02.06
Time was, long ago, that on Saturday Mornings you could flip from one network to another and watch kids shows of varying quality and all lacking in anything resembling educational content. These were the good, ol days. The days when you either complained about College Football interupting Bugs and Tweety, scratched your hairoff about how NBC could run Smurfs and Gummie Bears back to back or just throw your hands up and watch whatever CBS had on. To celebrate this long dead phenomenon, I bring you Saturday Morning Slugfest where I will look at one season of Saturday Morning cartoons and decide who’s year was the best…or the least sucky at least. To start off, I choose the year I started caring about cartoons on Saturday mornings (let alone TV in general) 1989! Hang on to your hats, this is going to be bumpy and nostalgic.
CBS
After getting clobbered by NBC and Smurfs for the first half of the decade CBS had made major gains since 1985 with Muppet Babies, Pee-wee’s Playhouse and Garfield and Friends so its not surprising to see those shows basically anchoring a block that’s riding on its own laurels and not much else. Frankly the new shows CBS had this season were some of the worst they ever had…
DINK THE LITTLE DINOSAUR
Uh…wow. Unless you told me this was a Ruby-Spears production, I’d have guessed it was a cheap Taiwanese Land Before Time ripoff (I wonder if Don Bluth considered legal action?). Dink and friends Amber, Scat, Shyler, and Flapper have fun in the Great Val-er… Green Meddow(!) with the usual heavy handed moralizing bullshit at the end of each episode. Surprisingly this got a second season where it was buried at noon with perennial rear-bearer CBS Storybreak.
THE CALIFORNIA RAISIN SHOW
Ick. Its one thing to make a tv show out a popular line of claymation advertisements, its another to make it and not even bother with clamation. I can only guess Wil Vinton wasn’t prepared for the workload of a series of 13 episodes so instead we have a fugly traditionally animated show where the singing raisins (who are more brown than purple in this show) fight other fruits and veggies for their share of the Hollywood spotlight. I can only imagine Murakami Wolf Swenson shoved this down the eye network’s throat as bargaining material for the rights to a certain moderately successful show of theirs then currently running in syndication…
RUDE DOG AND THE DWEEBS
Remember Rude Dog? Nope? Good! Neither do I! This show ran only one season and was a tie-in with a clothing line for skateboarders (yes this was the “hip” show on this year’s lineup as opposed to Dink). Mr. Opportunity (frmrly. Rob Paulson) plays the titular Poochie, a mechanic assisted by his gang The Dweebs as they toil through the travails of evil cats and dog catchers. In other words, its the Cadillac Cats from Heathcliffe except even less interesting.
THE VERDICT: If CBS was hurting for ratings (they weren’t) then this year would be a genuine disaster. None of the shows are any good and the latter two would be ritually sacrificed the following year for TMNT. Oh and IIRC, this was the first year with Fido Dido on the bumpers (seriously, who the fuck remembers Fido Dido?)
ABC
Remarkably, ABC only added two new shows this year (a record low for them) and technically only one of them was actually new. I guess they had to save money from their famous “After These Messages…” bumpers.
THE ADVENTURES OF THE GUMMI BEARS
Lets not kid ourselves, this is not a new show. Gummi Bears had of course previously been on NBC since 1985 but following a contract dispute would wind up spending its second-to-last season on ABC instead where it would replace the first half-hour of The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh, it was a short lived arrangement and Pooh would run in various lengths over the next decade (I remember the show being 90 minutes long at one point).
BEETLEJUICE
You want a shock success, this is it. The Beetlejuice cartoon ran two whole years on ABC and even managed to switch networks (to Fox of all things) to prolong its life. Ignoring the ending of the movie, BG and Lydia basically spend every episode hanging out together and getting involved in a variety of strange adventures. Ran for 94 episodes. NINETY-FRICKEN-FOUR.
THE VERDICT: Its a “if it aint broke don’t fix it” season. With four returning shows (two of which were hour long), there was little space for innovation. Heck, considering Gummi Bears was an NBC castoff, the only new show ABC produced this season was Beetlejuice. Record low does not begin to describe it.
NBC
As mentioned earlier, NBC started this season without Gummi Bears and by the end of the season would lose two more shows. Smurfs had gone from a ratings monster to a whimpering willow against Muppet Babies the previous two seasons and this would be its final year. Also Alf Tales would be cancelled as well (thank god).
CAMP CANDY
Camp Candy features an animated John Candy (voicing himself) as the owner of a summer camp. He and his kids get into a variety of misadventures with the usual use of moralizing and important life skills to set things right at the end of each episode. Frankly I remember never really liking this show but somebody did since it lasted into the next season.
CAPTAIN N: THE GAME MASTER
YAY! ITS CAPTAIN N!!! Today this show could only elicit groans of embarrassment from any old-school gamer but back then it was the shit. Dorky high schooler Kevin gets sucked into his Nintendo through “THE ULTIMATE WARPZONE!!!!!1” to help Princess Lana and some rather badly mischaracterized video game characters fight the evil (and about as equally mischaracterized) Mother Brain. Would survive until NBC finally pulled the plug on Saturday Morning Toons in favor of…
SAVED BY THE BELL
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
THE KARATE KID
Never saw this show but from the looks of it, Daniel-san and Mister Miyagi go looking for some mystical mumbo-jumbo with the help of some Asian chick. Where the heck is Cho-sen or the Cobra-kais when you need them?
THE VERDICT: NBC came into this year in a rebuilding phase and during this season would find its answer. Unfortunately its an answer that isn’t animated. Saved by the Bell turned out to be a surprise hit and eventually more shows of that ilk would fill out the schedule as the Peacock eventually replaced all cartoons with yet another Today show. Frankly we should be grateful for Qubo these days, it used to be so much worse.
THE FINAL VERDICT
This is a season where you have a network basically playing it safe, another green-lighting shows its already cancelled and finally one about to make the worst decision of all time. Out of this, I’ve got to give it to ABC since you’ve still got Real Ghostbusters and Bugs Bunny & Tweety to watch. Next year: CBS scores the Smurfs-Killer after Smurfs has already been killed and a fourth party enters the fray for the first time.
Originally posted on December 14, 2011