| You may know, if you've been reading enough of this site, that Awesome Blossom is an intentionally bad cartoon, that's supposed to be from the 80's. Why is it supposed to be from the 80's? Because it couldn't have possibly come from anywhere else. Here, I'll prove to you what I know, and then you'll understand. In the next few minutes, we'll be taking a peek at some typical shows this decade had to offer. People say the 70's was the worst decade in terms of taste, but as far as children's programming went, the bell-bottom-disco-duck generation hadn't seen anything yet. Some of my earliest memories are of the stuff my parents plunked me down to watch and I remember all of it being bad. So stay tuned for the.... HORRIBLE SATURDAY MORNING TV GALLERY!!! ...or something like that. We will start out easy, and then the shows will get progressively worse and worse as you keep reading, okey-dokey? Eventually we will come to the absolute worst....yes, the TOTAL, ABSOLUTE WORST TV SERIES EVER PRODUCED; THE WORST THING EVER TO FLICKER ON A CATHODE-RAY TUBE IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF TIME!! And that's not just including children's TV either--I mean this was the worst thing ever, and that includes My Mother The Car, everything from UPN, and the Star Wars 1978 holiday special. I knew of everything when I read about the existence of this show last week, and I realized, hey, there's no WAY it can get worse than this. But enough gushing, you'll see what it is soon enough. In the meantime, speaking of My Mother The Car, here's our first show: |
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| TURBO TEEN! Yes, an average teen crashes his sports car into a building where an experiment- al ray is being fired; and merges with the car! Now he can become a car at any time, and boy, was this intended to be cool! However, notice in the first picture that his girlfriend Pattie can still order him around, even though he could just ram her. BARBAPAPA!! As the name suggests, this show is from France and the main character is....this blob thing. Barbapapa lives with his wife Barbamama, their children Barbabravo, Barbalib, Barbazoo, Barbabelle, Barbalala, Barbabright, Barbabeau, and their dog. And the dog's name, by the way, was "Irving." PUNKY BREWSTER: THE ANIMATED SERIES!! |
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| Most of the shows you'll see here I didn't actually see myself; I got them off of Yesterdayland.com, which pretty much chronicles every 80's show that was on TV among other things. But I definately remember this. For some dumb reason, I can barely remember what life was like at age 3, but I can remember this show almost perfectly. I didn't even know this was a sitcom first. Years later someone in sixth grade mentioned Punky Brewster and I was like, "You remember that cartoon?" Okay, what could be worse than a Punky Brewster cartoon? I'll tell you what else. The fact that they got more creative with the concept. Punky had this creature in her backpack that talked in a squiggly voice and made her bike fly, a la ET. That was what I remembered....Yesterdayland revealed this thing's name as "Glomer." Oh, yeah, Glomer.....sure. Apparently, Glomer could not only make Punky fly, but could transport she and her friends to any location in the world too. Glomer was a pretty funky dude. But this isn't the worst show ever. No, the worst show ever had a concept FAR worse than this. BENJI, ZAX AND THE ALIEN PRINCE!! |
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| As someone once said, "When it's Lassie vs. Benji, Lassie never blasted off into outer space for a substantial period of his life." Indeed....Benji is doing exactly that here. The dog is in outer space, helping an alien prince and a creature called Zax find their way home. Benji could do anything except go on the paper. And yes, practically every revival of a classic character in the 80's set that character in outer space for a time. After Star Wars and He-Man, everything had to happen in space. Don't believe me? Then take a look at this..... |
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| Behold the actual premise for Gilligan's Planet: the professor failed time and time again in inventing stuff from coconuts that could rescue the denizens of Gilligan's Island. But for some reason, one day he invented a rocket and it worked! In fact, it worked too well--it rocketed them past the moon and on some distant planet, where they were now stranded even worse than before. And so began the GREATEST CHILDREN'S SHOW IN HISTORY!!! Not.... So if someone ever tells you, "They never get off that island," the actual answer is that they do, but unfortunately it was the 80's by the time they succeeded, meaning they HAD to wind up in space instead. THE HOT FUDGE SHOW!! |
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| All I know about this one is that it was supposed to be educational. MR. T |
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| If Punky Brewster could get her own cartoon, then Mr.T's was inevitable. But...what did he do in it? Believe it or not, he was a....gymnastics coach. Yes, it's true--those jumpy kids in the leotards behind him are his pupils. In addition to this, every episode packed an important moral. Wow, uh, I never thought I could use T's own catchphrase AGAINST him, but I pity the fool here. |
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| CAPTAIN HARLOCK AND THE QUEEN OF 1,000 YEARS!! That title...did not make any sense, did it? Well, there's a reason. This is one of the worst translation jobs ever done to an anime--two animes, in fact. If you haven't guessed, this company picked up two shows from Japan: Captain Harlock, about a pirate who becomes a space pirate after Earth blows up, and Millennial Queen, about a queen who rules in the year 1999(which back then was very far off. 15 years.) It was originally going to be just Harlock but there were only 30-something Harlock episodes and they needed 52. So they spliced footage of him with the Queen, confusing everybody who watched this and dooming the show to low ratings and a bad name. But this isn't the worst show ever. No, the worst show ever is an insult to any living creature, man or beast. You'll see.... FRED AND BARNEY MEET THE SHMOO For lack of better ideas, Hanna-Barbera used a lot of its classic characters over again for the 80's. They produced a new crop of Jetsons episodes, adding the Jetson family pet, this springy thing named Orbity. While Orbity was cool, there isn't much you can say about this. Now, Fred and Barney didn't exactly MEET the Shmoo, the Shmoo starred in a cartoon separate from theirs on the show. But the most important thing was, who the heck was going to know what the Shmoo was? His name was even in the title for pete's sake. The Shmoo, in actuality, was a blob. A blob from the ancient comic strip Li'l Abner. This is another thing kids were clamoring for....good thing Phil and Joe bowed to the demand. HULK HOGAN'S ROCK 'N WRESTLING!! I make fun of Cyndi Lauper sometimes, so you should know who she is by now. Well, this was her show. I mean it. She created this show. Naturally she was going to do that....she was at the time infatuated with pro wrestling; so much so that she married Captain Lou Albano. Well, anyway, she produced this show for CBS for a couple years, and guest-starred as herself a lot on it. Hulk didn't actually do much wrestling on the show however; the "Rock 'N Wrestling!" portion of the title referred to the music videos they would put between cartoons of wrestlers rocking out to pop tunes. Yep, this was her show all right. If you should respect Cyndi Lauper for anything, it's that she supplied the Goonies theme, not that she was generally nuts. It's just like you must respect the B-52's, not because they sound terrible, but because they DID THE ROCKO'S MODERN LIFE THEME. So we have no choice but to ignore everything else they've done out of respect. |
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| TRANZOR Z!! No, nobody watched this....but it's worth noting because Tranzor Z often went up against the evil Devilene the She-Man, who was half- man and half-woman, "possessing the worst qualities of both in one evil package." Makes me shiver.... GALAXY HIGH!! |
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| The educational theme for this one was, "DIVERSITY!" Like this place had a choice....this had some of the worst examples of minority groups ever. There was actually a classroom filled with nothing but students that were talking tomatoes. And get this--the lockers were ALIVE! "OW!! You slammed me because you're racist against our race, DIDN'T YOU?? RIOT TIME!!!" Forget tolerance--I'd declare war in this case. |
| But that isn't the worst show of all time. The NEXT one is. We've come to the end, and now you have a choice: you can just forget about knowing of its existence, or you can click the link below and be scarred for life. I leave the choice in your hands. But be quick about it here. I don't have all day. |