Lurker > RySenkari

#15: Elmo Takes Over Sesame Street

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It's Elmo's World and we're all just living in it.

Introduced to Sesame Street in 1979, Elmo started off as a background character, but soon gained increased prominence in the show during the 1980s, culminating with Kevin Clash taking over the role in 1985. Clash's performance was said to have "breathed new life" into Elmo's character, and as a result, Elmo became even more prominent, continuing to appear more and more on the show throughout the 90s. Created to be an innocent, toddlerlike character, Elmo appealed greatly to the show's youngest viewers, who were most engaged when Elmo was on screen. Finally, in 1998, Elmo was given his own segment of the show, titled "Elmo's World", which was a more fantastical segment of the show compared to the more grounded in reality segments of the rest of Sesame Street. "Elmo's World", a 15 minute segment of the hour long program, aired mostly during the 2000s, a time of significant change for Sesame Street from what it was before, and this is when most of the problems began, including the reduced presence (or removal entirely) of Muppet characters such as Kermit the Frog, and less emphasis on visiting real people in real world settings, to make time for more Elmo segments of the program. It was a serious departure from the show's original mission to teach kids about the real world and make them feel more comfortable in it, and while the Elmo's World segments did successfully appeal to young children, these segments were also said to be less educational than the main program itself, even adjusting for the fact that younger kids would be learning more simplified material. "Elmo's World" ended in 2009, and in 2012, a new segment called "Elmo: The Musical" debuted, focusing on songs sung by Elmo. Later on, in 2013, Kevin Clash would step down from the role after abuse allegations, though these were later dismissed due to the statute of limitations, and Elmo would take a less prominent role in the show going forward (though later spin--offs such as The Not Too Late Show With Elmo) would give the character some of the screen time he had enjoyed on the show itself). The rise of Elmo might've been popular with Sesame Street's youngest viewers, but it also forever changed the focus of Sesame Street, bringing the show in line with its contemporaries and in a way removing some of what made the show unique. It remains a popular and valuable educational resource for children, but it lost some of its appeal and even its sharp wit in the process, as what usually happens when a show with such a strong ensemble cast becomes so heavily focused on one distinct character.

#16: Clutch Cargo

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When you manage to make even Annoying Orange look like a normal cartoon...

Clutch Cargo was a 1959 cartoon about an adventurer who traveled around the world on dangerous adventures, sort of a proto-Race Bannon. One of the first televised cartoons, it could've been an innovative and groundbreaking show, and indeed, it did feature a creative story now and again, but what ultimately doomed Clutch Cargo to its status as a weird footnote in animation history was the producers' insistence on a shoestring budget for practically everything involved with the show, to the point where its producers said that they're not making an animated cartoon at all. Instead, most of the show's "animation" consisted of still frames of animation with live action movement superimposed on them, including, most infamously, the mouths of the performers, a technique known as "Synchro-Vox". This served to give talking characters an incredibly strange and disturbing look, with the real mouths of actors speaking the characters' dialogue and being shown on screen. Corners were cut on pretty much every aspect of production to save time and animation cels, with one producer bragging by comparing the production costs of Clutch Cargo to that of Disney at the time (one forgets that at this time, Disney was making the epic Sleeping Beauty, with animation that is still cited as some of the most beautiful ever produced). The disturbing animation techniques, combined with some pretty blatant racist stereotypes in a number of episodes, would ultimately relegate Clutch Cargo to obscurity and infamy, with only one season produced despite the low budget. What Clutch Cargo is mostly known for now is for having its theme song hummed during the infamous Max Headroom broadcast intrusion incident, and what that man put himself through is sort of how it feels like to watch Clutch Cargo today: screaming nonsense while being spanked repeatedly.

#17: Kid Nation

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Quit whining. You could be working for Dan Schneider.

