- by Owen Morton
The reasons that I have entitled this article as the first and probably only Thundercats article of this website are manifold. In the first place, it makes me capable of adding, 'Miss it and there'll never be another like it!' which is a caption I've always wanted to use (though, on thinking about it, even if you do miss it now, you can always find it later in the archives, so it's perhaps not as impressive as it might at first seem, but only if you think about it - so please don't). In the second place (which I don't think is a valid expression - and has it occurred to you that the number of brackets I'm using is increasing steadily?), and this is the principal reason, I can't remember very much about Thundercats at all, and quite how I'm going to pad out one article on them, I don't know, let alone filling in a number of them. In the third place, I don't remember particularly liking them very much, but I thought a website like this would be remiss if it didn't mention them at least once. And there you go. One filler paragraph at least.
Right, I'm going to start this discussion now by mentioning everything I can remember about Thundercats. As this is not very much, it won't take very long, don't worry. I know the leader of the goodies was a particularly demented man (and presumably Thundercat, whatever that may be) with red hair who was called either Lionel or Liono. I never knew which, because whichever I used, some bastard would say, "No, Owen, it's [whichever one I didn't say]" thus totally undermining my confidence in myself and in my knowledge of Thundercats. Whoever said that in my youth, I bet you they're responsible for at least seven of my insecurities now. Sadly, I can't sue them, because I can't remember who they are (although I have a good idea, and I'm fairly sure at least two of them were in my A-level Psychology class, and one of those was also in my A-level English Literature class, but not in my A-level History or General Studies classes - can you guess who you are yet?).
Anyway, my next nugget of knowledge on the Thundercats subject is that the baddy was called either Um-Ra or Mum-Ra, the uncertainty of which again has no doubt contributed to one or more of my insecurities because of the afore-mentioned individuals and their evil practices. But what Um-Ra's objectives were, and why Lionel saw fit to thwart him/her/it (for the gender of this character was never particularly clear either) in said objectives I can't really remember, and that is a sentence that I think I may be using a lot in this article.
My next piece of information that there was a pair of children who were goodies. The only reasons I'm mentioning them now are a) I can probably get another paragraph out of it, and b) I can remember them, which is the third of four things I can remember about Thundercats, and c) I wanted to make the point that they were probably called Thunderkittens, and that's probably a total fabrication by myself, though I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. I mean, if Lionel is a grown Thundercat, surely the children would be Thunderkittens. It works like that. If I, for example, was a Thunderman, and I had a son, he would be my Thunderboy. Or, if (he says, warming to the theme) there was a Thunderdog, it would have Thunderpuppies. Sadly, I can't remember the names of any more animal offspring names, otherwise we could have had a really fun and interesting paragraph. But we've had that already, really, haven't we? Okay, we can move on now to the last piece of information I can remember about Thundercats (and this is really pushing it).
When reading a Thundercats annual that my friend Peter McDonald owned (I believe it was Thundercats Annual 1984, although I can't be sure), I got really annoyed because the stories (which were all in cartoon form) were always split into at least two parts, so you'd get to a really exciting bit where Lionel was protecting the Thunderkittens from the evil forces of Um-Ra, and then suddenly it would break off and say 'Continued later'. And that was one of the really annoying things about it: it actually said 'Continued later'. It didn't actually say where in the book it was continued, so you couldn't just flip to where it was continued and read on. Thus, by the time you got to the bit where it was continued, you'd have forgotten what had happened anyway and were forced to just read the end of a story that now makes absolutely no sense to you (although it is debatable how much sense they'd have made if you just read them straight through - and on thinking about it, that's probably why they did it, to stop you actually realising that the stories didn't make sense).
And that, my fine feathered friends, is everything I know about Thundercats. I'm debating with myself about trying to pad this article out, by creating some sort of motive for Um-Ra's evil nastiness and explaining a back story for Lionel which tells you why he's called Lionel, what a Thundercat is and how he came to be one, but really, I think I'd not do very well, and I'd only cause hordes of people who can actually remember Thundercats to descend irately on my head (in fact, Seb has just wandered into my room and read this and assures me that it was Liono and Mum-Ra the Everliving, or some such nonsense, but I'm not going to go back through the article and change it all now (even though I could do it just by clicking 'Edit' and 'Find and replace') so you're stuck with it, I'm afraid (too many brackets)). So it's probably better for me if I just halt my endeavours here. And you can see why there won't be another article on Thundercats.
Oops! Just remembered something else about Thundercats. It's not particularly good, so don't get excited or anything, but I used to own a Thundercats sword! As I recall, it lit up when you pressed a button and I would imagine it made some sort of interesting noise as well, though I can't remember that. All I remember about said sword is that I got the series from which it came somehow muddled up, and started shrieking, "By the Power of Grayskull! I have the Power!" which, if you didn't know, is from another popular 1980's cartoon, one that I can remember substantially more about. And I'm not going to spell out its name, because everyone knows it. The only people who visit this website are addicts of that cartoon, so if they can't remember its name, well … oh dear for them.
And remember, the only reason I wrote this article at all today is because no one asked me to go out tonight (sniff, sniff). I do have more important things to do, usually. Honest, I do. As evidenced by the total lack of articles for the last four days. You see? I was doing important things (well, okay, I was drawing sketches of badgers and I did a good enough portrait of Lenin for people walking past to actually recognise him, but I think that's more important. And that was not intended to imply that Lenin was a badger, because he most decidedly was not, as far as anyone can tell, but the way I included my mention of Lenin in the same clause as badgers suggested perhaps implicitly that Lenin was a badger, but as I have already assured you once in this set of brackets, he wasn't).
Right. End of article.