I woke up this morning and realized that America's children are in big, big trouble. No, I don't mean because of the current economic state and the mountain of debt we're leaving for them to repay, the proliferation of drugs in schools, teen pregnancy or the ridiculous violence that pops up on YouTube because some kid had a cell phone camera and taped a school fight. No, this is serious peeps. America's kids are the victims of terrible cartoons!
For all you peeps that don’t know, here’s what goes down on Saturday mornings.
First up, PBS. They’ve totally given up on good programming for children. They have Dragon Tales and Angelina Ballerina when they should be showing, Reading Rainbow, Mister Rogers and Sesame Street. Although I think Sesame Street is kinda wack now too.
ABC doesn’t even bother with cartoons; they just regurgitate Disney shows for the kids who don’t have cable. You know what would be nice instead of Hannah Montana and That’s So Raven ABC/Disney? How ‘bout you bring back Gummie Bears or Duck Tales?
After NBC trots out 5 hours of the Today Show (don’t we get enough of that during the week?) they have these cartoons that are like 3D animation. One was something called Zulu and it was about space travel and then a Penguin show. I couldn’t watch either one really because the Zulu thing was stupid and I’m just plain sick of the Penguin obsession. If I want to see penguins I’ll turn on Animal Planet and so will my future kids thank you very much.
CBS’s KEWLopolis Saturday Morning Lineup consists of Horseland, SushiPack and Dino Squad. Seriously, they named their lineup KEWLopolis and they have a whole website dedicated to it. I don’t have time to blog about what’s wrong with that.
Horseland is about a bunch of equestrian girls with rhyming names like Zoe and Chloe and they look like cartoon versions of the girls on The Hills except they live in the “country” and ride horses all day. It doesn’t seem like the horses talk but apparently their other pets do? There’s a collie dog that sounds like Sean Connery. I heart Sean Connery but his voice does not belong on a cartoon. Creepy!!
Then there’s Sushi Pack. Here goes. These are actual animated pieces of sushi with arms and legs and food related superpowers. They’re supposed to save the world by the way. I can’t make this stuff up! Watch out for that spicy tuna roll kids! You may get heartburn! I mean, I know that’s what happens to me when I encounter a spicy tuna roll. Somebody call the Super Friends stat! Wonder Twin powers, activate! Form of, soy sauce! Shape of, chopsticks!
I think Dino Squad may be the worst. It’s about a bunch of kids who shape-shift into dinosaurs when trouble is around. I guess they’re supposed to save the world or something but from what, I can’t tell. In the episode I watched, their dino-forms were easily overtaken by nets. I’d trust the fate of the world to the Scooby-Doo gang over these yahoos. While these kids are shape-shifting, a song plays and shows images of I guess human and dinosaur DNA intermingling. The songs lyrics are like “Sixty-five million years ago, I’m in the Dino Squad!” Huh?!? Atrocious!
The scariest thing of all is that all these cartoons are supposed to teach some lesson to the kids but I got so sucked up in the terrible characters and bad plots I don’t know what the lesson could be.
Does anyone remember Looney Tunes? Rescue Rangers? Smurfs? Alvin and the Chipmunks? Muppet Babies? Hey, they used their imaginations peeps! Jem? I mean at least she’s truly, truly, truly outrageous! He-Man? She-Ra? GI-Joe? (Knowing is half the battle)Transformers? Tom and Jerry? The Jetsons? The Flintstones?
The following is how a Saturday morning cartoon should be:
