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Thundercats
The cartoon Thundercats appeared on TV for the first time in 1985, and in 1997, Cartoon Network started broadcasting it in the action block, Toonami.
Thundercats were a group of half-human and half-cat aliens who escaped from the self-destructing planet Thundera to the place where they established a new home, the Third Earth.
Along with them, a group of villains found The Third Earth, the ones the Thundercats called Mutants. I always thought it was strange for Thundercats to call anyone a mutant; they were human-cat themselves. That was a strange point of this cartoon. The Mutants of Plun-Darr presented more variations, as human-lizard, human-bird and human-simian.
All of them found in the Third World the villain named Mumm-Ra. This villain, a creepy mummy with a lot of spit in the mouth, started bossing around the Mutants of Plun-Darr, and together they tried to get the Thundercat's sword and source of power; The Eye of Thundera.
Lion was their leader, and even when I was a child I never understood why. Really… Lion was royalty back in Thundera, but once they got into a new world, no one would be offended if Thundercats replaced their leader. Lion was really stupid. Most of the episodes consisted in the Thundercats fixing some stupidity Lion did.
Beyond that, every Thundercat in the cartoon, except for the kids, had a special ability. Lion, on the other hand, couldn't do anything besides swaying his inexcusably phallic sword. Oh… and of course, to see Djaga's ghost, that wasn't of any help unless Lion wanted to play charades.
Well… I forgot that the sword also emitted a red light that called Thundercats from anywhere they were… and yet, I always thought it was a stupid power. They all had communicators; why bothering to emit a red light to the sky to help the villain to locate Lion, if he could call everyone by the communicator? It was just another idiosyncrasy from this cartoon.
Of course, that symbol in the sky thing may have been the cartoon's way to teach kids to be united with the friends, and yet… it just seemed stupid.
Another problem about the Thundercats, especially Lion, was to forget things that happened between episodes. That's the only explanation I can think about why they couldn't defeat Mumm-Ra. In most of the episodes, someone placed a reflexive surface in front of Mumm-Ra, he yelled as a little girl and ran away crying. In that case, why couldn't they keep a mirror with them? The only thing they would have to do if Mumm-Ra appeared was showing his ugly face back to him. Still, no one of them ever thought about it, in fact, didn't even mention the Mumm-Ra's weakeness, what reinforces my theory that they forget things between episodes. Probably they exchanged their long-term memory for nine lives.
Thundercats also had one of the funniest things about cartoons in the 80s; an epilogue with a lesson. Usually, at the end of the cartoon episode, one of the Thundercats reviewed what happened and shared a personal moral opinion. Nowadays I ask myself if the cartoon creators did that because they wanted to teach a lesson, or the real story couldn't fill 22 cartoon minutes and they had to complete it with this little epilogue. Well… I suppose I will never have an answer for that.
Silverhawks
From the same creators of Thundercats, with very similar plot structure and characters, in 1986 Silverhawks hit the screens.
Once again, the cartoon creators tried to use the Mutant thing, but this time, in a more subtle way. Using bionic metal parts, the characters were half-human and half-bird.
It was a funny cartoon, and I have some remarks about it. The first thing was the introduction theme. It was not unusual in 80s' cartoon, and Silverhawks wasn't an exception, for the introduction to have an instrument solo. In Silverhaws, the introduction theme had an electric piano solo of 15 seconds played by Col. Bluegrass - one of the Silverhawks - on his sonic guitar. Every time I heard that when I was a kid, I played an imaginary guitar in front of me. It was awesome.
Another interesting thing about Silverhawks was the complete disrespect of the laws of physics. The cartoon scenario was the outer space, but it was not unusual to see Quicksilver - the Silverhawks leader - falling from nowhere to nowhere, like there was gravity in space. Even as a kid, I thought it was awkward.
The last thing I would like to comment about Silverhawks was the character Cooper Kid.
He is the orange kid above. Cooper kid was mute, and as kid, I thought he had some sort of disability. As a grown up, researching about Silverhawks, I found out that the reason why Cooper Kid couldn't speak was because he wasn't human or born in Earth; actually, he was from the “Planet of the Mimes”. I used to think that being orange and having blue skin was weird, but “Planet of the Mimes” beats it all.
Great cartoon, and I certainly will watch again if Cartoon Network decides to reprise it. Would have great laughs.
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