuck that idea. So then I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. overlap. I was like, well, fuck that idea. So then I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to snake draft this. Okay, for those of you unfamiliar with the snake draft, person A, person B, person C, person H, who's the first, person B, who's the second, person C, who's his third and fourth, person B, who's the fifth, person H, who's the sixth and seventh. What's your going, you know?

So it's like the the tartan pattern in a kill. Do you go one way and then you turn around and you reverse it when you repeat it? Yeah, yeah. So you go as the horse plows the field. Um, so and it was get rid of the names you don't like. So, okay, Julia race, William erase, I erase two, William erase, Julia race two, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, noase, Julie Arase two, and so and it was erased the ones you don't like, don't worry about you getting yours erased because we all put a bunch on there. And we came down to Saxon being the name for the tabby. Cool. Simon was the name for the Tuxedo. And Julie didn't like that. And I said, okay, well, tell you what, we will take Simon, because it did not get erased,

and we'll put it at the top of the list for the, and we'll come up with a whole new list for the Tuxedo. So now we've cleared the field, right? So boom, you know, come up with one. Simon came up again, and she was upset again, and I was like, wait a minute, you could have erased that name. Any number of times this time and you didn't. And I really liked the name Simon too.

And she says, yeah, but there were other names on there that I didn't like. Yeah. And she said, yeah, there were names on there that I didn't like more. I'm like, that's fair. And then we got the core of the issue and she said, he got to name them both.

I didn't get to name any I said, okay, what if we go back to the last known name that you we erased that was yours because William got to a race Two and one of them was her choice and so Kipper and then I talked to William I said are you cool with that compromise since you got to name the other one He says yeah, that's fine. So we have Kipper and we have Saxon. I said great. You guys both realize that you both named the cats and I didn't get to name them at all. They're like, yeah, I was like compromise. I get their middle names and so that's why we have Saxon Brian and we have Kipper Thomas. I like it. Yeah. So that was that it's that it's a plus

adding right there. You know, I'll take it because I taught them compromise. I taught them, you know, all kinds of the standing up for yourself. It was good. And so the cats are cats are fun. So that's what's new in my world. We were talking last time about cartoons. Yes.

And I would love to get back to that. I not that our audience in India and Italy isn't excited as hell about my cats. Because it's clear that they are. Do we actually have an audience in India? Yes. India. Really? Yep. Well, hi folks. Yeah, holy cow Out of the coolers in India. Yeah, we go from India to Italy I was stricken by the fact that it was you know two eye countries. I was like all right cool. Holy moly. All right So last time we talked about four different cartoons and I figure this time we can talk about more Yeah I'll go first.

Yeah. Well, since you have what three left and I have one, so yeah, you're going to need to have two left. I have two left. Two left. Oh, right, right. Okay. All right.

So the next one, you're going to dig this visionaries. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So this, this one came in in 1987. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And it's about a world where futuristic machines stopped working and they're thrown into a technological dark age. But there's also magic. And it's all due to a great conjunction. Yeah. Discartoon, yeah. No, go ahead. Okay.

Discartoon includes the vocal talents of Peter Cullen. You might know him as Optimus Prime, your Monoray Jack and Zandar. Yeah. And mostly Optimus Prime, but yes. Yeah. I just love that he did your and Monoray Jack too. I was like, oh, and he was even Zartan's younger brother

Like I was like oh cool. Oh Yeah, really yeah wow also included Jim Cummings You you would recognize him as Hondo from rebels Yeah, also with the poo Yeah, jumpy squirrel, tigger, zummy gummy, and also Monterey Jack. Wait, yeah, there was a weird over switch off weird there. Okay, cool. All right.

Also, Roscoe Lee Brown, who just has a badass name, but he was the narrator from Babe. Really? Okay. Cool. So you have two sides. There are the spectral nights and the darkling lords. Oh, see, okay, right there. Right there. Give me, give me a phrase like darkling lords. And I'm in, like I'm in so hard.

And what I find, what I really like about that is spectral nights. Very frequently when we hear the word spectral, we think of specter, like ghost, or phantom or something like that. But in this case, in this case, it's talking about the spectrum. Yes. It's related to the spectrum of color because visionary is being the point. This is one of those cases. I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm sure you have an answer to this, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and I'm going to say the idea for the toy line came up first. And then the cartoon showed up.

Has like, how can we, what can we do with this idea? I think so. Did you know? I don't know for certain, but I do know that the toys were problematic to create. So I think the idea for the toy came up first, but the cartoon was easier to produce than the toys. Then the toys actually were, well yeah. And so now, now for those of you who are younger than Damien and I, which you need to understand, when we talk about the toys being problematic to produce,

the issue here is that every one of the toys, and I know this because I had two of them, I had Arzahn of the spectral nights, and I had one of the darkling lords, but I don't remember which one because frankly the villains didn't have an awful lot of personality in the series. Do you remember what the hologram on him was? I'm trying to remember it was no, I don't remember off the top of my head. Do you remember the color of his armor? Red and black if I remember right? Okay. So because Arzad was all shades of blue and silver and he had a hawk. He turned in the cartoon, he turned into a hawk.

And so again for our, you know, Zumer and younger millennial listeners who don't have any recollection of this at all, the toys for this series had holograms, which were new, fancy, oh my gods, whoa, hi tech kind of stuff in 1987. And so it had this three-dimensional image that was very clearly a holographic photo of a whatever object. And the action figures had that in the center of their chest, and you could detach the little hologram off of their chest and move it around like they had turned into whatever their alternate form was. And so Arzahn was a hawk, I don't remember what the other guy was. I want to say like a scorpion or something. Spider dragon maybe? Could be. Yeah. That would have been Cravex. That sounds right. Mostly remember was his helmet. He had a helmet on the look, kind of like the helmet from the from the protagonist in Lady Hawk. Or a similar advisor to it.

And he had a bent axe of some sort. Yeah, yeah, weird looking. Yeah, and I was disappointed in the fact that, because Arson was like the concept of turning into a hawk was really awesome to me. But I was really distal that his main weapon was like a weird mace axe thing. Yeah.