This is one of the shows I mentioned "fudging" my criteria for. Kid Nation was technically intended as a general audience program, airing in CBS on prime-time, but it ended up being marketed heavily toward kids, and CBS tried to promote the show by having schools show it to 7th-12th graders, so I'm counting it as a kids' show. The premise of Kid Nation was to bring 40 kids together in an Old West ghost town to see if they could successfully form their own society. They had their own "town council", and outstanding performers got gold stars that could be redeemed for real world money, with the possibility of earning six figure sums if one performed consistently well throughout the season. Needless to say, this show was absolutely littered with issues from the word "go". Psychiatrists and pediatricians went on record to say that the show's competitive environment could potentially cause extreme psychological stress for its young participants, while others complained that the show could potentially be in violation of child labor laws. There had been other reality competition shows featuring kids, such as J.D. Roth's Moolah Beach and Endurance, but those shows utilized older kids and had more participation from adult production staff to monitor the physical and psychological health of participants, while Kid Nation remained hands-off and left the children in charge of pretty much everything, with a much "looser" format for events and competitions. This led to some scary incidents, including a child accidentally drinking a small amount of bleach (they were treated by medical staff immediately afterward, but it's no less disturbing that this happened), and also led to New Mexico conducting investigations on the show itself. Kid Nation, despite the issues, managed to finish its first and only season with only a few of the kids quitting along the way, but despite the show's marginally successful run, it remains infamous as one of the most exploitative programs ever approved for airing on television. It enjoys somewhat of a cult status today, with both critical and supportive reviews still occasionally popping up on sites like Youtube.

#18: David Zaslav's Warner Bros. Purge

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See also: #34: Characters Whose Sole Purpose Is To Make The Protagonists' Lives A Living Hell And Who Never Get Punished

David Zaslav took over Discovery Channel in 2006, and when he was running that network, we never really heard all that much about him. Then, in 2022, he took charge of the merger between Discovery and Warner Bros., and holy shit do we know a lot about him now. He's on this list mostly for one of the first big moves he made, a move to remove dozens of animated shows from HBO Max and Discovery+ in the process of the merge between the two entertainment entities. These shows include popular cartoons like Summer Camp Island, O.K. KO!, Mighty Magiswords, and, most notoriously, Infinity Train. Summer Camp Island was particularly egregious, as that show was just days from airing its final season and the move put that season (which was already finished with production) in complete limbo, while there's no other way to watch most of the seasons of Infinity Train that were removed from that service. Zaslav's moves came as a series of "cost cutting" measures that included canceling and permanently shelving the mostly completed Batgirl movie, and while some of these shows were simply just shelved for a while until they could be sold to new networks, others were written off for tax purposes, making it legally impossible to ever show them again unless those back taxes are paid (the number of times a tax writeoff has been reversed in the history of television can be counted on literally one hand), essentially making written off shows lost media. That's bad enough, but Zaslav's model for "cost cutting" has now been implemented by numerous television executives, with writing off and shelving of digital content now becoming a standard business practice. This could, if the trend continues, lead to the largest loss of television media since the wiping of tapes back in the pre-1970s era, and it's Zaslav who started it all. This is the newest entry on the list, and so it's a bit early to gauge the full impact of Zaslav's actions. If the trend continues and we see vast swaths of digital media culled because of the new trends, this could easily be a top 3 moment in just a few years' time. On the other hand, if the trend is reversed (shareholders are already starting to revolt after Warner Bros. stock prices plunged following backlash against these moves), it may fall into the bottom half of the top 100, though there's already been enough damage done that this will remain a dumbest moment even if much of Zaslav's actions are reversed.

#19: Rubik, The Amazing Cube

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Damn, they always fly away when you're about to solve it.

