Even worse, what would happen if that man was obsessed with three young girl superheroes? One of the most disturbing moments in the Powerpuff Girls history is definitely the villain simply known as Larry. A middle-aged man, Larry is obsessed with the girls, to the point where he lures them to his home and imprisons them in some sort of miniature action figure box.
While in the cartoon they escape and save the day, the fact that the episodes focuses on this older man luring young girls to his home is just way too disturbing. Hormone-driven teen boys have always been portrayed as being dumb, transparent, and single-minded in their focus when it comes to the person they desire most. Yet one person one normally wouldn't associate with that group of boys would be Dexter. One the hit franchise Dexter's Laboratory , Dexter must fire Dee Dee at one point in the show, and when he finds her replacement, fans might have been surprised to find he picked a beautiful blonde woman with no qualifications other than her appearance.
For a character who excels at being the smartest in the room, he seems to fall for the typical teen boy drama by hiring with his urges, rather than for talent. At one point she asks him what certain buttons do while stroking his head, which prompts him to take a cold shower. Another moment sees Dexter ask her to dance, when she replies "OK, but it's fifty bucks extra! Womanizers are nothing new in our world, but in the world of cartoons, there are no characters more in line with a womanizer than Johnny Bravo.
Johnny Bravo was a well known and popular cartoon that focused on the titular character and his quest to meet and date as many women as he could, thinking himself a sort of Adonis when everyone actually rejected him. In one episode, however, he proved he was quite a creep, as the little girl character Suzy calls to invite him to her birthday party, which he rejects and says to call him back in 15 years when she's a coed.
Not only is he acknowledging that he will be attracted to her once she's of age, but shows he has little time or care for anyone who isn't a beautiful woman he wants to hook up with. This is a very creepy look into the woman obsessed man. Whether you believe they're real or not, the demon is one of the most feared and iconic creatures to represent the evil in our world to ever exist. Their influence knows no bounds, and that includes kid's television shows. One show filled with disturbing facts is definitely Courage the Cowardly Dog.
A show focused on a dog's quest to protect his family from creepy characters and monsters, the episodes were filled with disturbing imagery and nightmarish villains. One episode saw the sweet and elderly Muriel possessed by a demonic mattress. While the episode concluded with her being exorcised and free, the memory of the demonic Muriel eating people alive and having razor-sharp teeth is a little more disturbing than I'd like to remember.
Muriel was always the innocent one, the one that Courage fought through his many, many fears to rescue from untold danger. Watching her become that evil was unsettling. The themes of obsession and possibly murder come into play in another Courage the Cowardly Dog episode called Freak Fred. In this episode, Muriel's nephew Fred comes to visit. With a slender body and abnormally large grin, Fred naturally scares Courage and annoys Eustace. Eustace, wanting to go shopping for his own needs, locks Courage and Fred in the bathroom, where we learn Fred's dark secret.
He has an obsession with hair, and is determined to shave all of Courage's hair off. While this may seem innocent for a cartoon, look at his obsessive and disturbing behavior, and imagine that maybe this is a look into the mind of a possible serial killer.
Maybe even more disturbing to think about, what if the hair shaving is actually the beginning of much darker urges, and he starts wanting to collect other parts of his victim's bodies? Did you get chills down your spine? So did I When one thinks of cartoons, one doesn't normally have to think about episodes that see people getting eaten.
Courage the Cowardly Dog was never afraid to go into uncharted territory in children's television, including the theme of cannibalism. That's right, in one episode Courage and Eustace stops in a diner to eat while on the road, where they meet a seemingly friendly Pig who runs the restaurant. Courage notices people keep disappearing into the back of the restaurant, and sees the pig grab their belongings and hide them. He deduces that the pig is actually killing the guests and serving their bodies as meat for the hamburgers.