That thing was very cool. But anyway. So yeah, I don't know if I've gotten ahead of what you were going to say about the cartoon by revealing all of that. But I remember those actions. I remember those action figures vividly. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dividly. So these two sides fight against each other until Merlin challenges them to a contest not Merlin Merlin Well, of course because you know Now the winners No, no, no, well and murky, you know Very good point the winners of these various challenges are granted animal totems who go on their armor and allow them special powers. Some get staffs that need recharging in a pool that was a peace zone, which I thought was

really cool. Now the leader of the spectral knights is Leoric, who gets a lion on his chest. Get it? Leo? Cool. Wisdom based powers actually. Dark Storm is his Darkling counterpart who gets a snail on his chest for being quote,

all around slimy. Like, Merklin says that to him. Wow. I had forgotten that entire thing. And he can rot stuff. And he can what? He can rot stuff. Oh, okay, so that makes up for having a shitty animal totem. Well,

and it was it was because he had like he had slimed his way past someone like he was really scheming and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, let's make him the lowest lowest crawler there is, but then let's like give it nefarious capabilities. Yeah, yeah, Nurgle. Yeah, sorry, sorry, from my fellow 40K fans in the background, Nurgle, to San, cast God of decay, Rod, Corruption. There you go. Yeah. Now each of these guys has lieutenants and followers with different

awesome abilities. It's basically a King Arthur story, but with technological twist and the holograms and magical twists of the totems and and and in The Arthur legends there was not an anti-round table right That's a new twist. It's I remember I remember the cartoon and I remember even as n Did you say it was 87 87? Okay, so that would have been six crazy. So it was 12 even as a 12 you say it was 87 87?

Okay, so that would have been six grades. So it was 12, even as a 12 year old, it was like, well, okay, I mean, guys, name is Marklin. And like, obviously this is King Arthur and Knights of the Roundtable. Right. But the introduction of eight, no, no, it's not just that. There are, in fact, there is an anti-round table. There are pizza hut.

You know, yeah. And that brought the twists. Nice. Nice. Nice, well played. Well done, sir. Well done. Well done.

I'm not even mad about that one. Those two, really. But there we go. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know. So, let's see, it looked awesome. There was a comic book, there was a toy line that was pretty rad, and what I liked was

that there were overall plot arcs. It wasn't just bottle episodes like many of the other cartoons in the mid to late 80s. Now, the appeal of course is the armor and the night motif. Secondarily though, the world that it built was a world where things used to work one way, but now they don't. And I thought that was a nice deepening of a wrinkle. Like it was not just GI Joe versus Cobra.

Like GI Joe versus Cobra was very flat, but the depth they found was in character development. And even that, it was still kind of a return to Koda at the end of it all, but like mainframe still had had feelings for Zartana and stuff like that. You did have some character development, but in this, you had world development and heroes and villains are similarly affected by this, which means that both are imperiled in a way that brings out their true nature's, hence the totem stuff. And it's a large ensemble, so there's a lot of characters that can develop throughout the series.

Someone surely would have become the comic relief, and the upright nature of all the knights could have gotten challenged or seduced, and unlike J.R. Joe or Transformers, the other two big ensembles of their time, the villains are actually competent and kind of interesting. Often I think more than the heroes. Now good, okay, being the villains being more interesting than heroes is just like, that's a thing. Like, you know, because as people in the world, we all, we all identify with the hero, or we all, we all realize that we should want to be the hero. Right. But we identify with whatever it is we see in the villain that, you know, is our own perceived

flaw. Yes, that's true. And so that's the reason that everybody roots for the hero but everybody also gets a kick out of a really good villain because there's the escapist nature of like, if I could just be as charming as Tom Hiddleston's Loki for like 24 hours. Sure.

Sure. You know, you know, that's, yeah. So I mean, that's just a thing, but yeah, no, the characters not being cardboard cutouts, I think is a recurring theme in all of the series that we're talking about is that I think most of these series, Tiger Sharks, maybe not so much, but the rest of what we're talking about is part of the reason we want to see more of this is because the writers were actually like, no, no, seriously, let's spend some time thinking about these people. Well, I would push back a little bit.

There's one that I'm going to bring up later where it's all car bird cutouts. And that's the point. Okay. It's going to be fun. But so in this series, in this series, good was good. Okay. But it doesn't mean that they were competent or even right Or necessarily nice right and so there was this mild

Subversion of the value of order throughout the entire series even though it's nights and lords Now unfortunately and only got one season of 13 episodes season of 13 episodes. Yeah. What is with you? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Now, it was canceled for the same reasons that transformers, gem, my little pony were canceled.

And for the same reason that GI Joe went to Deek, Hasbro and Marvel's Sunbow ended their business relationship, and that was it. Really? That was the only reason. No shit. Yep. That sucks. Yeah.

Like, I cannot begin to tell you. I have a point I am to hear that that like, wow. Mm-hmm. Wow. Like that actually disappoints me even more than the reason why my number one series got canceled. Speaking of which, which I haven't, which I haven't gotten to yet. Why don't you get to it unless you want to talk a little more about visionaries first.

Well, I want to talk, I want to talk a second more on visionaries because it really, it really captured my imagination in a really big way. And it actually does kind of tie into the next series that I'm going to talk about. I have a visionary story just so you know. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. But you do your thing first. Well, okay. Well, what I'm going to do actually means kind of kind of starting with my number one series. So I want to hear your visionary story and then I'll So I was I was a freshman or sophomore in high school Okay, I befriended an upper-classman and he and I got to talking about visionaries

And then one evening we hung out and we went to blockbuster and we picked up visionaries Holy shit, and we watched it. Yeah. And there you have two high school guys. Not talking about girls, not talking, not, not getting high, not anything. Just watching visionaries. We're not getting high because it's you. Right. Yeah.

But just watching visionaries. There you go, man. It's just, I mean, I mean, that's a defining moment of like, you know, when you really knew you were geek. Yeah. Like, and being excited about it. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's fucking awesome.

Yep. Like, dude, no, my, my last series is Thunder of the Barbarian. And it's a Hanabar Barra property. It ran from 80 to 81 and then did a very short period of time in syndication. So my memories of it are from when I was very young. And the thing is, well, they're from when I was very young. Oh, fuck you. No, dude, come on. I was seven. That counts as very young. So, the thunder of the barbarian was a Saturday morning cartoon. I was three. Yeah, whatever. Bite me. Uh, and it was created by Steve Gerber. Of the Gerber knife family. Yeah.

