Childhood cartoons that don't hold up as well as you remembered

[Eddy]

I'm sure we've all been there: a cartoon we loved as a kid that we revisit in our adult years only to find out that, shit, this isn't really as good as I remember it being. That's not to say you can't enjoy the show from a nostalgic standpoint but it certainly isn't a show that you would put on any "greatest cartoons of all time" lists or anything.

One that comes to mind for me is the SatAM Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. This show has got a huge, HUGE following. A lot of Sonic fans act like this was the pinnacle of the franchise and it's herald as one of the greatest Saturday morning cartoons ever in some eyes. To those people I have to ask: when was the last time you tried watching SatAM? I liked it as a kid too but wow is this show dated. From its plot that is so dark you can't help but find it absurd at times and the campy as hell 90s lingo from Sonic ("Mondo cool!") This really is a show that was a product of its time. Now, I've still got nostalgic feelings for it, but it's really not that great and we probably didn't lose anything of major value by the show getting canceled before the definitive ending.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

I watched Rocket Power and CatDog growing up. The former is a product of it's time. The later is just plain stupid.

[Silverstar]

This technically doesn't count as a 'childhood cartoon' for me, since I was 29 when it first hit the scene, but one show like that for me is definitely The Powerpuff Girls. When that show premiered, I thought PPG was the shiz, but having recently revisited the show...not so much. I don't hate PPG, but nah, it wasn't the magnum opus that I originally thought it was. For one thing, the show overstayed its' welcome; PPG is among those once good shows that tainted itself by staying on much longer than it needed to *cough*The Simpsons*cough*Family Guy*cough*Aqua Teen Hunger Force*cough*Futurama*cough*; the first PPG episodes were definitely the best of the series, even if they did adhere to the same basic formula over and over again. The show began meandering in the later seasons and by the time of the movie, it had become a sad, uninspired and unfunny parody of itself. The post-movie episodes sucked, and by the time they got to that artsy-fartsy "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" episode, yeah, it was time for this show to go.

Looking back, I think, like many of Craig McCracken's works, The Powerpuff Girls was a better idea than it was a show, and now ironically, though I wasn't crazy about it during its' prime, I'm starting to think that Genndy Tartakofsky's Dexter's Laboratory was the better show concept. PPG just isn't that enjoyable to me anymore.

[Avaitor]

We've talked about this on the board before, but Doug really is a show that's better left as a memory than one to be rediscovered. Same with Pokemon, Power Rangers, and the 90's Marvel toons.

[Peanutbutter]

I have watched Doug recently and enjoyed it as much as when I was little. What exactly is so bad about it?


Anyway, one cartoon I'd put here that didn't even hold up when I watched it was Angela Anaconda. Her voice was so shrill and her imagination pieces made it so that she came off as far more spiteful and rude. Another one that I kind of liked when I watched but doesn't hold up when I think about is the Three Friends and Jerry. Very, very bad animation by today's standards.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Personally, I really enjoyed PPG when I re-watched it last year, so I can't really agree that it hasn't aged well, but different strokes I suppose. Now, as far as Cartoon Cartoons go, one show that really isn't as good as I remember it is Johnny Bravo. For what it's worth, I still do like the first 2 (or 3) seasons of the show. They are possibly a bit TOO goofy and zany for my liking, but there is some clever humor beneath all of that. Having said that, the show just has such an awkward delivery of it's material when I watch it now, and certain aspects of the show that I used to find funny really grate on me. That said, Pops is still easily one of my favorite cartoon characters from the entire CC line-up.

Oh yeah....and the last season of Johnny Bravo was a piece of shit.

Also, while it's off-topic in regard to this thread, I just wanted to mention that there are 2 CC's which I feel hold up surprisingly well (with one being even more appealing to me now than it used to be) are Ed, Edd, n' Eddy and Courage the Cowardly Dog. The former is a great combination of slapstick and bizarre but clever dialogue, and the latter is just a really damn successful combination of humor with uncomfortable creepiness (whether you're a kid or an adult).

[Daikun]

For me, it's Tiny Toon Adventures. I thought I'd start rewatching it on the Hub after not seeing for nearly the 20 years ago when it aired on Fox. The show has timely 90s humor written all over it. Some jokes are still okay, but others have aged pretty badly.

How I Spent My Vacation, on the other hand, surprisingly holds up very well.

[Commode]

A vast vast majority of them.  Even a bunch of cartoons a lot of people seem to hold in high regard, or shows that I still liked a few years ago, I don't think really hold up.  This is not even including shows like Catdog or Angela Anaconda, where an episode of those shows wouldn't hold up a week after it first aired, nor does it include terrible shows like Squirrel Boy(I wasn't even watching cartoons during this period).



I don't know, maybe I'm becoming more cynical.

And I love TTA, but I think it "holds up" in the same sense that first season/certain episodes of the second season Simpsons "hold up", if that makes any sense.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I learned the hard way that Animaniacs just kind of sucks. Like half of the jokes are just references to 90s culture and Spielberg. And the shorts go through a pattern, like the "douche gets his life ruined by the Warner siblings" formula or "Slappy gets annoyed by new things."

