#Tell Friday

[Friday]

sometimes i get jealous of younger people's cartoons because I mean like they're so much better than the toy-shilling slop we had in the 80s and 90s, and they have a ton of hot goth girls, but then I remember we had Gadget so it evens out

[Thad]

I mean we had the Golden Age of TV Animation, with Disney, WB, and Spielberg throwing some serious money at children's cartoons.

I've been spending my lunches switching from Batman to Superman to Gargoyles. The '80s got pretty dire but the '90s were fucking great.

[Yoji]

sometimes i get jealous of younger people's cartoons because I mean like they're so much better than the toy-shilling slop we had in the 80s and 90s, and they have a ton of hot goth girls, but then I remember we had Gadget so it evens out

And we still have our share of straight-to-toy bullshit nowadays. I'm lookin' at YOU, Paw Patrol.

Like, my kids don't even WATCH the show. How did we end up with so many (admittedly second-hand) toys from it??

[Friday]

ah yes, Paw Patrol, Copaganda for toddlers. Get 'em as early as possible before they watch any actual news so their formative opinions on Cops is "Cops are cute cuddly friends" and not "monstrous trigger happy racist murdering idiots."

I mean we had the Golden Age of TV Animation, with Disney, WB, and Spielberg throwing some serious money at children's cartoons.

I've been spending my lunches switching from Batman to Superman to Gargoyles. The '80s got pretty dire but the '90s were fucking great.

That's fair. I was mostly thinking of the 80s and painted with too broad a brush. Batman TAS is the best.

[Mongrel]

Even the 80's toy-shilling slop had its appeal and had people behind it who put in work to make something they could actually be proud of at times. You watch stuff about the making of He-Man and they were just grabbing anything anywhere they could find cheap or even free and actually making something out of it, and it really is impressive how well they did with basically no resources.

Teddy Ruxpin actually put out an epic long-form serial fantasy story, something which is still very rare for episodic kids' cartoons to do (though that was more common among Euro and Japanese shows). He-Man and GI Joe are corny and ridiculous and dumb in so many ways but even kids who've never watched that shit or owned a toy can get a kick out of Skeletor or Cobra Commander. Transformers, well, I don't need to tell Thad or any of you about Transformers. TMNT is iconic and is a ridiculous amount of fun.

I could probably find more, but the main thread running through all that is that a lot of the toy-driven crap still produced extremely strong and memorable characters. The shows themselves may have been goofy or mixed, but they had such strong characterization that that was still enough to carry a lot of shows.

The 90's had some amazing, genuinely top-shelf stuff, and Batman was a big part of kicking that off, but it was also a time of overproduction with lesser or aspiring studios cranking out a ton of shows with decent production values but extremely mediocre and forgettable writing. There's a lot of 90's cartoons whose characters I can easily picture in my head, but whose names and show titles escape me, never mind any actual stories, because they were just supremely unremarkable.

There was a Canadian studio in particular which just churned out huge amounts of stuff and it was all so unmemorable I can't even remember the damn name of the company, but it doesn't matter much as most of those studios went bankrupt or were absorbed by other companies in the consolidation which followed the 90's peak. Most of that stuff will never see the light of day because there is absolutely zero nostalgia for any of it.

I think we can all agree that Paw Patrol is absolute garbage and Batman TAS was lightning in a bottle.

[Thad]

Even the 80's toy-shilling slop had its appeal and had people behind it who put in work to make something they could actually be proud of at times. You watch stuff about the making of He-Man and they were just grabbing anything anywhere they could find cheap or even free and actually making something out of it, and it really is impressive how well they did with basically no resources.

There was some serious fucking creative talent involved, too. Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and JMS all worked on He-Man and She-Ra. Steve Gerber wrote for Transformers and GI Joe. Motherfucking Jim Woodring worked on Rubik the Amazing Cube.

And I haven't even mentioned the voice actors, because I don't think I need to. Everybody who was working in animation was working on some toy commercial or other and putting in quality work.

It was no Batman: TAS. But it was practice for a lot of the folks who eventually went on to Batman: TAS.

[Büge]

There was a Canadian studio in particular which just churned out huge amounts of stuff and it was all so unmemorable I can't even remember the damn name of the company, but it doesn't matter much as most of those studios went bankrupt or were absorbed by other companies in the consolidation which followed the 90's peak. Most of that stuff will never see the light of day because there is absolutely zero nostalgia for any of it.

I dunno which studio you mean, but CinéGroupe has a hell of a lot to answer for, for Mega Babies alone

[Mongrel]

Even the 80's toy-shilling slop had its appeal and had people behind it who put in work to make something they could actually be proud of at times. You watch stuff about the making of He-Man and they were just grabbing anything anywhere they could find cheap or even free and actually making something out of it, and it really is impressive how well they did with basically no resources.

There was some serious fucking creative talent involved, too. Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and JMS all worked on He-Man and She-Ra. Steve Gerber wrote for Transformers and GI Joe. Motherfucking Jim Woodring worked on Rubik the Amazing Cube.

And I haven't even mentioned the voice actors, because I don't think I need to. Everybody who was working in animation was working on some toy commercial or other and putting in quality work.

It was no Batman: TAS. But it was practice for a lot of the folks who eventually went on to Batman: TAS.

One bit of trivia I remember in particularly is the sheer number of Tiny Toons alumni who went on to do amazing things after being incredibly stifled and pissed off working on that show. It feels like EVERYONE worked on that thing and they ALL hated it, but they also all learned from each other. Must have been a hell of an environment.

[Thad]

One bit of trivia I remember in particularly is the sheer number of Tiny Toons alumni who went on to do amazing things after being incredibly stifled and pissed off working on that show. It feels like EVERYONE worked on that thing and they ALL hated it, but they also all learned from each other. Must have been a hell of an environment.

It's weird how little-remembered Bakshi's Mighty Mouse is given that basically everybody who worked on it went on to be huge in the '90s.

[Mongrel]

One bit of trivia I remember in particularly is the sheer number of Tiny Toons alumni who went on to do amazing things after being incredibly stifled and pissed off working on that show. It feels like EVERYONE worked on that thing and they ALL hated it, but they also all learned from each other. Must have been a hell of an environment.

It's weird how little-remembered Bakshi's Mighty Mouse is given that basically everybody who worked on it went on to be huge in the '90s.

Oh man, we remember the hell out of it in our family. :D

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I've heard it mentioned in enough songs by hip hop songs that it seems like there's a strong nostalgia for it among artists who're the right age for that. I don't remember it having any particular black or urban coding in it, but it's been a long time, Bakshi's stuff frequently had gritty urban themes, and it's not like I would have really noticed that detail as a kid anyway. Could even simply have been a regional thing too, if it was big among kids in, say, Philly or New York.

[Friday]

[nosimpleway]

"Has your foster mother ever been mistaken for a man?"
"Have you?"

[Friday]

[Yoji]

Okay, I'm trying not to cackle like an idiot at work over a picture of an Amtrak locomotive with a supersonic shock cone. Let's check on #tell Friday and god fricking dammit

[Friday]

[Friday]

So I've been reading about this new thing where they train dogs to be able to help out in repairing forests damaged by human activity

I sort of didn't believe the claims the article was making but today I found a cool video about it

[Kfroog]

this one got me laughing quite loudly

[Romosome]

this is what I was trying to say about Mediterranean people being cool

also the french wouldn't say please lol

[Niku]

[Kfroog]

Kind of curious what reaction you'd get for trying Welsh, Gaelic, Breton, Occitan, Basque, or Sami. I don't know, maybe Welsh and Gaelic are the only ones that would actually change the color that's already on the map.