Did it funny? No, let's see. No, the baby food fortune. Yeah. No. Howard the duck. Oh Okay, that was my fourth guess Yeah, okay as a as a Marvel guy I'm surprised you didn't go to that quicker, but He's notably is the creator or her creator of Howard the Duck. He's a Eisner Hall of Fame comic book writer, and He's also well known to to really really hardcore comic book writer. And he's also well known to really, really hard core comic book fans as the author of a very important run of Marvel's Man thing.

Okay. And so he came up kind of with the basic idea and he brought in Jack Kirby. Him I've heard him. Yeah. That was good to say who needs the introduction? Did you do the visual design for the show? Okay, wow.

So whoa, whoa, whoa, back it up. Back it up. He's doing Jack Kirby's helping him on that. This is at the same time that Spider Friends is out. Spider Man is amazing friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stan Lee's doing that. Wow. Oh yeah.

Okay. So the show has like a serious pedigree. Like so much other stuff in the early 80s and this is kind of how it how it ties into visionaries. It's a post-apocalyptic storyline. Okay. So visionaries, of course, is there's a planetary conjunction

that re-awakens magic and causes technology to fail. Okay, it introduces a new dark age with magic and you know, Arthurian themes. In this case, and this is part of the intro to the show at the beginning of every episode, they told you a runaway planet passes between the earth and the moon in 1994. Okay. It does the standard just a little farther into our future than we are. Only even even a shorter period of time than normal because what we've what you point out regularly and what we've established is usually it's like 30 years. Yeah. Okay. Let's you one one demographic generation forward. Yeah. In this case, it was 13. It was half that time.

In this case, it was half that time. So, anyway, 1994, causing massive devastation and real-wakening magic. So, there's our parallel to vision. The story takes place then several hundred or even thousand years after that. We don't really know for sure thousand years after that, we don't really know for sure after new earth has settled into an equilibrium with weird climate changes and a moon that has visibly been cracked in half. Oh wow. Like part of the visual shorthand for, hey kids were going to postocalypse was in the night sky. The moon was visioned for pieces.

Yeah. OK, floating, I mean, like orbiting next to each other, but still clearly very separate. And so the story centers on our main character, the titular, thunder, the barbarian. Thunder's boon companion, Ucla the Mach, who is very clearly a wookie but not a wookie. Speaks in, speaks in grills and snarls and you know big eight-foot-pull hairy

thing the monstrous kind of face. And funny story about Ucla, the Gerber and one of his comic writer friends who he brought in to help him with the project. We're going on a walk in the evening and they were talking about this idea and Gerber was really angry that the network was basically saying, no, no, you've got to have this eight foot tall Harry, you know, wookie character. It was like, man, I don't want to do this. I don't even know what to name the guy. And they were walking past the UCLA campus.

Oh, it's for Intercom and said, how about you, Tammy? It's so bad. Yeah, no, who's a ukula? That's so bad. And back to go. Yeah, no, but it's great, but it's awesome. Yeah. And so, who's a ukula of the mock? And so, and then the third member of the heroic trio

is Ariel, the sorceress. And she has magical abilities specifically focused around being able to create like barriers and bridges of light energy and she can blast foes with with light like magic missile kind of kind of spell stuff. And of course, you know, her costume basically looks like a one piece swimsuit because you know it's 1980. Right. You know. And it's it's and the thing is the storyline is okay. The characters are very heavily influenced by Star Wars because like ukula is clearly a fucking wucky. Sundar carries the sun sword which is a a a hilt that is attached to his forearm. He's got a bacer, this is a colored hilt on it that he's able to attach and an energy blade springs out of it. And it's really clearly lightsaber. He has blonde hair that's in very clearly a 1980 version of a Luke Skywalker, you know, Cassidy

haircut. Right. You know, I mean, there's so many things about this that are like, okay, so you're borrowing an awful lot from Star Wars. So this is a lot of derivative stuff there because like this made a shit ton of money. Hey, you know, and so we have all these almost that are very clearly, you know, influenced to where, you know, and so we have all these almost that are very clearly, you know, influence story, you know, lifted from Star Wars. And the storylines are all pretty, pretty like the plotlines of the stories are all pretty formulaic. But, but the world building in this is absolutely amazing.

From the opening credits of every episode you see that there is an entire planet of weird shit. And our main character and his sidekick and his kind of romantic interest, like it's clear that they have feelings for each other, but they never admit it kind of thing. He never admits it. Like it's clear she likes him and he kind of admits that she matters to him, you know, because he's masculinity. But you know, and kids show.

So like how much can you really do? But it is this wonderfully weird. And I mean that in the sense of like weird fiction kind of way, every episode or every story arc because they would have, they would have story arcs that would involve more than one episode to resolve. And one of them, a sorcerer, some wizard has wound up in a position of dominance over some innocent group of people.

And the Thundar and Ucla and Ariel are, you know, liberating one group of people after another from the machinations or domination of one wizard after another. And there's this wonderful blend of magic, like no kidding, weird fiction, sorcery, magic from beyond the stars, weirdness, stuff, with stars, weirdness, stuff with super technology. Like one of the wizards has super tanks with laser cannons because this all, you know, the cataclysm took place in 1994. So that's a technical from before the fall, you know, and it's, it's the feel of sorcery and super technology was very like black more D&D or I'd be willing to bet money that when Kevin Shimbayat or Henry pronounced his name wrote rifts in 1990, Thunder of the Barbarian was one of his influences. Oh, yeah. Because the whole idea of Rift, of course, for anybody not familiar, is there's a massive cataclysm as magic returns to the world.

