My friends and I were obsessed with Thundercats. The nasty little boy across the road was nick-named Ssslythe (onomatopoeic, isn't it?) I think his real name was Graham, but I never called him that - with hindsight, he was a rather sweet kid, but boys have cooties when you're six. My friend even had the Lion-O action figure with the light-up eyes that everyone goes on about. That choppy arm action is great for carrots, but proper fencing it ain't. All you have to do is stand on the guy's left, and he's screwed.
While Panthro was out defending the tree-house or the swing, Cheetara and Tygra were inside the house having a marriage ceremony as involved as the ones you get in aristocratic Japanese families. Complete with My Little Pony bridesmaids, a fancy horse for the bridegroom to ride, and a kiss at the end. (You can't say six-year-olds are unromantic and uncomplicated.) At least Lion-O wasn't the centre of attention. He was where he should be: up on the sideboard, brooding. While Cheetara threw a bouquet that looked suspiciously like Lego. (My friend had recently been a flower-girl at somebody's wedding, and knew how these things should be done. Freaky that she's married herself now. Time flies so fast....)
We actually were talking about how the current programmes are such junk compared to most of the stuff we had. I mean, Power Rangers. Gimme a break. Alright, a lot of the programmes were pathetic, especially the Smurfs and he-man. (Also known as She-man and He-girl. Someone sat down one day and said: we need a character with a Manly Name.) And that milkweed sorceress creature, oozing tears and snot at every opportunity. As if being "good" means having thin white hands and a crystal ball, and moulting ugly grey feathers everywhere. Must have been shaman-chic that season. Native Americans everywhere were gnashing their teeth with rage whilst back-yard fortune-tellers changed their wardrobes and practiced crying. Philistines.
Who else has noticed the corporate tendency to get kids hooked on junk by any possible way, to sell spin-offs? If that means sacrificing kids on the altar of Monetary Gain, then sobeit. Why else is there so much violence and obsessive behaviour? Viz the "gotta catch 'em all" goons. The Japanese have a word for people who sit in their rooms all day and obsessively collect strange things that look like beetles - otaku. It probably means "really really weird".
Pokemon contains elements of Taoism; He-man: dualism (good is evil and evil is good, sort of thing), (Smurfs: incest - all those smurfs and only one Pappy smurf? And one girl-smurf? Did they grow out the ground? :-) I think not); My little Ponies: pure evil - it's the shiny hair what does it; and lotsa others were just an introduction to the occult. Ever see Gargamel and his pentagrams and candles? Demon-summoning 101. Bloody freaky. I sometimes think that there wouldn't be much left from most of those shows if you took out the new age indoctrination, the taoist god-energy shit and the mad demon priests. Why do we have to put up with it? Of course, these days having little demons stored in your trading cards is nothing: it only matters that they're stronger than everyone else's. But having them in your party snacks is something else again - I don't know how many nasty ram-horned purple things with skew teeth have given me shocks when I've opened a packet of Simba's. (Everyone's like: "What are you stamping on? A spider?")
Some of the best shows were ones like Rainbow Brite (these people just can't spell) and Bravestarr - although "Rainbow Brite" does sound vaguely like a brand of some potent oven cleaner. But the horses did it for me. What little girl doesn't want a steed that can fly along a rainbow? (I can't help loving the concept of "mining" the coloured sprinkles. Quite a little industry they had going there). Bravestarr's wisecracking, sarcastic beast who transformed into a rifle-cleanin', foot-stompin', smoke-snortin' gun-slinger was brilliant. Note that it was the Native American who was the leader here. No yes Kemosabe, no Kemosabe, three bags full Kemosabe. Jolly good fun, what? And the bandits went to intergalactic jail and there was a Justice System that Really Worked. It was a total PC paradise. With cute little Mexican mining creatures who couldn't speak English properly (okay, maybe not so PC) and needed protection from slavers. Same thundercat themes in different clothes. Save the brutemen from the bad mutant moguls. Surprised there weren't actually American flags in the background with the Star-spangled Banner playing, like on the New Kids on the Block cartoon. [Now THAT was evil. Gave me nightmares for weeks. Turn on their music and any grey-faced baddie worth his salt would go straight back to his respective crypt. Screaming for mercy, like in Mars Attacks.] Although in Bravestarr, all the planets were named New Montana or New Arizona. That was a joke. Much more likely to be a New China or New Nigeria, with all the population problems they have.
