Saturday Morning Cartoons: The 1980’s Collection,
Volume 1 (Warner Bros. DVD Set)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: C Episodes: C
Everyone
has a different propensity for 1980’s television series, animated or
otherwise. There are those zany series
that reflect an era of excess and outlandish styles and others that remain
solid/classic television to this day. For
the most part, however, many series have been forgotten with time, never to be
seen or heard from again. Thankfully (perhaps) the invention of DVD has allowed
the forgotten and dismissed to resurface just as horrible as ever.
Now for
your ‘enjoyment’ on DVD is Saturday
Morning Cartoons: The 1980’s Collection, Volume 1; a compilation of some of
the most idiotic animated series from the 80’s.
While classic series like GI Joe and
Transformers have lasted the test of
time, even inspiring recent feature films; many of the Saturday morning
cartoons from the 1980’s were mindlessly taking advantage of popular trends of
the day. The set being reviewed here
features episodes from odd series like Kwicky
Koala, Thundarr the Barbarian, The Flintstone Kids, The Mr. T Show, Chuck
Norris: Karate Kommandos, The Completely
Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, Goldie Gold and Action Jack, The Biskitts,
The Monchhichis, Galtar and the Golden Lance, and Dragon’s Lair. Wow! Seriously,
it is such a cornucopia of 1980’s animated randomness that as I watched them my
head was spinning. There is a sampling
from each of the series, some with one episode and others with several, but
overall I was stunned at how bad the series were. Each series used the basic Hanna-Barbera
premise and classic archetype of good vs. evil, but what was more stunning to
me was the variety of shows that I had forgotten. It took almost the whole episode on most
series for me to get a brief ‘flashback’ of my childhood and watching the
series, but sure enough their horribleness was stored in the back of my mind. I am guessing that audiences will never get a
full run of these series on DVD or otherwise, due to rights reasons as well as
the risk of no one buying them, but Warner Bros has once again done a solid job
of giving fans a taste of the past; mostly emphasizing what they ARE NOT
missing.
For those
of us in our mid too late 20’s Saturday morning cartoons are a fond memory
(though I do recall sleeping in quite a bit), but nostalgia is at times better
left as a warm fuzzy feeling not to be further explored. The Saturday Morning Cartoons were a chance
for studios and companies to promote their newest toy or diabetes inducing
cereal to a young audience, while their parents were unwittingly asleep in
their bed. Back then substance and depth
were not too much of a concern when it came to television and like I said
before time has not faired well for our childhood memories. This set was packed to the brim with pure
awfulness. Not only were the cartoons
horrible, but as will be further reviewed below the picture/sound quality is
atrocious. I have emphasized in my
reviews time and time again that 1980’s animated properties were not taken care
of; simply because no one had the foresight of DVD/home video and its
profitability. This oversight has left
us with a jumbled mess in which only bits and pieces of the aforementioned
series still exist. Whereas I did not
enjoy watching these series fully, the nostalgia coupled with laughable nature
of what is being offered was enough to think these series deserved better. And who knows perhaps there is someone out
there who is anxiously awaiting the full release of The Monchhichis…though God knows they need help.
The
technical features on this set are awful.
Perhaps by no fault of the studio itself (in terms of
restoration/digital transfer efforts) the series are overflowing with color,
sound, grain and quality issues beginning to end. There is even an ambiguous warning at the
sets opening screen that emphasizes that ‘stock footage’ from multiple sources
had to be utilized to recreate episodes and may not be as originally rendered;
in other words SORRY NERDS WE MESSED UP, but did our best. The picture is a simple 1.33 X 1 format with
bland colors, a worn appearance and enough grit/debris to create a dust
storm. There is no doubt in my mind that
the studio could simply not find good source material, being lost or mistreated
over the years. Instead we are left with a subpart product due to years of
carelessness. The Flintstone Kids seems to be the one exception to the quality
debacle, but I was already expecting a full release of this (more popular than
the rest) animated series. The audio
does not fair well either as they are presented in their weak (yet original)
Dolby Digital Mono. The sound comes
through MOSTLY crisp and clear, but offers nothing special. Quality is lacking even with nostalgia running
rampant.
The
extras are absent with the exception of the featurette Lord of Light, which gives a basic ‘behind the scenes’ look at Thundarr the Barbarian; in the end
being nothing special, though it makes me think they had at one point intended
to have a ‘full series’ release.
I can not
say run out and buy this set, but if you are looking at a sampling of your past
or want to see how your little ones react (consider it an experiment) I would
say go for it. The worst thing that
could happen is that you realize how old Chuck Norris really is.
- Michael P. Dougherty II