Lay lines open up and magical energies released and Earth becomes a grand central station in a massive, interdimensional set of, like it's a link between multiple different dimensions and universes and everything. And like when, and so you have super technology and giant robots and power armor and laser weapons and you have wizardry and demons and all of that. Sure. And so like looking at Thunder of the Barbarian

and looking at Rifts, I'm like, there's no way this wasn't an influence. Right, right. You know, and all of the background art in Thunder is this amazing like Tell Steve Kirby, I want, or Jack Kirby, sorry, don't know where that came from, tell Steve Kirby I want or Jack Kirby sorry don't know where that came from. Tell Jack Kirby I want you to do post apocalypse and and have the apocalypse happen 20 years in the future and just let him run with it and like I

want I want everybody in our audience who knows who Jack Kirby is to imagine that for a moment and then let me tell you it's even better than that nice and and and it only got two seasons. Okay. 81 and it got shelved. In favor of Le Verne and Shirley in the army. I remember that one. Like, I want to find the executive of the network who made that decision. And like, I don't even know what I want to do with them, but I want to, I want to do something

to them. Like, I just want to slap them repeatedly. Like, really? You have Jack fucking Kirby doing the art for this. You have a guy who's going to go on to become a, a, to become a hall of fame comic book writer doing the development of the writing for the storyline for the show and you're gonna replace it with what? Like not even anything that makes you any fucking money. Like, how does this fucking happen? So, you know, it wanted to find interesting, you know, talking about this thematically, because when we talked about doing this episode,

we kind of told each other kind of what some of our series were gonna be, and I knew you were gonna be doing visionaries. Yeah. Because we both mentioned visionaries, and I was like, no, no, you do visionaries. I got another one that I wanted to do instead. And, and this was it. And what strikes me is, so Thundar is 8081. Vision is 87. And in both cases, we have a post-apocalyptic storyline. Yep. And we have the overt mention of technology failing or being

sideline in favor of magic and sorcery. True. And I think it's interesting what that says about the popular mindset of the people who were writing the stuff in the 80s. In the case of thunder, of course, 80s, the Reagan and Electon. We were staring down the barrel of nuclear annihilation. I find it interesting that this apocalypse is not a nuclear apocalypse. It's a cosmic apocalypse. It's caused by a runaway planet, which scientifically would be a rogue planet, but anyway.

In 80, of course, the second oil crisis was basically just behind us. Right. And so there was a very strong post-apocalypse field, everything about the Thundar. And even find it interesting, you know, the focus and thunder on the transformation of the world, 100 years, a thousand years, however long it was after the fact, as opposed to what you pointed out in visionaries

that apocalypse was like last week. And everybody in visionaries was still working to try to figure out how to get used to. Right. This new, you know, it's like the difference between the walking dead and fear of the walking dead. You know, thematically. And I just, yeah, so I mean, that's kind of where my head goes, thinking about those two series. Well, you know, if you think about the day after it comes out two years later. This is true. You know, post-apocalyptic stuff has been there since the 70s, really, because you had the late great planet Earth, you had, I mean, there's a lot of

apocalyptic writing in the 70s because in, I don't know what was, well, I do know it was going on the 70s, but had the evangelical Christian movement in the concept of rapture shifted from a secular Christianity of activism and making the world a good place so that when Jesus comes He's gonna be happy with the job that we did to Yeah, well not just look busy, but like he's gonna pluck me off of this planet and fuck all y'all Yeah, so you know he was not eminent, but imminent, you know, and it's it's there's a decided shift there. Yeah. Yeah, there's a there's a there's a very definite shift in focus So I think if you look at we have to we have to make sure we are the elect when he comes

And if you look at it, you've got to make the world ready for him and if you look philosophically um existentialism gave way to absurdism. Absurdism gave way to deconstructionism. You know, and deconstructionism gave way to postmodernism, and all of those are inherently self-centric. And people are looking inward. So an apocalypse doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to expect or to be focused on because apocalypse is tell us about ourselves. They tell us about what we would do in a stressed situation. Okay, so I can see that. That makes sense.

Yeah, well, and everybody was operating with the kind of idea that we were at five minutes to midnight. Yes. Yeah. And so anybody's theory about what that midnight might look like was of interest.

That's absolutely. Yeah, the way I'm saying that. So I think that's why you're gonna end up with more apocalyptic type stuff. Well, yeah. You know, when, when, when the United States Department of Defense is actively pursuing mutually assured destruction as, you know, the way to stay safe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, wait, let me think this through for a minute. Like, you know, and the thing is, you know, post facto, we can look at the thought process. I don't want to say logic because it's like logic. It has an internal logic. It has an internal logic, but logic emotionally doesn't feel like it fits.

Right. But you look at the internal logic of the thought process and you're like, okay, I can see how you got there. The premise is flawed. Yeah. But retroactively, what the fuck, man? Well, speaking of what the fuck, man, I have two cartoons left. Okay, go.

The first one is the Inhumanoids. Have you ever heard of the Inhumanoids from 1986? Oh, I think I have. This is a sunbow cartoon, and it was part of an effort to run cartoons on Sunday mornings too. Right. And in humanoids totally felt like a Sunday morning cartoon. It was the bee squad of cartoons.

There was less pizzazz. It was also run on syndicated networks because football was on the big three. Oh, dude, I remember this one. Yes. I remember this one. This one fucked me up. It fucked a lot of people up. It did not even. It did not even.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, this is horror meets cartoons on Sundays. Yeah. This feature, the vocal talents of Michael Bell, who played Duke in G.I. Joe. He played Drew Pickles and Rugrats, and Lance in Voltron. It had William Callaway, who did Aquaman in Super Friends, and Professor Keenbeen in

Richie Rich. And it had Ed Gilbert, Ballue from Tailspin, and the priest from Johnny Got His Gun. Oh wow. Okay. Dielspin and the priest from Johnny got his gun. Oh wow. Okay. So there's a group of people called Earth Corps and they are subterranean explorer scientists and clunky personal armor.

And they accidentally are going to unleash evil creatures from under the ground. They find decompose, who's encased in Amber in Big Sur and they unleash him unwitting. Yeah, there's there's oh my god level of the level of Elritch horror. Decompose. No, I don't remember the voice, but I remember this is that the one with an exposed ribcage skull. Yes.

Yes. Fuck to me. I remember this is that the one with the exposed ribcage yes, yes, y'all Fucked me up. Yeah, now there's a bad guy in dust realist named blackthorn shore and he sees profit in these Explorations and he So awesome he unleashes tendril a monster that frees decomposed who is on display in San Francisco. And I think that's what really twigged me about this cartoon. It was based in a city that I knew. So most cartoons were set really far away from me. And this was all in California. And it was for the most part in San Francisco.