Amongst product placement and merch-driven cartoons, there are some that are so boneheaded, so ill-advised that you wonder what kind of illegal drugs the production team was on. There aren't many shows this applies to more than Rubik, the Amazing Cube, which began airing in 1983 as part of an hour-long show with the Pac-Man adaptation (which wasn't great in and of itself, but looks like Arcane next to this). The show revolves around a magical Rubik's cube named Rubik who can transform into a magical flying hero once he's solved, and when he's not solved (which happens often due to his young friends fumbling him more than Matt Ryan), he just sort of wiggles around making gibberish noises and mumbling "help". All the while, the kids have to avoid an evil magician who used to be Rubik's original owner and who's constantly trying to take him back. Even in the merch-driven 1980s, the idea of making an animated series about a Rubik's cube has to be one of the silliest ever, and fans agreed, with this show only lasting 12 episodes. If there's one good thing about this show, it's that it was one of the first cartoons to feature a majority-Latino cast, but my God, they deserved so much better than this. Boring, silly, and derivative even in ways that the worst of the Scooby Doo imitators weren't, Rubik, the Amazing Cube faded largely into obscurity, but when it is remembered, it's remembered as one of the worst animated series ever.

So, I've thought about it, and I'm convinced: the death of Optimus Prime DOES quality as a children's TV moment. I've fudged my rules a couple other times in equally loose ways, and there is a consensus for Optimus Prime's death qualifying, so I'll go ahead and slot it in. Like I mentioned earlier, two of my top 20 moments are closely enough related that I can just merge them together into one entry to make room for Optimus Prime.

With that said, the top 20 is now set! No more changes, if you're not happy with my top 20 rankings you'll just have to complain in here :p

And speaking of the top 20, let's begin:

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#20: The Day My Kid Went Punk

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What would I do? Buy him a guitar, I guess?

Afterschool Specials used to be a staple of ABC's mid afternoon lineups throughout the 70s, 80s, and even a bit into the 90s. Attempting to entertain kids while teaching them valuable life lessons, they spanned the spectrum of quality from Emmy-winning classics to truly awful garbage, and between all the misguided morals, hammy melodrama, and overdramatic cautionary tales, I knew these specials needed at least one representative on my list. And while doing my research to find out which ones were the worst, one of them kept coming up at the top of list after list: the 1987 movie The Day My Kid Went Punk, about a quiet, well-behaved young man who suddenly decides to become a punk rocker. Oooh, scary! He gets a pink mohawk, he pierces his ear, and joins a punk band, all to win the heart of a special girl. He looks less punk than Luna Loud, for fuck's sake. The dialogue throughout shows that the writers knew next to nothing about punk rock (and punk rock wasn't even scary at this point, it had been years since the Sid Vicious/Nancy Spungeon incident and now everyone had moved on to commercialized hair metal). His mom, who decides to start a conference on "Punk Syndrome", keeps giving him crap throughout the movie, even though her son's behavior barely changes (he plays music for children about believing in themselves and takes a lonely little girl horseback riding). Honestly, it's hard to tell what this movie's message is, as it waffles back and forth between overdramatizing the punk rock craze and having a "just be yourself" message, and ultimately sort of settles somewhere between, with the protagonist toning down his look but not all the way. While the movie has its entertaining (entertaining in a campy, MST3K sort of way, mind you) moments, it's also boring, nonsensical, and about eight years too late, falling flat even amongst the worst of the worst of ABC's afterschool specials. Movies like these are why kids stopped watching them at all and started gravitating toward Fox Kids, and can you really blame them?

I mean, two of the entries I have in the top 20 could potentially be rolled together to make room for Optimus Prime's death if y'all think it belongs on here...

TheRock1525 posted...

I'm still banking on the death of Optimus Prime as #1, or at the very least top 5.

It happened during a movie, so I can't include it on the list. It'd be top 10 for sure if I did though!