You see, the real beef the world has against the US isn't the Imperialist attitude or petty agricultural protectionism or financing of dictators through the CIA. Oh no, it's Survivor. How many series do there have to be before everyone is prepared to declare war and blow up the studio? Hang Jeff Probst from a flagpole while everyone yells, "The tribe has spoken!!!!!! You are the ultimate survivor! There's no-one crappy enough to replace you!!!!!" Ruined my Tuesday nights, I promise you. I'm so tired of watching people complaining about the elements (eeuw, I'm sweaty, where's the air-conditioning in this benighted tropical forest? whine-whine-whine). Or stripping all the mussels off the rocks so it'll take fifty years for the environment to recover, just because they're too lazy to go to the next beach. They don't HAVE to be there, they WANTED to be on Survivor, Jeff Probst notwithstanding. I've never seen anyone gloat so much, by the way. Reminds me of a snarf in a candy-fruit patch. Apparently the Kenyans are spitting mad, because the Survivor film crew cut down a centuries-old hardwood indigenous forest to put up their tent camp. In a National Park. They shoulda been locked up in a Kenyan jail. Contemporary Midnight Express with night-time whispered monologues. Bound to be an instant hit, with prison chic on the Milan catwalks as a result, I'm pretty sure.
I must say that even though I loved programs like Thundercats, they were pretty terrifying. Even My Little Ponies had this really evil streak that leads one to wonder: exactly who designed and wrote those programmes? New-age peace-and-love gurus who secretly murdered their followers and kept their bodies in trunks in the basement? (probably, as there were a few of those. I think they're all living under assumed names in Brussels by now). I can remember being terrified but fascinated by Thundercats, like someone watching a "spiritual enlightenment" Oprah segment. Hiding behind the couch so it can't get you, but listening in case anything interesting happens. Like maybe the freaky-looking guy gets killed by the Dead. Or Lion-O falls down a hole, depending on the programme...! I mean, who comes up with a terrifying flying demon-mummy that can rip people apart and cast evil spells? Trailing long strips of toilet-paper, double ply, while he's at it? Pretty unnerving when you're six and green furry creatures still lived under your bed. Especially if you had to turn off your own lightswitch and get into bed before the lumpy shadow rose from the floor and grabbed your leg. Eeeew. Aaargh! Yeurgh!
I did notice that most grey-hued villains with bad teeth and evil breath have really nasty, uncomfortable digs. Why were all villians super-evil in those shows? And impossible to defeat? And totally irredeemable? In the real world, both sides usually have some right on their side... (except when European and other nations we wont mention invade and subjugate other nations on flimsy pretexts, like their-mad-leaders-have-nasty-bombs.) You do realise that George W. and Lion-O have a lot in common, I.Q.-wise? At least Bill Clinton would be shagging Cheetara, patenting Panthro's inventions for himself and trying to encourage, generally, more peacetalks with the mutants... who would benefit from a little labour-intensive agriculture and mining industries on a small scale, especially to provide as much food and super-alloy as the Thundercats could consume in environmentally sustainable ways. With a large cut of import tax off the top, as administration is so damn costly, of course. (**cigar puffs**)
Naturally Lion-O's M.O. was to bash 'em and ask questions later. And why didn't Snarf move out and start a little Berbil catering business, instead of following Big Boy around? Get a life of his own, without worrying about being Lion-O's second-best mom? (No-one mentions Lion-O's actual mother - probably why he's so anal-retentive.) Surely Lion-O could grow out of his five-year-old "Look Mommy I Went Potty" little smirk and swagger routine. If I had super-feline strength and a big sword (here comes more Freud) maybe I'd need the other Thundercats to teach me that I.M. Fabulous ain't my real name, if you know what I mean. In real life, Saving The World gets put aside in favour of a job, marriage and kids, and that didn't really happen in Thundercat Happy-Land. I don't see Lion-O changing nappies at four in the morning. Samurai Bruce Willis types don't work on Wall Street, unless there happens to be a serial-killer terrorist thug there on the first day. After which they get fired and return to inter-movie limbo.