Now the Earth Corps are aided by sentient Redwood trees, an ancient race called the Moutores or Moutors who have sealed the evil subtrainially. The leader of the inhumanoid is a guy named Metlar and he's kept imprisoned by a Magna Corps, another Moutor who's keeping the Titan in Bay. Now, eventually, the government gets involved and summarily cuts the budget of the very people who are trying to keep evil underground, which then enables the evil Black Thorn shore corporation to use his own metal magnetic suit, schematics which he'd stolen from Earth Corps, like a good industrialist would, to control the evil that is metlar. Of course, guess what happens with,

you know, he's powered by hubris. So the whole series has a full plot that we can actually follow. Yeah, I'm from the hubris. Look for the H-label. That needs to be, that needs to be, you want to do the trick of, so we're powered by hubris.

I love that. That's brilliant. OK. So there's an actual plot that we follow all the way through. It's not bottle episodes. And there's several subplots that are also playing out. There's a ton of environmental stuff that's tied into what happens when these malevolent creatures rise up

and affect the world that we live on. And they make use of nuclear armament build that has occurred during the Cold War, as well as an effort to work together with Soviets to stop these issues. So there's a lot of taking on glass notes in perestroika. There's a lot of taking on mutual arms reductions and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. And this show is deep. No pun actually intended. Which is rare. I know. Oh, this show. It's got horror elements. It's kind of reminiscent of Lovecraft.

It's immensely. Yeah. Reminus, I mean, you know, speaking as the guy who, you know, tangentially referenced Lovecraft when talking about Howard. Yeah, no, this, you know, I mean, you know, decompose is and I mean, let's talk about tendril. Yeah. Yeah. Is is like obviously a Kthulu XB like, know you know towering figure you know tentacles,

tentacles, yeah like maybe a mollusk, maybe seaweed, we don't know. Right. And it feels very Greek Titan. I can't say that Titanomaki. Titanomaki. Titanomaki. Thank you. Titanomaki? Titanomaki? Titanomaki, thank you. It's got that too. You're keeping these things under wraps, you know. It's got character development. Permanent things actually happen to the characters, and there's a lot of internal struggles for some of them. So it was just really different from the rest of the cartoons that we saw in 86, and it was one of the first proto-environmental cartoons and it took it on in a very different way. Yeah, and I really want to dive into that a little bit. Scientists talked to trees for advice on things that they were clearly going to impact the world in a horror based environmentalist way. It also had political corruption and corporate backing of that same thing as a backdrop

to what's going on with a senator master's in who is a do nothing senator who cuts the funding at shores request. Right. Hi, hi, hi, lady. Shitbag. Yes. Shitbag politicians. That's right. In the pocket of a massive conglomerate. Yeah. I vaguely, you know, I never caught very many episodes of this, but I remember it like I said, it fucked me up because you can pose. Yeah. Like terrifying. Yeah. I remember thinking at the time like this is a cartoon. Yeah. So.

Holy moly. Yeah. This highlights the importance of a budget when it comes to power over scientists and the ambitions that politicians seek to wield. He. You're a fucking adult, is that? Right.

He decides to run for president and he gets easily manipulated by shore and metlar. I would just point out you have a guy who decides to run for president who is easily manipulated by foreign power. Yeah, and corporations. Yeah, he bumbles. He has no real platform. He tries to convince he tries to crib talking points from his opponents for president those terms meant stuff. And he's an idiot running for president on a populist platform who comes dangerously close to getting into office. I mean, could you imagine? Still count, does it still count as dangerously close if somebody succeeds? That's even more dangerous. That is dangerously dead on. Yeah. Yeah. Now, do you remember in G.I. Joe that there was a reporter whose name was Hector Ramirez and he was questioning the value of G.I. Joe? Yeah. He's in this. He's in this. wait wait backup backup. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck up. Yep the same character same character and he was literally this literally happens in the

G.I.J.O. universe like we could point to a concrete link. Yes, well not only that this also Exist in the gem in the holograms universe Fuck you. The the heraldor Rivera send up of Hector Ramirez exists in all three. He's the host of 20 questions. What? Yeah, okay. Okay.

Yeah, folks, in listing audience, you cannot cannot see my face but like my mind is blown here Wait, yeah, you're telling me Immunovids Gemini Hollinger and I was Angie a Joe all happened in the same universe. Yes, and the in humanoid How Dude yeah and the Inhumanites. Yeah. How the dude. Yeah. This is literally earth shattering. Like come on. Yeah.

Well, and as the host of 20 questions. I wanna see that, okay, somebody on the internet already knows this. I need to find the fan fit crossover. Yeah. And as the host of, as the host of 20 questions, he generally just gets in the way, bumbles his way through, tries to be sensationalistic, and then he tries to get his cue factor up as much as possible.

Well, yeah, yeah. So this, because it was the the okay, this was 87 this was 86 86 so this is It's right after he opened out complete late. Well, it was late Reagan era. Yeah, what I'm gonna Yeah, so so yeah portrayal of the media is gonna be colored by that. Yeah, well and her all the Rivera being really popular colored by that. Yeah well and heraldor Rivera being really popular. Yeah me who he was. Yeah and still is really interesting. Oddly. Hi Hi Heraldor. How you doing? So this show we actually if we actually get his attention I'll be stunned but yeah. Yeah. Heraldor. Fuck you. Anyway moving on sorry. This show was canceled because the toys were too big to be affordable by the parents. Yep.

So, SunBo said you can stay on for the full run of 13 episodes. Again, provided that you let us advertise other products for more successful series on it. Wow. How how obviously crassly capitalistic manipulative getting possibly be. Yeah. Wow. So so I want to say, I remember seeing a decompose

yes, figure. Because you could put other figures inside it. Yeah, because it's because it's open up. Like, oh my god, it was fucking terrifying. Yeah, it was iconic. Yeah, yeah. And there was slime that you could pour over it. Oh, yeah, no, it's.