Courage must protect Eustace and find a way to get them out of there before it's too late, but this proves difficult as the curmudgeon Eustace wants to eat dinner. One word popped into my mind after this episode: ew! Flintstones; meet the Flintstones! They're a modern stone age family! The Flintstones is one of the most popular and iconic cartoons in broadcast history, and it's run on Cartoon Network helped cement the network as an animated television force to be reckoned with.
However, the Flintstones were not without controversy. In the 60s, Winston cigarettes sponsored the show, and both Barney and Fred smoked regularly on the show. They even had lines like, "Let's take a Winston break," and "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.
While it's hard to imagine the dumb yet lovable Fred lighting up a cigarette before heading down to the bowling alley or going on a smoke break while working, this happened often in the 60s. One might expect to find extreme violence in shows like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead , but rarely do we expect cartoons to get so violent that they are in fact graphic.
Yet that's what happened on Cartoon Network when the show Steven Universe came into being. Another example of extreme violence on Cartoon Network has to come from Steven Universe. On one episode titled "Fryboy," Steven puts a gem shard into the costume of Peedee, which grants the costume the power to animate and come to life. However, when this happens, Peedee tells his costume Frybo to make people eat fries.
From there, all heck breaks loose. The costume goes on a rampage in the city, forcing french fries down people's throats. Uncle Grandpa is a goofy action "comedy" featuring a cape and underwear-wearing hero named, you guessed it, Uncle Grandpa. It's a ridiculous and silly image, but is the actual content funny?
Well, not really. His oh-so-witty catch phrase is, "Good mornin'! It's hard to believe, after sitting through the dumb gags and shallow catchphrases, that this show's creators were inspired by the likes of legends like Tex Avery.
Note to the Cartoon Network execs - just because you've got a concept that makes for a successful YouTube offering, doesn't mean it'll translate to a full-blown TV show.
This lesson seems to have been given countless times in the case of Cartoon Network, though perhaps the juiciest example is the Annoying Orange crossover. The show stars a creepy looking orange sporting a human face, who cracks lame jokes and puns to his fruit and vegetable pals. You could say it's, well, annoying I'll see myself out.
Don't get us wrong, this zany, short-lived cartoon had its amusing moments, and surprisingly enough being produced by Hanna-Barbera, was decently animated. But the two "stars" of the show, who are ever-so-cleverly named "The Little Dog" and "The Big Dog", just come off as annoying and mediocre imitations of that classic Nickelodeon cartoon that came out a few years prior.
If the quirky and absurd nature of this show's look reminds you of one of those trippy Adult Swim programs, that's likely because it was meant to be one. Unsurprisingly, it was rejected for that block after its pilot was pitched, but reworked to air during normal CN hours.
The premise of solving weird and surreal problems has the potential for creative plotlines, but the jokes are just weird and fall flat, and the animation is crude and ugly. This show is just not edgy enough for the adult crowd, and the insane gags most likely fly over the heads of most of the younger market. In case you couldn't get enough of the lame comedy Uncle Grandpa, how about an even less memorable series based on that show's villains?
You can gather this is a pretty goofy show from its premise alone; a band of 5 zany fraternity monsters getting into various hijinks. The character designs are crude and nonsensical to the point of being ridiculous, and the voice acting is just annoying.
Who would have thought that an overrated, bland comic strip would inspire the creations of not one, but multiple show variants starring the lazy lasagna-loving cat Garfield not to mention a slew of movies, games, and toys? Though most tend to think of the far more memorable Garfield and Friends when they think of this franchise, many tend to forget about this CG stinker - if they've heard of it at all. There's a reason for this; the animation is poor, the jokes are lame, and the show hardly seems to resemble the charming and dry humor found in the comics.
I guess even Cartoon Network had to jump on the Medieval fantasy Game of Thrones themes that seems to be all the rage. The problem is, this show, unlike that one, has very little substance. It feels very stock, as it combines Dark Age-era "save the princess" plotlines with basic "day in the life" high school monkeyshines you might find on a mediocre sitcom. This show is further proof that flashy CG doesn't necessarily make an interesting cartoon.
