Mongo Nation

We track down our favorite cartoon characters and publicly humiliate them!

By Ted Hucklebuck

Most everybody (of a certain age) has fond memories of their favorite cartoon stars from childhood. Ninja Turtles, Voltron, Thundercats; There was never any shortage of great, animated series on the tube every Saturday morning, trying to sell you action figures or breakfast cereal or whatever.

Sadly, there aren’t really any cartoons that aren’t about collectible card games or that are specifically for adults anymore. But for generations raised in the 80s and 90s, cartoons were big business. So what do you suppose happens to all those cartoon stars that don’t get resurrected in big budget Hollywood movies, like G.I. Joe and the Transformers? Do they retire, change professions, or simply cease to exist? We looked up a few of our own favorite cartoon stars from the 80s and 90s and were (somewhat) surprised by the answers we found…

He-Man

Much to everyone’s no one’s surprise, He-Man is still a buff prick that goes around wrestling other buff pricks and “punishing” them for their misbehavior. But at least now he’s abandoned his sissy “Prince Adam” persona and is all He-Man, all the time. Clad from head to toe in metal and leather, He-Man manages a totally straight bar called “Men-At-Arms” in the seedy “Toolbox District” of Eternia. Most nights you can find He-Man riding the mechanical bar with his platonic male partners, Ram-Man and Fisto, arm wrestling patrons for drinks, or simply playing a relaxing game of strip poker in the men’s room of the nearby highway rest stop.

Beavis and Butthead

Beavis and Butthead, once the most famous duo in America since Cheech and Chong, met a tragic end in 1995 the day that MTV officially cancelled “The Headbangers Ball”. The two were found hanging from nooses in a seedy motel room a week later in Highland, Texas. Witnesses described the smell in the room as a combination of Cheetos, Mountain Dew and shit.

Because they already had a movie in development and two more seasons contracted to MTV at this point, their deaths were covered up and their parts in the movie were finished by a combination of look-a-likes and CG. The end product was a disjointed mess, and was not particularly successful. The TV show fared a little better, since Beavis and Butthead had a near Tupac-like propensity to over-record content. But one has to wonder if we didn’t lose an important part of our American pop culture when MTV stopped showing music videos, and effectively pulled the pin on the human grenade of hilariously dumb video commentary that was “Beavis and Butthead”.

Serpentor

Despite the fact that he was both more capable and more terrifying of a terrorist leader, few people have the same warm feelings for Serpentor that they have for his subordinate, Cobra Commander. (I don’t think Serpentor was mentioned in the movie even once.) Maybe Serpentor was just too much of an overachiever… Or maybe he just lacked an endearing sense of humor. But for whatever reason, he’s always been looked back upon as the Andrew Ridgeley to Cobra Commander’s George Michael. Luckily for Serpentor, he has since found himself a proper niche in the world of Republican Far Right media.

Currently the star of a radio show turned TV talk show, aptly titled “Don’t Tread on Me! (Or I’ll Laser Your Face)”, Serpentor continues to have a platform to espouse his political views. Topics range from “Worldwide Genocide: Is it really such a bad thing?” to “Ultimate Weather Dominators: The solution to this global warming thing that all these hippies are always crying about?”. Serpentor is behind only Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly in terms of popularity, though most fans would agree that Serpentor’s temper tantrum flip-outs are significantly more awesome and that he’s about one more embarrassing Youtube clip away from the top. Read the rest of this entry →

The hype machine has to stop somewhere, right?

By Jeremy Azevedo

Due to the success of Transformers and the overwhelming hype surrounding the upcoming G.I. Joe movie, producers are no doubt snapping up licenses to 80s cartoons at an alarming rate…

But for every Thundercats or He-Man, there’s another franchise that has absolutely no business ever being made into a movie. Here’s a look at the bottom 5:

Bravestarr:

Yes, he does ride that horse, and yes, it is awkward.

Bravestarr essentially combines science fiction, westerns, racial stereotypes and Satanism into one tidy package. The plot revolves around a planet known as “New Texas” (naturally) upon which some valuable mineral known as “Kerium” is being mined by meek “prarie people” who seem to receive no visible benefit for their slave labor. Despite this fact, an alcoholic Native American sheriff known as Marshall Bravestarr is called into action to combat an evil menace (the antichrist, furries, prarie people who want a piece of the action, gay robots) over the fate of New Texas and it’s precious resources, armed with his shamanistic spirit animal powers and a sweet cowboy hat. This show also features a talking horse that stands on two legs and can shoot a rifle, which sort of defeats the purpose of being a horse in the first place. Additionally, this also makes everyone feel weird about it when Bravestarr rides on his back.

Likelihood of being adapted into a film: 1/1,000

Silverhawks/Tigersharks/Sectaurs/Dinosaucers

Piss-poor Thundercats clones: This is why we can’t have nice things.

As a result of the overwhelming popularity of Thundercats, everybody and their mother was scrambling to develop their own anamorphic superteam of humanimals to delight bloodthirsty warmongering children and also give furries something to fap to. The bastard spawn of this shameless cash-in resulted in militaristic teams of bird–people, sea creature-people, insect-people and dinosaur-people, all of which were comparatively short lived. I can’t remember a goddamn thing about any of them, really, other than that the only African American Silverhawk was named “Hotwing”, which is pretty funny by today’s standard for being borderline offensive.

Likelihood of being adapted into a film: 1/10,000 Read the rest of this entry →