Dave Reviews Cartoons

A bit of an old school review for me on this Easter weekend, as I was thinking about how as the eighties rolled into the nineties and my interests expanded to include Teenage Mutant Ninja (Hero over here) Turtles and wrestling, which both combined together at different times in the comics, cartoons and toylines of TMNT. So, this is a look at some of those occasions across the various iterations we’ve had over the last 35 years.

The Suicide Squad was a shockingly good movie. A big part of that was how much fun Big Match John was as peace-through-violence supervillain Peacemaker, who was the model for the Comedian in Watchmen. However, as good as he was in that I was a bit tense about how good a spin-off series was as he’d be surrounded by office nerds rather than Bloodsport or Ratcatcher. Did I have good reason to be? Find out below.

As I’ve been looking at New Japan shows over the last few months I’ve been aware, especially with recent toy releases, that the characters of Tiger Mask and Jushin Liger originated in anime shows. I really wanted to look at the 1969 Toei Tiger Mask show, wherein a Japanese heel returns from America under a mask to become the biggest babyface in all of wrestling, fighting the evil faction he once belonged to, but YT and my usual sources are fairly bereft (although the intro is before the jump). Therefore, it’s Jushin Liger, the show that gave Flying Fuji Yamada an identity for thirty years, that I’m going to look at.

One of the big winners of the vote last week was Centurions, which ran for 65 episodes in the eighties and has always felt like something that should’ve been a lot bigger than it was. Great toyline, with the main characters having powersuits with ports all over them that allow you to connect different weapons and vehicle parts to them, with Ace McCloud in blue as the aerial guy, Max Ray in green as the nautical guy, and Jake Rockwell as the ground guy (although he did have some flight gear as well). The writers were pretty cool about mimicking how you might play with them as kids too, so if Max Ray is on the injured list and you need to go underwater then Ace or Jake could power up with one of his sea suits. Or, you could be Jake Rockwell and be scooting around a city in a road vehicle, but need to join up with the others quickly, so Skyvault, the space base of operations, can beam up the ground vehicle and refit you with an aerial vehicle to fly off.

Villain of the show is Doc Terror, with criminal cohort Hacker. He kinda manipulated Hacker into becoming his personal science experiment in order to ensure his freedom from the cops. Not seen, but implied, is that he has to have an arm and a leg chopped off in order to be bonded to a heavy armour and weapons suit. When the World Council see him as an abomination, and without the ability to be changed back, he throws a tantrum that seriously injures Doc Terror, meaning that the scientist has to give up half of his body AND face to live on. They can switch their cyborg halves with similar flight or weapon suits.

This is a “mini-series” insomuch as it was aired about six months before the rest of the series, but it’s not like one episode flows into the next and so on.

Ring Raiders is one of those toylines from the end of the eighties where you might be able to remember it but not really remember much about it. Small planes connected to rings by a plastic stalk, so to make them fly you could just pop the ring on and pilot them with your hands. An interesting concept, but lacking any figures or characters, which limits the appeal to me beyond the cool names.

A short-lived show was produced to promote it, and while it’s been mostly lost to history it’s shockingly good.

Next week I have the week off, so happy to do some cartoon reviews. Below the line is a selection of shows, I’ll review five with the most votes or interest.

I’ve not been feeling the love for posting cartoon reviews recently, but revisiting a random video prompted me to give this show from the nineties a look. Imagine someone doing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but knocking the Ninja Turtles part off the end. Meet the Street Sharks, a toy-based cartoon show from 1994, with not the best reputation, but I’ll see whether that’s deserved or not. This is a review of the first three episodes (Sharkbait, Sharkbite and Sharkstorm), presented as a mini-series.

One more review before I call it a year, unless some interesting podcast or shoot interview pops up in the next week. Will probably put out a post for review requests prior to the middle of February when I have a few days off work again.

Don’t really want to editorialise, but I’m not especially convinced that the last number of the year 2020 going up by one will make that much of a difference in the world, but let’s stay optimistic. This has been the worst year ever for a lot of people, which I can attest to personally as well as for many of my friends, and the same across the world. Fingers crossed things start changing soon.

Until then…

Finishing up a round of Christmas special episode reviews with a few from Filmation.

Guess who messed up their calendar and thought today was the 23rd? Moi! So, a quick review of another Christmas special before I post some Filmation Christmas episodes later.

I wanted to watch this just ahead of reviewing a film I went to the cinema to see almost thirty years ago. No surprises as to what that film is.

A bit delayed with some things I was going to review, so bumping that to tomorrow and instead having a look at these two specials from the early eighties. The Raccoons was a staple of Saturday mornings when I was a kid for a long time, although I must admit that it was mainly because I loved the intro, loved Run With Us, and just ate my breakfast through those two things to kill the time.

As recently pointed out by a work colleague of mine, Cyril Sneer is definitely a Jewish caricature.

A stop motion animated Christmas special, Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey from 1977, from Rankin/Bass today. I was surprised to read in my research that they’d actually closed up shop before Thundercats, probably their biggest hit series, had concluded airing. Funny how that happened with a lot of studios with big series in the eighties, nothing implied.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4cg0lg

Today is a selection of requested reviews of shows available via Dailymotion, pretty much stuff I’ve never seen before or am not aware of having seen, so it’s almost all new to me.

Yo Joe! The original G.I. Joe and newer Renegades series both had Christmas episodes, so reviewing those, plus one on the same disc as the former that I’ve completely forgotten what it’s about.

A couple of stories from two different series, which I’ve thrown together here on the simple basis of them both starting with the letter T. Need it be more complex than that?

When I reviewed some DC Christmas episodes the other day I forgot that Batman: The Brave and the Bold had a Christmas episode too (aired December 12th, 2008), so figured I’d best review that. Plus, you’re never going to have to twist my arm too much to review some BTATB episodes, so find a few more thrown in for the price of one!

Seeing as we had three DC Christmas episodes, only fair to redress the balance with some Marvel equivalents.

Starting off some Christmas cartoon reviews with a trip to the DC Animated Universe.

A week today will commence my break from work for two weeks, so I’m game for reviewing a few animated shows and films while off as well as some wrestling. Clean slate, I do have a few little things in mind with a festive flavour, but comment below with any suggestions.

Cheers!

Edit: Also, you can make suggestions for things without a Christmas theme as well if there’s something you’d like me to take a shot at as well.