Yeah, like there was a combination of fascination and absolute horror involved. Because it was basically horror cartoon. Let's not lie. And yeah, I remember seeing it. I remember looking at it going, oh my god, that's huge. And I remember personally having like no interest in it at all. Yeah. I kind of would bet like I remember seeing a couple of them

who says this show and realizing this is really, this is a big, this is a big idea show. Mm-hmm. And not really wanting to engage with it. Yeah. Very much beyond that. Like, I feel like this is a case of like nowadays, a series like this could do really well on a niche network, like Cartoon Network.

Sure. You know, as an animated series for adults, but because of animation, ghetto in the 80s, it was targeted at kids. And on the one hand, that's kind of cool because let's not talk down to kids. But on the other hand, it was clear that the writers really had a lot of stuff they wanted to do that it's like, you really need to be given a budget and like the freedom to engage an older audience. Yeah. Yeah. Like look at what has been done with, you know, Shira and the princesses of power and Voltron on Cartoon Network now and be like, like, no, we're not

targeting eight year olds. We're targeting 20 year olds. Right. You know, yeah. I think for everything that you've talked about with what it had to say about politics, what it had to say about all of those themes, I really genuinely, I totally agree with you. This deserves more time and attention. And I really want to see this revived by Cartoon Network for an audience

because there's so much that can be done with this. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. Now the last one I'm going to close with may well be my favorite on the list. And it is called the Toxic Crusaders. Okay. It's a cartoon that was based on the toxic Avenger.

Toxic Avenger, which was an aroma film. Our rated Droma film and it was in this cartoon is grotesque and brilliant overall. Okay, so it featured the vocal talents of Roger Bumpus, who later go on to be Squidward. Okay. Chuck McCann, who was Duckworth in Ducktails. Yeah. And Katie Suzy, famous for being Lola Bunny, and also Janine from the Real Ghostbusters. Oh, okay. All right.

So, do you know this cartoon at all or no? I remember like title cards. Okay. Watched it. Yeah. Because it was it was a bit Utrei for me. Sure. It has it has one of the best theme songs. I'm the conventional one of the two of us. So, you know, clearly it has one of the best theme songs there was there toxic crew Saiders toxic crew Saiders and then some words explaining what happened to them very specifically and then toxic crew Saiders toxic crew

Yeah, yeah How much time we're really gonna spend on developing lyrics for this like yeah, let's- Well, it's a minute and six seconds long the song was, but it absolutely talks about like how he got started and it tells you the very specifics of, you know, like there's no subtlety in their in their song. It's great. So you follow a character named Toxie, who is a janitor turned superhero with tremendous strength and endurance due to falling into a vat of Toxic chemicals at the gym that he's a janitor at. Now at the time he was wearing a tutu and because he had

to dress up for something I forget exactly what and holding on to a mop. Now the mop, named mop, was also imbued with toxic superpowers. Okay. So it's kind of like a singing sword, except it doesn't sing. It's a dancing sword. Okay. All right. He's dancing mop. Yeah.

He's joined by No Zone, who is a pilot who flew through the Oh Zone layer and then crashed into a silo of radioactive pepper. Ozone layer. 80s. This was a big fucking deal. So it was toxic sludge by the way. Well, yeah, but, you know, we heard a lot more in detail about the ozone layer as true kids. That's very true. And it's interesting. The scientist responsible for chlorofluorocarbons, the CFCs. Yeah.

Yeah, for damaging the ozone layer, is the same guy who developed methylated lead in gasoline. He just was, was he trying to beat the guy who came up with chemical weapons in World War I? Like what the shit? I don't wonder, don't shit. Yeah, no, that's a remarkably fascinating and like, who the fuck is this guy? No doubt out of a brief history of everything by Bill Bryson. Okay. Which I highly recommend as a book,

because you learn shit like that out of it and it's written very entertainingly in general. But yeah, wow. So yeah, because in the 80s, of course, as school kids, we were bombarded with the recently discovered understanding that holy shit, CFCs are destroying the ozone layer. We're going to stop using these things. Yes.

And that's like the only sort of kind of environmental victory, like real victory, I can think of in the course of my lifetime, is that, you know, the ozone layer has largely recovered. Yeah. You know, because we figured out we were fucking it up and we stopped. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Turns out we could actually do shit when we list the science.

When we all decided to list the scientists and follow their limitations, we could fix things like, wow. Mm-hmm. Well, they're also joined by major disaster, who is a military man who fell into a radioactive swamp and got the power to control plants, which is my favorite guy in the series because of reasons that I'll illuminate in a minute.

There is also headbanger, who is a conjoined scientist and telegram delivery boy. They both fell into an atom smasher at the same time and ended up fused. Now originally this mono duo worked for Dr. Killamoff to do evil stuff but they switch sides because women liked toxic crusaders better. Okay wait. Yep. This day was literally dr. Killamoff. Yes. I love how that manages to be completely on the nose and vaguely Russian at the same time. Yes. completely on the nose and vaguely Russian at the same time. Yes. Not even vaguely, fuck vaguely. Yeah, it's just like, no, no.

No. Wow. And finally, you get the character Junkyard, who is a homeless man and a dog that refused together by lightning and a toxic sludge spill onto both of them. Okay, so see, you started out with a lightning and I was like, wait, what? And then you got those toxic. Yeah. Okay, so see you started out with a lighting and I was like wait what and then you're going to talk. Yeah, okay. Now their antagonists are Zara Zosta who is the ruler of Smogula, a different planet. And his chief agent is Dr. Kilmoff who has to wear a ribbreather when he's on healthy planets. Psycho is the Cassandra of the bad guys,

who always tells them in excruciating detail the entire plot of the episode, and then they do stuff anyway, and then he tells them. Okay. Bonehead is similar to Toxie. In fact, he was one of the Jim Rat bullies who led to Toxie's accident, and then he got the same from Toxie.

And then there's a bunch of others that the fab four take on. Now it is a tremendously subversive cartoon. Think of all the heroes. Just think of the heroes. They're all hideously deformed in some grotesque way and yet they're heroes. So you know I love that already. Yeah, right off the bat I can tell this is going to be fucking cat for you. Yes. test-quake and yet they're heroes. So you know I love that already. Yeah, right off the bat, I can tell this is going to be fucking cat. Yeah.

