Recently I've been reading articles about the science fiction British import, Doctor Who, which will be going through a transition when the actor playing the title character leaves the show after the Christmas special this year and someone takes his place (like James Bond films, the main character has been played by a host of different actors).
What has been interesting to me is just the number of people who grew up watching the show in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. For many people the show shaped their childhoods. I've only been watching for the last few years, but I can relate. I too can't think about my childhood without remembering the different programs that I flocked to. I'll list some of them below:
1. Super Mario World. No, not the video game, but the TV show. It was a real thing. And I watched it right up until I went to Kindergarten. Check it out:
The video game convinced me that Mario was perhaps the greatest hero of all time. It was not
enough that I played the Super Nintendo game every minute I was allowed to be on the console. I dressed up like Mario. I wore a cape like Mario. There's a picture of me blowing out candles on a Mario-themed birthday cake.
The show didn't need to do anything fancy to keep my interest. Mario teams up with Luigi and Yoshi, they have to defeat Bowser who has usually captured Princess Peach, and they almost always succeeded by getting a power-up in the nick of time. I had to quit watching when I began going to afternoon Kindergarten and could never get back in time for the show. Looking back, the show was really pretty awful and was jam packed with Italian stereotypes. One episode actually revolved around attempts to revive an unconscious Mario with the smell of pizza. Kinda racist now that I think about it...
2. Power Rangers. If Mario was awful, Power Rangers was ... what's worse than awful? Vomit-inducing? Bad. But I was a dumb kid and I loved it. It had ninjas, robots, and dinosaurs. The show was so formulaic that by the end of 1st grade I was wondering why the heck didn't they just skip all the precursory stuff and just go straight to the final battle (which involved a one-hit kill...maybe they should have lead off with that).
I vividly remember one of my saddest moments being when my babysitter jokingly told me that Power Rangers was canceled and they weren't going to be showing it anymore. I cried for about two hours before she could convince me she had been just joking.
This is the premise of the show, taken word-for-word from Wikipedia:
In Mighty Morphin, alien wizard Zordon recruits "teenagers with attitude" to harness the power of the
dinosaurs to overcome the forces of evil space alien Rita Repulsa.[4] When "morphed," the rangers become
powerful superheroes wearing color-coded skin-tight spandex battle suits and helmets with opaque visors
I still can't believe I was so obsessed with something so dumb, but it ruled my life there for a while. One thing that invariably happened in each episode was "Rita" would send down some of her minions wearing all-grey spandex to fight the rangers. These minions were completely indestructible with only ONE weakness...a giant circle in the center of their chests which, when hit, kills them. It was the ONLY thing that could destroy them!
Occasionally, I and my friends would try to act out the stuff we saw on the show. You know, all the karate? It never worked out that well. We had an occasional bloody nose incident, but we still did it. I think the lesson from that is that I shouldn't let my child watch anything remotely violent until their brains have fully developed....so 25.
3. Pokemon. Thankfully, I matured past the notion of brightly colored superheros battling enemies and moved to a show featuring brightly colored monsters leaping out of tiny orbs and battling each other.
I was initially uncertain whether I should think Pokemon was cool or not. But after playing the Gameboy game I became addicted. It was the first (and last) anime show I ever watched and really it could get kind of goofy. Here's the premise:
Once a child turns 10 years old, he may leave home and travel the world finding and capturing wild pokemon (which means "pocket monsters") which he can then force into battles with pokemon belonging to other people in a quest to become the ultimate pokemon master. Looking back on it, it was actually a pretty horrible concept, kind of like Michael Vick's dogfighting ring turned into a cartoon.
As dumb as it sounds, it's easy to see why it appealed to kids. Imagine being able to walk around with the ability to summon monsters to do battle any time you wanted. Kids picking on you at school? Pull a raichu out of your pocket to electrocute him to death. Take that, Jebediah Hendrickson, you jerk!
Beyond that, though, the show got touchy-feely when it came to the relationships between humans and their pokemon. That's really what made the show itself appealing, this notion of "No one understands me! But at least I have you, bulbasaur!" One of my friends was able to relate. I'll keep his name secret to protect your identity, Josh Dreiling. He was once watching an episode entitled "Bye-bye, Butterfree!" in which one of the main character's pokemon is set free back into the wild so that she can be happy and live with the other butterfrees. While watching it, his sister barged into his room to ask him something when she stopped and asked, "Are you crying?" "NO! Shut up! Leave me alone!"
It's truly scary for a 10-year old to get in touch with his feminine side.
4. Angry Beavers. No feminine side here. Two beavers who are brothers must live on their own in the wild. There is absolutely no moral or educational value that can be taken from this show, it was just silliness.
What probably appealed to me about the show was the brothers, Dagget and Norbert, had arguments and fights that my brothers and I had all the time. Fights over everything from getting the last candy bar to being the first one through a doorway.
Aside from that, it was probably just the silliness of the plot that kept me interested, but there was always something vaguely relatable in each episode. For example, in one episode Dagget and Norbert are eating literally tons of cereal and collecting hundreds of box tops so that they can send them in and get their own street sweeper. I still remember eating as much cereal as I could when there was a toy or a competition at stake, so I could relate to the episode on some level. To this day, the part of that episode that sticks with me is....why on earth did they want a street sweeper so badly? Chances are, they probably didn't. They only wanted it because the cereal company was offering it.
Oh, and there was a character named Stump. You don't ever see him move...and by all measurements of logic he shouldn't move, but apparently he is completely self-aware and mobile and is well-liked by everyone in the forest. Part of the fun was you never knew when Stump was going to show up next with his stupid carved-out smile.
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