Last night, while killing time on the internet and chatting with Adriana (who is hilarious by the way), I accidentally let my remote control stop on The Hub, a channel which is partially owned by Hasbro and seems to be used primarily to sell my childhood memories back to me a half-hour at a time. I mistakenly started watching the proffered Transformers episode and was dismayed to find half a dozen things in the first few seconds that bothered me about it. Bumblebee’s scale was inconsistent, going from 12 feet to 6 feet and anywhere in-between, while Optimus Prime went from throwing jet planes with one hand to standing only twice as tall as Sparkplug Witwicky in the finale. And you probably don’t even want to get me started on Jetfire, who was not much taller than Prime in robot form, but able to carry ALL the Autobots as passengers in jet mode. Usually I try to be kinder to vintage material, but the Transformers cartoon simply does not hold up for me, and I am left with the certainty that 11-year-old me was simply not paying all that much attention.
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) reminds you that both of the robots in today’s image are meant to be the same character, asking: What pop-culture delights of your youth fall short of your grown-up expectations?
11 Comments
Krull! That film was the highlight of my movie-watching childhood, but watching it now, i cannot get past the 1st scene without mentally puking at the acting.
The Six Million Dollar Man. From a kid’s perspective, was a great show is very groan worthy as an adult. I am glad they don’t rerun the shows.
Defiantly the 90’s Spider-Man cartoon. 10 year old Charlie thought it was he most awesome thing since Awesomy McAwesome came to Awesome town.
26 year old Charlie wants to know why nobody ever throws a punch, and why do they keep pushing on each others’ shoulders? And why dose everybody have a laser gun? How come said lasers never hit anybody? And why does every storyline take fifty squillion episodes? And how many times are they going to reuse that clip of The Lizard smashing a wall? And why did they make the city on a Sega Saturn? etc, etc….
Some of those things are the fault of parent groups and the FCC putting pressure on them to tone down what they considered violence rather than the people working on the series. Some of it I can understand, but they had a lot of things that seemed quite ridiculous even to me back in the day. I still roll my eyes when I read some of the restrictions they had on those shows.
the Dark Crystal.
Personaly I think Dark Crystal and Labrynth hold up pretty well, as an adult it’s clear that the stories only exist to get to the next set piece but when the creatures and worlds they create are so charming it’s easy to forgive them.
The old A-Team episodes. I used to love them in re-runs growing up. Now, I wonder why four spec ops agents can’t ever seem to hit any body with a full magazine of AK-47 ammo. Also, just how dumb can B.A. be when they drug him for the eleventyith time with laced milk to get him on a plane. However, when I can play a strategy game and have the ability to name my units, four of them always end up being BA, Face, Hannible and Murdock.
The 80s TMNT cartoon. I was a Turtles fanatic as a kid, and still love the movies (1, 4, and to a lesser extent 2), the comics, and the newer cartoons. But I could not believe it when the 80s cartoon came out on DVD and I realized just what a godawfully stupid show it was. The dialogue was painful, the animation was bad, the jokes weren’t funny, and there didn’t seem to be anyone in that world with an IQ higher than 40.
Have you seen “Turtles Forever”? Despite knowing how painful the 80’s TMNT is to watch now, I was rather amused at the teaming up of the classic 80’s toon team with the slightly more recent team (from the FOX/CW series that was ending at the time the special was aired). They even made sure to point out just how groan-worthy the 80’s toon was. They also end up teaming up with the original black and white comics team (in a fully black and white world too).
I agree that the 80’s cartoon is bad and I loved it as a kid getting all the toys and devouring all the episodes but its one show you shouldn’t watch again. The transformers show may not hold up but the movie is still great. I got the touch!
Yes, I have seen it. The 80s Turtles come across a lot more goofy and tongue-in-cheek stupid than the just-plain stupid they were in the older show, so they were a lot more tolerable. It’s like when a politician says something stupid and they mock it on SNL. The SNL retelling often seems less hard-edged than the actual dumb comment, because they’re doing it with a wink and a nod to the camera.