Yes. But also you have a janitor working class. You have a scientist who's stuck to your delivery boy. So you've got the the merging of the working and the professional classes. You have a homeless man and you have two military men. Okay, yeah. Now this is a huge inversion of your standard Marvel and DC heroes where they're classically beautiful,

except for of course the Fantastic Four, which I talked about before. Which we've gone into, which you went into in remarkable detail. Yeah, previously, yes. Now these guys are regularly roasting the lack of environmental policies and efforts. And they're doing it in 1991. And they even lightly roast false activism with the character Mr. Earth, who does more harm than good. Okay, wait, man. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. years. Really? Yeah, this is 91. I want to say Captain Planet was 94, but I might be off by a

year or two, because I usually am. So, yeah, Mr. Earth does a lot more harm to the good. Now, these guys are common folks with common sense solutions to the problems that they see. They even take on the need for rent control in their final episode. Really? Yes. Rent controls. Yes. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, Captain Planet did come out the year before. So I was wrong. Okay. Yeah, I was gonna say. Yeah. Mr. Herskartoon. Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah.

So, at the end of it, like I said, they're fighting to bring a corporation, basically, that is trying to bring them to account while being environmentally safe. So they're trying to create, rent control, they're trying to show why this corporation is bad and they're trying to create rent control. They're trying to show why this corporation is bad and they're trying to be environmentally safe. Now, sadly, they had planned a crossover with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it never happened. That would have been perfect.

Yep. It's like, hey, you were made by Slugged too. Holy crap. Now, the reason why is because they were canceled, do you like to guess how many episodes they got? 13. 13. So I am five for five or six for six, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. And this deserves so much more. I'm sure Eastman and Laird would have been like totally unborn with their cover. Yes. Yes. So in 91 there was so much more you could have taken on and you could have used those as breaks between the fights

with the agents of smogula. You had a homeless hero. You had a class struggle hero. You had a split personality class struggle hero. you had two military heroes whose pensions were never discussed You had whose disability benefits were never discussed You had like let's let's have a real conversation VA yeah, oh like they absolutely could have done that Well, you know, you're not you're not actually suffering any kind of disability because you've got superpowers. So like, right. Sorry.

You know, you didn't disclose those superpowers when you signed up. We actually need to take back your signing bonus. Yeah. Like they could absolutely be an episode. Yeah, that'd be totally an episode. Yeah. Yeah. This show was so self-aware that you you it makes tiny tunes and animaniacs

Seemed dim-witted by comparison I'm sure like it just like the Cassandra of the group that I told you about yeah It's a psycho the the shit that he would say to Dr. Killamoff and and he would then just turn to the screen and blink while Dr. Killamoff came up with reasons why it didn't work The cancellation might just be due to the fact that environmental saturation and cartoons existed at the time like we were saying Captain planet seemed to have everything pretty well-cornered there teenage mitten Ninja Turtles also were dealing with With with things like. That's some, add some points that brought up, yeah?

I can see that. But this show had cartoons and comic books and a video game, and it had a video game on the Sega Genesis. I vaguely remember that. Yes. It was so grotesquely fun and styrical. It was so grotesquely fun and it's tyracle.

This is another one that if anybody are listening on it, it's no one who works for cartoon network or who knows anybody who knows anybody who works for cartoon network. Like talk to them. Yes.

Get this show played. Figure out how to make this happen. Yes. Like, at least give this some more air time. Mm-hmm. And if anybody can be convinced to, you know, talk to Troma works about the license for this. Like, yes.

Dude, there's no reason in, as we've, as we've talked about before, like we're living in now an environment where with the number of networks there are, you can make money. Yeah. Not, you know, huge obscene, killer money, but you can, you can make a profit finding a niche and, and fulfilling the needs of that niche. And like there are people who would watch this who would totally be like, no, seriously, you've got to check this out. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And not and not only, you know, Xers like you and me, but Zoomers, who'd be looking at this like,

oh wait, hold on, this is a thing, like, really? You know, like there's no reason why this show are really any of them that we've talked about. Well, I can't even tie your shirts because it was pretty derivative. But, you know, the others that we've talked about are all series that I think if somebody took a look at them and said, no, you know what?

I can make that work. You couldn't make that work on sci-fi or on Cartoon network, or someone. I think there's there's legitimate reason and especially with something that's dealing with important enough topics like the environment. Yeah, you know, all the shit like, you know, you talked about how much there was to attack in 1991, like how much more shit is there to attack in 2021? Oh, and this show was so self-aware. It could just say like, hey, didn't we deal with this in 1991?

Did we? Did we? Clearly we didn't. 30, 30 fucking years ago. Yeah. How did this not get solved? And then you would have somebody go, no, no, we didn't. And looking straight at the camera. Yeah.

You know, so. And zoomers and looking straight at the camera. Yeah, you know, so my favorite character was major disaster. Now here's why he had the power to control plants. At some point, the show had some sort of toxic waste facility that was disastrally spilling toxins into the air and nobody could figure out how to beat it. And major disaster used his power to lift it up and away, solving the problem at the end. Everybody looked at him, a scance wondering how that had happened and he calmly explained to everyone that he could control plants. And since it was a toxic waste plant. Wow! That was therefore within his control, and everyone just accepted it, and that pun worked, and it's why it worked. And Psycho, the character who always talks, you know, tells the bad guys,

here's what's going to happen. He had he had he had predicted it almost let her perfect He said what if one of the toxic crusaders actually has a hidden ability in like the way that they can express their thing and it can do exactly the thing that happened But Dr. Kilmoff of course didn't listen the only flaw in his plan was the pun. So puns can save the planet. And so you're sold. That's right. Game over. But I remember in 1991, appreciating the shit out of that. Okay, my star was it's was there. It's it's it's it's it's pretty appreciable. I gotta admit, there is value in that.

