Ill-conceived cartoons

[Ash]

It wasn't really an ill conceived toon in my opinion but I did have friends that disliked it....

Remember M.A.S.K.?
It stood for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand

I used to watch that show and collect the toys religiously!

[Menard]

I actually liked M.A.S.K. too. That is the early episodes. It got rather ridiculous when they started replacing characters and had twin badguys.

[ErikJ]

What about those underwater Smurf like things? Snorks I think they were called.

[DaveMunger]

I see Snork shirts now sometimes on kids who've never heard of them.

[Sam]

I loved Mask. It's my second favorite cartoon ever. I only wish I taped a couple of episodes or something. Funny thing about the toys, I had all the characters but, none of the vehicles.

[chris]

Gilligan's Planet .... a cartoon based on Gilligan's Island T-V show, but based in space.

Turbo Teen - a teen and car become morphed together in a science experiment... when the teen gets hot he turns into a car... when he gets cooled down (usually by ice cubes or cold water) he turns back into a teen.

Rubik the Amazing Cube - an alien that looks like a Rubik's Cube and has a blue face that can do amazing things for a family.

All from the 80's .... chris

[AndyC]

I completely forgot all of the many crimes against the Flintstones. Redoing classic cartoons as crappy forgettable shows for 'today's kids' is definitely nothing new.

Remember the All-New Flintstones Comedy Hour of the early 70s, with teenage Pebbles and Bam Bam, and their pals with names like Moonrock and Fabian?

Or there's Fred and Barney Meet the Thing, as well as Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo. Stupidest part was that in both cases, they were separate cartoons. Fred and Barney never met the Thing or the Shmoo.

There was the incarnation in which Fred lived next door to Frank Frankenstone for some reason. The Gruesomes, for a couple of original episodes, were a funny nod to the Addams Family, but what the heck was this about?

And the other characters from the late 70s/early 80s, such as O.K. Simpstone were equally cheesy.

There have also been any number of crappy movie-length Flintstones cartoons too.

Interestingly, after all that, it's still the original series everybody remembers. I had to think pretty hard to remember the others. Kind of gives you hope, doesn't it?

[Ozzymandias]

One of the greatest creations of Al Capp before he became a mean right-wing jerk.

The Schmoos was a great satire on the New Deal. You could cook them and eat them, use them as money, and use them as transportation. Wall Street hated them and sought to destroy them, but they kept coming back and reproducing at alarming rates.

Hanna Barbera killed the Schmoo (they only used one) by putting him in a neo-Scooby Doo rip off. Then had the nerve to rerun it as part of the Flintstones.

Extra coolness: Rival cartoonist Ham Fisher was upset that his former assistant Capp was becoming so popular that he went before Congress and to varrious media outlets claiming that the Schmoo was to look like a part of the male anatomy (SHOCK! GASP!).

[AndyC]

Yeah, I remember my mom telling me about the original Shmoos when the 80s version came out. She grew up in the 30s and 40s, and is well versed in the lore of Dogpatch comics.

I tried to share this information with my best friend at the time, and his reply was "It's Mighty Mysteries Comics, not Dogpatch!" I gave up trying to explain any further.

Funny, for a while there, Sccoby Doo clones seemd to be just about all HB knew how to make. Goofy cartoon animal (or shapeshifting Barbapapa wannabe, or caveman or ghost of an old-west prospector) teamed up with a group of teenagers to solve mysteries, or have some kind of wacky adventures.

[Eirik]

I always thought Grape Ape felt like a marketing gimmick that somehow outlived its product.  Like there was a "Grape Ape Grape Cola" or something released at the same time as the cartoon but got yanked off shelfs after a few months while the popular cartoon lived on.

A mix of Rodney Dangerfieldand Curley from the Three Stooges as a shark teamed up with Fred-Shaggy-Velma-Daphne clones solving underwater mysteries in "Jabberjaw" was an ill-conceived cartoon, but somehow it worked anyway.

[Yaddo 42]

Ah, Turbo Teen, one of those shows built around the hero's power activating at inappropriate times like the old gimmick of "I have to sneeze," at exactly the worst moment. Plus the way his face deformed when changing into the car was a little too freaky looking for a kids show.

There was a Thing solo cartoon in the late 70s- early 80s, that was awful and dull. Ben Grimm was an awkward, and I think poor, teen who could change into the Thing when he would link two magic rings together and recite the lame magic chant, "Thing Ring, do your thing!" He had to do and say something similar to change back. Since he usually changed two or three times per episode, they could burn up a couple minutes per episode using the same animation each time. Grimm spent every episode moping about his miserable life and how the stuckup kids (basically every other character on the show) hated him and poked fun of him in between saving their ungrateful butts.  

Grape Ape, a cartoon built around a character being so big and dumb that he was actually a burdon and a danger to other characters. Yet, it was okay because he had the dog sidekick to say "I'm sorry".

I remember the Schmoo cartoons. I had heard it was a character from an old comic strip, but only knew it from the cartoon. I hated trying to explain to adults how I knew what the character was even though the comic strip was "before my time".

[Fearless Freep]

Since he usually changed two or three times per episode, they could burn up a couple minutes per episode using the same animation each time.

I like on "Static Shock" that the earllier episodes made a bigger deal of Virgil becoming Static but the later ones did/do not .  Like "OK, you know the routine, so let's not waste time.."

[Mr. Hockstatter]

I would have liked the D&D cartoon if they didn't contantly get cheated every week out of going home by having to make "a tough choice" EVERY SINGLE WEEK on behalf of the greater good.

Wasn't that called Star Trek:  Voyager?