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, here's an obvious one that nobody has mentioned yet: Dragon Ball Z. Let me get 3 things out of the way, here:

1. I adore the original Dragon Ball anime and pretty much the entire manga (including the parts that got adapted into DBZ), so I'm really only referring to the DBZ anime specifically

2. I'm referring to the DBZ anime in general, whether it's ANY of the horrible dubs, or even the original Japanese version; the voice-acting was never the only point (but yeah, while we're on the subject, GOD were those dubs awful), because the core problem with this show was how fuck-awful it's pacing was, to the point of making me wonder how the hell I used to sit through nearly 300 episodes of a show that really could have been told in less than half of that

3. Kai is a lazy as fuck re-cut of DBZ, but it DID at least give the crew at FUNimation a chance to redeem themselves by giving the show a truly stellar quality English dub, which is really the only reason that I even tolerate Kai to begin with

Anyways, yeah, this show was awful. To me, it downright killed a lot of the manga's best moments, and it is just such a chore to watch. There is a great, classic story in there that just got screwed up by Japan's constant need to keep an anime running, combined with Toei's terribly bad-habit of keeping their shows on a dirt-poor budget and just generally cutting corners wherever possible. On top of that, I was never really a fan of the original Kikuchi score OR Faulconer's soundtrack. Neither set of tunes really fit the series very well, for me. On that note, aside from the dub, I should also give Kai credit for its soundtrack, which I also felt was one of the few things that justified that version of the series existing; even if most of it did turn out to be plagiarized, unfortunately (especially because it was the only good soundtrack that I felt actually fit DBZ in tone).

Man, I used to watch this show religiously when I was a kid, back when it aired daily on Toonami. But these days, I don't nearly have enough patience to sit through that stuff, even without the filler material. These days, if I ever want my fix of Goku's adventures from the latter half of his story, I really only have the manga to resort to.

[Goldstar]

For me, one example of this would have to be Tiny Toon Adventures. Even though the good jokes and gags still hold up pretty well, the show would have aged a lot better if the characters weren't mentioning that it's the 90s every 20 seconds. I get that the TTA writers were trying to make the point that this isn't your parents Looney Tunes; that these are Loonies for the modern era, but the constant mentioning of it being the 1990s was considered cutting edge back when it was the 90s, but seeing the episodes again now in the year 2013, the "It's the 90s!" tagline makes TTA look ferociously dated now.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I actually think TTA holds up surprisingly well (because I wasn't expecting it to at all) but Animaniacs I don't think does. For the same reason Dr. Insomniac mentioned, it always feels like the same joke over and over and a lot of the skit ideas are pretty horrendous. I honestly don't really enjoy watching it nowadays much at all. I think Pinky & The Brain was a better series.

Otherwise, I don't think it's any secret that the first animated TMNT show doesn't hold up well at all.

[LumRanmaYasha]

There are many, many cartoons I watched as a kid that I don't care for much anymore. Too much for me to feel like explaining them, although I will say that I think E-K is exaggerating how bad Dragonball Z really is. Certainly I don't care for it that much, but I think it's still watchable, although I no longer watch it in favor of Kai and the manga. Also, I love Kikuchi's score. Anyway, my list is divided into two categories: shows that don't hold up for me at all and shows that only hold up for me partially.


Don't hold up at all:
Yu-Gi-Oh!
Beyblade
Sonic X
Cubix: Robots for Everyone
MAR
The Prince of Tennis
Kiba
Mucha Lucha
Megaman: NT Warrior
Mike, Lu, & Og
Time Squad
Squirrel Boy
My Gym Partner is a Monkey
The Jetsons
Scooby & Scrappy
The New Scooby Doo Mysteries
13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo
What's New, Scooby Doo?
Krypto the Superdog
The Flintstones Kids
Tom and Jerry Kids
Baby Looney Tunes
Lilo and Stitch
Kim Possible
The Proud Family
Teacher's Pet
Teamo Supremo
The Buzz on Maggie
Kappa Mikey
Catdog
Doug
The Wild Thornberry's
Ahh! Real Monsters
Rocket Power
Chalkzone
Kablam!
All Grown Up
Danny Phantom
Super Friends
He-man
Captain Planet
Richie Rich
Laff-A-Lympics
Jabberjaw
Josie and the Pussycats
Birdman and the Galaxy Trio
The Dino Boy segments of Space Ghost
The Dial M for Monkey segments of Dexter's Laboratory
Pokemon Chronicles
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!
The Smurfs
The Snorks

Hold up partially, but not really enjoyable to me as a whole anymore:
Tiny Toon Adventures
Animaniacs!
Freakazoid!
Talespin
Goof Troop
Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers
Recess
Dave the Barbarian
Brandy and Mr. Whiskers
The Replacements
Dragonball Z
Dragonball GT
Sailor Moon
Zatch Bell
Pokemon
A Pup named Scooby Doo
Xiaolin Showdown
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Teen Titans
Johnny Bravo
Cow and Chicken
I Am Weasel
Codename: Kids Next Door
Samurai Jack
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi
Ben 10
Rugrats
Ren & Stimpy
The Fairy Odd Parents
Hey Arnold!
Catscratch
Thundercats
SWAT Kats
2 Stupid Dogs
Dick Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines
Wacky Races
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop

...I think that's about all. 

[GregX]

Any cartoon from the 1980's except for DuckTales
Any Marvel cartoon from the 1990's.

[Eddy]

I think The Powerpuff Girls still holds up well but I have to agree that the post movie stuff ranges from bad to awful.

Nostalgia aside, I wouldn't say the original Pokemon series holds up that well. Though Team Rocket does provide some amusing entertainment.