I look at that as kind of a callback as the right word, but you think about in folklore the way language gets played with. And, you know, when heroes have special power, special abilities and whatever, and storytellers would make a living out of twists like that. Yep. Absolutely. Even without necessarily just being a pun, I like the kind of folklore,

well, you know, turns out it was a plant, you know. Yeah. And, and oh, well, okay, that works then. And everybody was, you know, it's so good. Okay, all right, we're in, and we're walking, you know. Yeah, no, I ain't even mad. Yeah. I feel no need to say, good day. That works for me. And especially when

you're dealing with something that is overtly satirical. Yes. I think I think in self-aware. Yeah. I think there's a real value in giving kids. Because again, this was in you know 90 and you said 91 91 yeah So we're still we're still dealing with you know kind of kind of later end of because because it was shortly after this That animation started to get a little bit more like you can be grown up and watch certain cartoons. But we're still dealing with animation ghetto. You know, it's the kids medium kind of thing. And I think anybody who gives kids credit for being smart enough, savvy enough, whatever you want to say, to get the idea of satire. I think needs to be recognized for that. I would agree.

Because I think there has always been, there continues to be sadly, but it's a little bit less now. But I know in the 80s, there was this assumption that, well, you know, kids aren't necessarily going to get it. And the satire was always aimed at parents. Right. And you know, the thing is, if you actually spend any time around kids, like being a public school teacher, you understand this. In a way that other adults don't, kids get satire. In some ways, I think they get it better than adults do.

Oh, yeah. Especially middle schoolers and early high schoolers, like are in that developmental zone, where their bullshit detectors are on maximum sensitivity. And if you throw anything satirical at them, they're gonna be like, oh my God. Growing up, they're all such fucking hypocrites, like holy shit.

Oh yeah. And of course, as an adult, you recognize that, well, you know, we're not always hypocrites. We just look like we're hypocrites because you're not quite old enough to understand what we're trying to tell you. And there is that going on, but like if you want to point satire at a 13 year old, like fucking do it.

Like they will eat it up. And if any of any group that I think needs to be, if I were to change the media landscape in a meaningful way, one of the things I would want to do is be like, no, no, if you're going to do a show for 12 and 13-year-olds, because I'm teaching seventh and eighth graders. So this is my big brick. If you're going to do a series for 12 and 13-year-olds, like, no, no, don't talk fucking down to them. Right.

Like, whatever you do, don't make the mistake of talking down to them. Right. Like whatever you do, don't make the mistake of talking down to them. Assume they are, if not smarter than you think, assume they are savvier than you think and run with it. Yeah. And they will, and they will eat it up

and what you will wind up creating will be far better for the effort. You know, and so yeah, I think I think a show like this one. Toxic Crusaders, yeah. Toxic Crusaders. Because I want to go back to toxic vangerous the title because I know that's the source material. But yeah, you know, a show like toxic crusaders a show like like take teenage

mutant Ninja Turtles and make it a little bit less. I'm trying to think what the word is I'm looking for. Make it a little bit more subversive. Make it a little bit more satirical. Like up up the level of that involved in it and aim that at my students and they will go ape shit. Right. Because because if you if you talk to them in a way that recognizes their intelligence, they're going to love you for it because not enough people do that. Like a huge reason that our friend Tessa and millennials are so desperately in love with SpongeBob Squarepants. It's because like when they were that age, it was talking to them in a way that was like,

no, no, we're not gonna talk down to you. We're gonna be satirical and sarcastic and we're gonna do this stuff. And they're like, oh my God, these are my people, this is my language. Like if producers of media for young people could figure that out and stick with it, I think they'd be doing the world of service

because sarcasm is kind of a tool in critical thinking. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And subversion. And so I think if we if we look at the the cartoons that you liked that you wanted to see go on, yeah, they all had rich worlds. They all had archetypical characters. Yes. Two of which dealt with the C and one was post-apocalyptic. Yeah. If we look at mine, they all had 13 episodes. They always dealt with ideas of identity. Yeah. And if they didn't, then they were all subversive. I think it's interesting that mine are very earnest. It has the first leaner direction of being subversive. My minor bratty is fuck. lean in direction of being subversive. My minor bratty is fuck.

Well, you know, there's an earnestness in being bratty to it can be. You know, there's certainly a purity to it. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, there's there's a straight forwardness to it that that, you know, like there's there's so much like, no, I mustn't do that restraint involved in being polypure heart, you know, that like, right, it's there's so much like no I mustn't do that restraint involved in being polypure heart, you know, that like it's it's it's deliberating not not to not to have to worry about that. But you know, yeah, I think I think it does it does say an awful

lot about the two of us what it is that we what we chose. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Well, we've given people two episodes of fantastic recommendations, probably easily found on YouTube. Oh, all of them, I'm sure. I know, I know for a fact, Thunder of the Barbarian and Tiger Sharks, we found on you too. I'm not as sure about Pirates of Dark Water, but I think parts of it can, however, I do know the Pirates of Dark Water got a DVD release. At least.

Nice. You know, it deserves a third fucking season cartoon network, Hannah Barbera, get on it. Let us know how the story ends even if you have to cast other voice actors, except Hector Elizondo, keep Hector Elizondo for the long time. Bringing back. Bringing back. Keep Hector Elizondo, it's holy crap.

But everybody else, you can, I mean, if you need to, you can change them out. But yeah. Cool. Well, where can people find you on social medias if they want to discuss editing ideas? I can be found on Twitter as a HBLAQ. I can be found on Instagram as a HBLAQ. I can be found on TikTok as Mr. Blalock, I can be found on TikTok as Mr. Blaylock, because that's how I introduce myself to my students. And of course, the two of us collectively can be found on Twitter at Geek History Time. And if they want to correct you

about some point of lore with the toxic crusaders, where can they find you? You can find me at at the harmony, two h's in the middle, on the Twitter and the insta. And like I said, you can find us at at Geek History Time. You can also find this podcast on Stitcher, Spotify, as well as the Apple podcast app. on Stitcher, Spotify, as well as the Apple Podcast app. And we would love it if you would please go rate, subscribe, review, let us know what you think, especially if it's got the five stars that gets our

QFactor up and it allows your friends to share it with you more often. So, yes, we would love it if you would please rate, subscribe and review. But otherwise you can find me at on Tuesday nights at twitch.tv forward slash capital puns Sling in puns all over the place and then there's the occasional Contest throughout the world that I'm a part of sometimes

So yeah, so for geek history of time rate subscribe and review, please I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock and until next time, Lords of Light!