Growing nostalgic for childhood TV shows

[1 Comment(s)]

By Emley Kerry

Nothing is as great as recapping your favorite childhood shows with friends. If you hang out with a group of people your age for long enough, one of these days you will inevitably end up talking about your favorite animated TV shows from when you were a kid. With nostalgia and excitement, each person prattles off their favorite cartoon series, characters, and moments of certain episodes with astounding specificity. But even more incredibly, you remember the same details! With all of the events of our childhood that we have forgotten, the TV shows of our formative years seem to stick with us. So, let's go back in time and remember a few of our favorites, the ones that really mattered to us and still put a smile on our faces.

Captain Planet:
Captain Planet, with his blue mullet, chiseled jaw, and rippling green muscles, was determined to save the planet before being eco-friendly was deemed as cool. The series, which began in 1990, taught kids how to protect the environment around the same time that a gaping hole was discovered in the ozone layer. The superhero was summoned by a beacon formed when the five planeteers put their elemental rings together, but what was with the Indian kid with the "heart" power?

Scooby Doo:
Even as kids, I think we all realized the rigid pattern this show followed: Scooby and Shaggy do everything they can to run away from the ghoul, ghost, or goblin haunting that episode, but in their attempt to run away, they end up stumbling across the apparition, who ends up being a disgruntled character that we were introduced to earlier in the show. Regardless, it was all kinds of enjoyable.

Unfortunately, the show jumped the shark when Scooby's cousin Scrappy Doo showed up. The 1999 movie was the nail in the coffin and an insult to our childhood memories of the beloved series.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Rafael fought crime and kicked ass with their super Ninjitsu skills from 1987 to 1996. Pizza-eating turtles named after major artists and a martial arts teaching sensei rat? It makes absolute sense when you're eight years old.

Inspector Gadget:
Did you know that inspector Gadget was brought over to the U.S. from France? It makes more sense when you think about it because who here really knows what an inspector is? The character of Inspector Gadget was the original transformer, part man and many parts machine, and the bumbling and inept detective/French po-po ended up accidentally defeating bad guys with the help of his sharp niece Penny. The show ran on Nickelodeon from 1987 to 1992 and re-runs were picked up by other networks.

Smurfs:
You've got to love a kid's show with a communist message. The Smurfs, originally Les Schtroumpfs in French, was an American animated adaptation of a Belgian comic strip also about small blue people who live in a cooperative community in the woods where each Smurf works in the position best suited for him.

The Muppets:
I know it wasn't animated, but I just had to throw it in because no TV list is ever complete without the genius show that was of the Muppets.

Originally Published: Issue 822 - November 4, 2009

Share on Facebook

Back to the top