Ever get nostalgic about your childhood? I do, especially recently about the TV shows I watched when I was a kid. This is helped in large part of course by the magical creations of Youtube and Wikipedia, which have allowed me to relive, in some small measure, a bit of those good old shows. I've been able to find the old show intros... and in more than one case, entire episodes! And now I feel like sharing. Of course, there's a lot of shows out there, and I don't feel like inundating... so I'm gonna do a few at a time. These are in no particular order, nor with any particular theme. Now, let's see if I can figure out this whole "embedding" thing...
This old Disney cartoon is one of my earliest and fondest memories of TV cartoons. I would have been four and five when the show first aired, and probably remember it more from reruns on the Disney Afternoon after-school block. This 'toon featured a detective/rescue agency headed up by the two chipmunk title characters who went around doing good deeds for other animals and solving cases that "go slipping through the cracks." The show also starred Gadget, a brilliant girl mouse inventor, a strong-arming Australian mouse named Monterey Jack (as in the cheese, natch), and Zipper the fly - who didn't speak intelligibly but tended to be the funniest (to me, as a four, five, six, seven year old). As with most Disney cartoons, lots of humor and slapstick, but I also remember a lot of teamwork and friendship messages, especially about being gentle with one another's foibles and perseverance.
This cartoon redefined, to a large extent, what American cartoons could be and introduced an entire generation of young people to the Batman character. Dark and moody with a penchant for serious drama and little slapstick, I could probably rewatch this cartoon as a 20-something and still really like it. I would've been 7, almost 8, when Batman came on the air, and 10 when it ended, and that sounds about right, though I no doubt caught it in re-runs as well. The art deco and rather timeless look to Gotham (relatively high tech, but police in zeppelins for example) really appealed to me, since Batman was very clearly in the "real world" but still separate and comic-booky enough. Aside from Batman (and Robin, Batgirl, Alfred) however, the villains of Batman were particularly well-done, especially the Joker and Mr. Freeze. This particular cartoon spawned a series of 'toons roughly linked, with the last show not ending until 2006.
3/4. Where in the World/Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego - September '91 to October '96 and February '94 to January '99, respectively
If the Oregon Trail was the definitive early computer game(s) for kids my age, Carmen Sandiego comes in a very close second, if not surpassing it. The games basically were educational, originally about Geography (Where in the World...), in which the player would try and catch the greatest thief in the world, Carmen Sandiego. There was an early '90s gameshow which I followed faithfully, and one of the highlights was Rockapella's song that played at the end of the show (apologies for the video, which is just clips strung together to the song). A few years later, there was a Saturday morning dramatic cartoon with the same basic premise and starring sibling detectives trying to catch Carmen. To this day, I think of Carmen Sandiego as the greatest fictional thief ever and basically uncatchable. And my love of history and geography was at least partly stoked by these shows (and games).
4. Gargoyles - First run October '94 to February '97
(apologies for the annoying ad)
The success of the Batman cartoon led to Disney considering making their own cartoon with a more mature bent to take advantage of the pre-teen/teen demographic, and this show worked perfectly for me. I liked it for many of the reasons I liked Batman - excellent writing, complex plots, darker themes (all keeping in mind I watched this show first-run and in re-runs until I was maybe 16), and I loved the voice cast. Where Batman was comic-books and detective stuff, Gargoyles was medieval history and mythology, and this is another series I could probably watch again and really like.
So that's round 1. Long post, but maybe this rekindled some memories, or interested in some new ones.
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