Many I would mention are already here, so I’m throwing in Reboot!
Finally, a current discussion about Reboot to bring this up in.
Okay, so Matrix from the later seasons was absolutely just a parody of Cable from X-Men, right? With the gun, and the sleeveless armor, and the gold eye?
Yeah, it’s been a while so I looked up the character’s arc and it does seem that he is inspired from Cable and/or Solid Snake (who actually debuted in Metal Gear in 1987).
Ahh… Always felt like that was a parody or callback, and never figured it out!
Pirates of Dark Water
Samurai Pizza Cats
I thought I was the only one.
Well met fellow internet stranger!
The Secret Show - this old British cartoon about secret agents that would go on exciting missions and such! I swear that oversimplified corporate art style took inspiration from The Secret Show!
Silverhawks
Yes! Outer space Thundercats!
It was so good!
Dino Riders*
Dinosaucers
Denver the Last Dinosaur
Star Com
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors*
War Planets
The Centurions
Visionaries*
* I had the toys for these ones
I adored Denver the last dinosaur when I was little. That and Danger Mouse were two of my favorites.
gargoyles of couse,
Don’t hear much about Count Duckula or The Raccoons anymore.
Oh yea, I remember my Duckula casette tapes!
Excuse me?
Haha! Beg your pardon. Eat any good broccoli sandwiches recently?
Nanny makes some killer food.
Both of those had theme songs which went really hard.
Yup! I was watching this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRPbKIXoEsI
Made me think of it.
I have seen them do this live in concert, it was entirely amazing!
The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin had surprisingly good animation and writing.
In the early 80s there was a weird cartoon called Pandamonium, about three pandas who could merge together to make some kind of superpanda. They traveled the world with a couple of humans trying to protect it from an evil alien called Montragor. It was an early production of Marvel Animation and little of it survives online now.
Saturday Supercade adapted arcade games (and also Pitfall) into short cartoon episodes. It featured the first cartoon version of Mario and Donkey Kong, long before any others. Pitfall’s supporting characters Rhonda and Quickclaw made appearances in the Pitfall II: Lost Caverns game.
The Real Ghostbusters wasn’t really obscure, but J. Michael Straczynski wrote for it, and he wrote an episode involving Cthulhu. (He also was story editor on He-Man, and penned the episode it was revealed that Teela was The Sorceress’s daughter.)
There are a number of cartoons that Cartoon Network hyped up then just kind of forgot about: Mike, Lu and Og, Sheep in the Big City and Whatever Happened to Robot Jones are three in particular.
Oh, and the Earthworm Jim cartoon was really funny! It kind of rests these days in the shadow of the much more popular Freakazoid and The Tick, but it deserves to be rewatched now.
Exo Squad.
One of the first (to young me) serial cartoons that had an ongoing plot week to week.
The Herculoids from Space Stars… which included Space Ghost and Astro. Also Captain Caaaaavemaaaan! Also of course loved Inspector Gadget and Thundercats.
Favorite of all time. Exosquad. Mech armor, space warfare, synthetic humans, space pirates, insurgency, spies, politics, slavery and freedom from it, reproductive rights, clones and resurrection- yes this was all in a kid’s cartoon and it was awesome. That was two seasons. Sadly they canceled it before season 3 where they were hinting at ALIENS.
didn’t they cross over with battletech or robotech? was too old by the time it came out but recall seeing some stuff…
Not as far as I know, but I’m willing to be wrong. I only ever knew about the TV show.
apparently it was robotech, but the toy lines, not the series; I was a huge robotech fan as a kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exosquad
The toys were often compared to the popular Robotech franchise, and Playmates acquired the license to Robotech to produce both toy lines under the same label, spawning rumors of a possible crossover.[13][unreliable source?] This possibility was considered by the authors but later abandoned. Today the Exosquad toys are considered highly collectible along with their boxes.
Ah that makes sense. They did have a similar vibe so I could have absolutely seen a crossover happening. Maybe if the show hadn’t been canceled.
Thanks for the info.
The little chalk drawing kid
Yep.
Had cable growing up in Norway and DJ Cat Show and Fun Factory showed most of these.
Think I have randomly sung the Denver the last Dinosaur song at least once a week since 1988
Dragon Tales!