Azula
Davy

#21: Milli Vanilli On Mario

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"Thank you, Mario, but our princess is in another- princess is in another- princess is in another-"

One of the most bizarre and ultimately ill-advised cartoon guest star appearances ever took place in the 1990 episode of The Adventures Of Super Mario Bros. 3, called "Kootie Pie Rocks". In it, Princess Peach plans to go to a Milli Vanilli concert, but those plans are dashed when Wendy O. Koopa (also known as "Kootie Pie" in this adaptation) kidnaps the two band members and demands that they give her a private concert. Hilarity ensues, largely due to Milli Vanilli's terrible voice acting (they voiced themselves in this episode, and boy if this wasn't a clue that there was no way they were really singing those songs, here you go), and their monotone reactions to Wendy threatening to turn them into accountants. Literally, she zaps them, they cry out "we're nerds! This is terrible!" in the most hilarious accent imaginable, and they finally relent to perform for her, only to be rescued by Peach and the Mario Bros. just in time. They return to their concert to perform for their new pals, Mario, Luigi, and Peach, and the episode ends with a quick snippet of their hit song "Girl You Know It's True". This episode was already pretty bad, and even IF we hadn't found out all that stuff about Milli Vanilli just weeks later, it'd be at the very least an honorable mention for this list, but with the scandal breaking when it did and immediately making their guest appearance incredibly short-sighted and ill-timed, this episode became one of the most infamous in animation history. The producers scrambled to "fix" the episode by cutting out Milli Vanilli's music and replacing it with generic music from the show, which only made it more hilarious, and also censored references to the band's songs within the show's dialogue, an extremely overblown reaction to a fairly silly scandal (compare the Milli Vanilli scandal with what some of the animators on this list have done, for example). Milli Vanilli's appearance on The Adventures Of Super Mario Bros. 3 looks silly in retrospect, and the show's move to censor the episode after the scandal just makes it look even sillier. Maybe the show's production staff wanted to avoid blame for bringing on Milli Vanilli in the first place, but instead of editing the episode so that it barely makes sense, maybe they should've just blamed it on the rain?

hombad46 posted...

I kinda feel like that should be higher than number 22 since I'm hoping that the 21 remaining entries aren't also about actual murder

Oh, I definitely debated putting that one much higher. I also debated not including it at all (it's not so much dumb as it is just plain evil). I kinda split the difference putting it where I did: it's dumb in the sense that it's senseless, but in terms of impact on the industry itself, it doesn't compare to some of these other incidents that are either more famous or more "dumb" in the traditional groan/"what were they thinking?" kind of way. I feel like it has to be mentioned in any list of infamous animation/children's tv incidents though. Obviously I know it's going to be controversial either being only at #22 or even being on the list at all.

#22: Ember McLain's Biggest Fan Commits Mass Shooting

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It's quite possible some of you followed this before he did the unthinkable.

One of the most popular and enduring Danny Phantom characters was Ember McLain, a rocking ghost girl with a tragic backstory. Her unique (and beautiful design), excellent voice acting performance (by Tara Strong, who for some reason didn't sing Ember's theme song), and her theme song itself, simply known as "Remember", endeared her to millions of fans... including one particularly disturbed fan whose name won't be mentioned here out of respect to his victims. This fan was obsessed with Ember, to the point where he created a web series called "Ember's Ghost Squad", which he hoped to turn into a full fan cartoon. However, his more benign fantasies and fanart were mixed in with disturbing fantasies of escaping to an animated world beyond our own, which, as the years went on, he began to see violence as his way of achieving this goal. He even animated himself and one of the characters from Ember's Ghost Squad committing a fictional massacre, before going on to do so in real life on the night of June 7, 2017. He murdered three people at his workplace before taking his own life, in one of the most senseless acts of evil ever perpetrated by someone so heavily involved with a cartoon fandom. His actions not only destroyed his own life as well as three innocent lives, but put a permanent stain on both the Danny Phantom series and on Ember, the character he claimed to love. It's still difficult to bring up the character of Ember in many fandom circles without someone bringing up the shooting, an absolutely horrific thing for Ember to be remembered for, and a sad reminder that we live in a country where fandom can cross over into horrific violence, with the easy availability of deadly firearms to the mentally disturbed making it an all too familiar reality.

