80s Cartoons Were Wonderfully Awful

"I FECKIN LOVE RUNNING THROUGH SPACE!
AND KILLING THINGS! AND SMOKING!"

I recently went channel surfing and found something called "The Hub," which at midnight at least showcases Generation 1 Transformers episodes backed up by original G.I. Joe. Basically, it's my childhood mornings and I couldn't be happier.

These characters talk about murdering the hell out of each other, though. Every six seconds, Galvatron is demanding they kill a Prime, or Dr. Mindbender is working with deadly neurotoxins.

And copyrights? Well, they were at least kind of alluded to. Mostly they were just thinly veiled. Example to both of the last points: A James Bong knock-off who looks exactly like Burt Reynolds of 1984 just entered a mobbed-up ritzy club called "Ritzy Club." Then he made references to smoking and hit on a woman by pandering and treating her like a child.

Oh, and no one writing these shows has ever heard of the concept "Show, don't tell." In their defense, animation was really really hard. I mean, you had to pay a Korean studio to draw all those little pictures. Better to just reuse footage of a head nod an have a bunch of words spoken off-camera, then show someone diving from an explosion. So, really no change. Except now it's a Korean computer studio.

Of course I also watched Mighty Max last week and it was exactly the same, so maybe I just love really lame TV regardless of age, so long as they straight-up try to murder characters left and right. That's sure improve the Disney Channel.