Favorite Childhood Show

JOEY! I freakin hate you now!!!

I was going to say Rocko!!!!!

 

Speed Racer.

 

I forgot to mention Rugrats! God I loved that show.

 

reboot... especially when season 3 was released... Andraea became sexy... and "Matrix" had much too much baggage but it was so good

 

Pingu Ftw!

 

Johnny Bravo
Saved by the bell
Boy meets world

 

i was sooo obsessed with power rangers when i was little
it's one of the things in my life i can never forget

 

Hm... Magic School Bus totally rocked my world, so did Arthur. And Archie's Weird Mysteries!!!

 

LOVED MAGIC SCHOOL BUS.

I played the computer games and everything. That show was The Awesome.

 

hey arnold!
out of the box
mr.roger's neighborhood
barney
catdog
more i can't think of right now.

 

ummm i was like a power ranger addict and dressed up as one for three consecutive years for halloween lol...

And of course i loooved barney. I used to watch that show in spanish lol (!)
Loved it!

 

HOLY FLYING FUCK YES.




Mannn, you made me want to watch again. Right now.

God, Rocko's was EPIC.

 

Ren & Stimpy

 

Hells yes! and that orginal green ranger was frickin hot!!!!

 

Just so EC isn't the only brave "older" person posting in this thread...

I was one of the first group of kids to be raised on Sesame Street. From what I have seen, the show actually hasn't changed much. It's a bit heavier on the "star power" now - famous guest stars and "Elmomania" - but the basic feel is the same. It's hard to believe that back in our day, there WAS no Elmo.

There were a couple other shows on PBS after Sesame Street I watched. The most notable was probably Electric Company. Think of it as Sesame Street for the slightly older set. Most of the pieces involved minimal set design and then-hip clothing and dialogue. Here, we see regular character Easy Reader (a hip street-wise guy with a passion for reading) and his friend Carmella reading Stanley the...Magic Message Board. I think.

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Random factoid - both the actors in this clip are Academy Award winners. That's Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader, and Rita Morena as Carmella.

Like most kids of my time, Saturday mornings involved sugary cereals and glueing myself to the TV. (Is Saturday morning still special like that?) The funny thing is, though, that there really wasn't much worth watching. The only decent cartoon shows were reruns from previous years - older Scooby Doo episodes, old theatrical Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry cartoons. It's odd that I ended up an animation fan, since the late 70s through the mid 80s are considered by most to be one of the worst times for cartoons. (It took shows like Transformers to help wake up the industry, and the Disney afternoon shows really helped push animation into a golden age.) The shows were unbelievably cheap-looking, poorly produced and acted, and basically had nothing at all to recommend them.

Here's the intro to one show that I (embarrassingly enough) remember actively seeking out.

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Even in this 38-second clip, you can see how bad this show is going to be. Check out how poorly rendered the humans are - even though they're not even moving in their brief shot. How crappily the title burns upon (barely) being touched by Godzilla's flaming breath. How Godzilla goes from utterly submurged one second, to standing ankle-deep the next. (What - is he on some sort of undersea elevator?) And then, yes, there's Godzookey. One of the first in a long line of what my friends and I termed the "chick-a-bwank" characters. Characters who are on the show simply as comic foil, and fail to ever EVER even so much as make you smile. Characters that make you cringe every time they show up on screen, and make you cringe even decades later just hearing their name mentioned. Characters whose antics are usually accompanied by goofy sound effects or music. The sound made as Godzookey embarrassedly looks at the camera after his failed landing attempt is, in fact, the "chick-a-bwank" sound effect that gives these characters their genre name. (For those keeping track, Scrappy Doo and Gleek the Space Monkey also belong in this group.)

...and HALF the intro to the show is given over to this bit of comedic genius.

Sorry. Baggage.

Then I hit double digits. And on August 1st, 1981...this happened.

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It really is hard to explain what a huge impact this had. On my generation in general, and even on me specifically. Up until then, even music I liked, and music I bought, was performed by faceless musicians I knew little or nothing about. Perhaps I'd catch a quick clip of Andy Gibb performing his new hit song on some show, but other than that, I only had my record sleeves to even know what the heck these people looked like. And if you were young, you mainly bought singles rather than albums (buying "hits" rather than full albums by artists). And most of those came either in generic paper sleeves, or perhaps in sleeves with art that didn't have the artist on it.



But MTV added a dimension. Sure, most of the early videos were simple performance or miming clips. But we could actually see the performers performing. And even within those cheap clips, there'd be an element of "style". And these visual clues would work their way into our brains, combining with the song, until the two were rather inseperable. Is Duran Duran's "Rio" really that stylish a song, or does it just seem that way because I can't hear it without thinking of Simon Le Bon lounging on a beach in a blue-and-white suit? Doesn't really matter, I guess. The song IS stylish in my brain now, and nothing can convince me otherwise.

It had an even bigger effect on me. I was already a big fan of music, and MTV made me more so. Up until that time, I felt a bit weird putting on a record and just listening to it. It seemed like that wasn't enough. I had to read a book or straighten my room or something while it was playing. Just sitting there listening seemed wrong. But MTV made music a submersive experience. Watching MTV wasn't something you could do in the background while you did other things. And I started listening to music that way, too. Putting on a record, and just staring at the music sleeve. Or, if there was no music sleeve, just laying on my bed and letting the music take me along.

And this this really was life-changing. I know my friends and I spent untold hours drawing that MTV logo and coloring it in, probably (if they're anything like I was) humming that guitar riff from the moon-landing clip over and over. (I REALLY need to find out who that is playing that...) A few years ago, I saw an MTV vinyl jacket on eBay...and bought it. It's one size too small, which means I can't "snap it up", but don't care. Still love the thing.

And yes, to trot out the old cliche. MTV isn't what it was. It used to be music videos all day long, broken up only by "VJs" talking a bit about the bands between videos, short "music news" segments, and perhaps a concert later at night. I don't bemoan the change in MTV. It is what it is, and really, it is what it's always been - a 24-hour commercial for itself. It's just that now, instead of reminding you that you're cool because you're watching the latest Flock of Seagulls video on MTV, it reminds you that you're cool because you're watching Cribs on MTV.

Lex

 

Holly, what do you think I did during every single one of the History lectures I had this past year at Uni?

Watched Rocko's Modern Life. No shit ^_^

 

:roflmao: Your parents let you watch entirely too much TV.

 

I liked The Flintstones and The Jetsons. When I was a little older, I'd come home from school and watch Batman or Gilligans Island. My absolute favorite show was The Brady Bunch. (stop laughing!) My dad wouldn't let me watch it so I had to walk two doors down and watch it with my Grandma. Bless her heart!

 

hmm
Rockos Modern Life, Rugrats, Dragon Tales, or Arthur.