I admit my beef against Lion-O really stems from the stereotyping of Cheetara. She was sooo stereotyped! Like the only thing aside from her (beautiful fourposter) bed in her room was a huge mirror (so she could dream about transdimensional Egyptian princes; at least she had an interesting - if rather frustrating - lovelife. Tygra obviously had to be beaten on the head to notice her, but then he probably had the whole staying-celibate-as-a-virile-yet-cerebral-warrior-monk thing going. Or was pretending to).
Tygra was the thinking woman's Thundercat. Brainy yet brawny, which is a rare combination. Turning invisible was also a great party trick. Who knew his colour-themed blue whip could hide 110 kilos of medical textbook perfect musculature? Meow.
Back to Cheetara. She just didn't have any higher brain functions. What did she do all day? Look pretty in all the "useless" gold she stole from Panthro's junkheap? She could have been this Sapphic poetess with a penchant for astro-dynamics, instead of an airhead sprinting enthusiast with pretty hair. Bloody sexist, really. And she had to be everybody's mom and the feminine Voice of Reason, which was just downright stupid. I should write an article about starting a Society for the Non-Sexist Portrayal of Female Super-Heroes. Think about it. --- (The non-sexist portrayal of male superheroes is something else altogether, of course).
Seriously, there were some weird little sub-themes in Thundercats. Maybe I should get some Psych student (who hasn't already succumbed to the Dark Side and Doctor Phil) to analyse it for me. I'm trying to get hold of an episode called The Four Winds, which will prove my theory. Tygra goes invisible [presumably to escape his yearly rabies shot: dratted things hurt like the dickens] and enters Castle Plun-DARR through the underwater moat / tunnel / drain system (purpose built for illicit entry - can't remember why he'd do anything so immensely dumb) gets caught, and strapped into a mansize ripper-aparter.
(Jackalman : Duuuh, we caughts us a fish!(Monkian wins Bad Joke of the Year award; primate members of voting committee resign in protest - Third Earth Times).
The mutants don't kill him straight away, of course; oh no, in the best tradition of James Bond villians, they leave him completely unguarded for hours until the sun comes up and activates the machine. So he can get rescued and live to fight another day. And then there is the obligatory "Eek, Panthro, Willa's spider's on your shoulder!" joke to make Panthro wet his pants and everybody else laugh at the end. Mwa ha haaaaaa. --- **arghhh cough cough** (Wilykat was smoking behind the Robear village again).
I think the whole thing was hugely psycho-logical, as swimming underwater is usually symbolic of death or birth or something; mmmmmmm. "Insight into the mind of an Animator 101". I'll ask Mike, the Psych honours guy with a shaved head, long beard, pierced tongue and weights in his ears. Pretty sure he'd know....
Most of this silly rant wuz inpired by all the wonderful kooky articles at www.x-entertainment.com - just search for "thundercats" and find reviews of the penny racers, the nasty uncomfortable digs of mum-blah, the ever-stupid, and a review or two of episodes. Then browse the blog and have acres of fun wallowing in eighties nostalgia. Keep the prozac close!
PS Maybe Panthro was a catnip-smokin' hep cat jazz artist car designer? Just a thought. Bet I know how the 'Cats spent saturday nights: rolling around in the catmint patch, growling and chewing and watching the pretty purrr-ple lights.