Cartoon Network has had its share of CG duds, but most of those look like gold compared to its experiments with live-action programming.
But where that film was actually fun and creative, this show was naught but a hodgepodge of obnoxious un-funny cartoon critters and a bland, uninteresting kid. Perhaps the most amazing thing is that they managed to convince the voice actor of SpongeBob to voice the penguin. This reboot of the iconic hit has the misfortune of being overshadowed by a more iconic predecessor.
While this modern-day reimagining of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup has its charming moments, it just doesn't measure up to the original. It's well animated, though the overabundance of bright colors makes My Little Pony look bland The actual plotlines and characters, however, all just seem toned down. You could typically estimate how long older Cartoon Network shows would last.
Unsuccessful shows would make it to 26 episodes at most, moderate hits would get 52 and only really big hits got 78 episodes. Episode counts this decade are a lot higher. Some of that is cheating due to episodes now being 11 minutes instead of 22, but even just counting half-hours, the trend is upward. Adventure Time concluded with approximately half-hours, and Regular Show with around plus a movie.
Gumball will conclude next year with half-hours, and Teen Titans Go! Even moderate hits have had the chance to last; it seems unlikely Clarence would have gotten 65 half-hours and Uncle Grandpa 76 in the '90s.
On old-school Cartoon Network, the commercials were often as funny as the shows themselves. The crossover bits morphed into the network's full-on branding with the " CN City " design. Cartoon Network in the United States will occasionally shell out the money for impressive spots like these for their birthday celebrations, but in general the channel's packaging lacks the same pizazz.
Studios handles comics adaptations of modern-era Cartoon Network shows while IDW manages the classic properties. The main run of Adventure Time comics, written initially by Ryan North later taken over by Christopher Hastings and illustrated by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb, were some of the most acclaimed all-ages comics around.
The "Night of the Vampire Robots" is just one example of the sort of special events old-school Cartoon Network would pull. There was the yearly "June Bugs" marathon, playing almost every Bugs Bunny cartoon ever made. There were parodies of sports games and awards shows. Toonami did animated music video nights and a "Giant Robot Week. This isn't so much a thing Cartoon Network today does better than old-school Cartoon Network so much as a thing old-school Cartoon Network didn't do at all.
It might not be the most amazing thing in the world, but as Cartoon Network moves more and more into the digital space, it's cool that it's producing interesting podcast content. The Steven Universe Podcast is a goldmine of production trivia and creative insight into the channel's biggest hit with the older geek crowd.
Drawn : The Story of Animation , a collaboration with Stuff Media, carries on the legacy of the old Toonheads -style programming educating about animation it's also one of the rare examples of Cartoon Network acknowledging Adult Swim programming.
There's no more "CN Real" block of reality shows. The only times you'll see live-action on the channel today is the occasional movie. This isn't counting Adult Swim, which has managed to make live-action programming work by virtue of not being called "Cartoon Network," and keeping its live-action content so weird that it couldn't possibly air elsewhere.
That said, before Cartoon Network was really an all-cartoon network, not even making exceptions for live-action movies. The closest thing to an exception was The Banana Splits , which at least contained cartoon segments.
Cartoon Network has ultimately held to its mission better than, say, MTV, but it's still not quite as perfect at that as it once was. This might be the most controversial point on this list, and the one that's most up for debate. Old-school Cartoon Network certainly made many good and some great shows. In the s, though, the high points have gotten even higher. Were any of the old Cartoon Network shows as emotionally complex as Adventure Time , as narratively ambitious as Steven Universe or as all-around perfect as Over the Garden Wall?
The average quality's been pretty impressive as well. Aside from some questionable reboots of older series, Cartoon Network Studios' current slate is extremely impressive. Reuben Baron is a writer, filmmaker, critic and general nerd with a particular interest in animation. He is the author of the ongoing webcomic Con Job: Revenge of the SamurAlchemist, adapted from one of his contest-placing screenplays.
Follow him on Twitter at AndalusianDoge.
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