#23: The Bat-Embargo

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Because kids get super upset if they can't tell Liam Neeson from a guy in a cartoon.

The Bat-Embargo refers to a controversial policy enacted by Warner Brothers around the time of the 2005 launch of Batman Begins, in which, with the exception of Batman himself, Batman characters couldn't be used in one production if they were also used in another. This meant, for example, that Robin couldn't show up in anything except The Batman once it debuted in 2004 (productions like Teen Titans were grandfathered in, but only as long as their own productions lasted), Joker and Harley Quinn could no longer appear in the DCAU (since they also showed up on The Batman) and Ra's al-Ghul couldn't be in the DCAU anymore because he was the villain in Batman Begins. This controversy mostly effected shows like Justice League Unlimited, limiting writers to using backshelf Batman villains such as The Clock King. The policy confused and angered fans, in part because it was inconsistent, in part because it didn't restrict other DC properties like Superman and The Flash, just Batman related works. In addition, its reason for being enacted (kids might be confused by two different versions of the same character) also didn't seem to make sense, and also insulted the intelligence of children. The policy put the nail in the coffin of any hope of reviving Teen Titans for a sixth season, because once production had ended, Robin wouldn't be able to be brought back even if fan petitions were successful in getting production re-started. Though the Bat-Embargo has softened somewhat, elements of it actually remain to this day, with Batman characters notoriously being more difficult to get rights for compared to other DC characters, hinting at the continued existence of a "soft Bat-Embargo". It did force Justice League Unlimited writers to be more creative rather than leaning on the same old Batman characters like The Joker, but at the cost of some potentially juicy storylines involving Renee Montoya or the League of Assassins. While the Bat-Embargo may have had a hidden silver lining here or there, its hamfisted implementation and ultimately its dumb reason for existing in the first place have earned it the deserving ire of DC fans everywhere.

#24: Merch-Driven Cartoons Take Over 80s Animation

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They'll keep blasting you with the Care Bear Stare until you buy the toys.

During the 1980s, we gradually crawled out of the late 70s cartoon nadir, but at what cost? Apparently, the cost that practically every Saturday morning cartoon of the era was made just to sell toys. From Rainbow Brite to Care Bears to He-Man to Strawberry Shortcake to Transformers, a slew of cartoons invaded the airwaves that were explicitly designed to sell toys to children. How could you tell? Endless characters, endless varieties of the same character, a parade of villains, tons of weapons and gadgets at every turn, all seemingly with an action figure set to debut the week after it aired. Hey, the 1980s were the era of "greed is good", after all. Still, the quality of cartoons certainly improved (gotta keep kids' eyeballs on the screen to sell them toys, after all), and some of the most beloved IPs of all time came out of this era, so what was the problem? The problem, of course, was that companies got too greedy. As the decade wore on, the in-show advertisement got more and more blatant, the cartoons got more and more formulaic, and the toys got more and more complex. This attracted government attention, and it's not hard to argue that the 1980s toy-driven cartoon boom led directly to the massive regulations of the early 1990s that eventually killed Saturday mornings for good (but more on those in a later entry). In addition, the huge success of the merch-driven cartoons of the 1980s led to a focus on merchandising, even to the detriment of other aspects of quality cartoons. This created an environment where if cartoons didn't sell enough merch, they were canceled despite ratings or critical acclaim, even when there was barely any merchandise to buy at all. Greed might be good, but too much of a good thing is always bad, and for all the good cartoons we got out of this era, it may not have been worth the damage done to the industry.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

Wait so what in particular has happened since 2003 to get it on this list? I'm sure that cartoons still do space parodies to some extent but you only mentioned things from the 70s and 80s.

Not much, but the 70s/80s space cartoons were still bad enough to earn it a relatively high spot on the list. Remember, counting only kids' show stuff, it was #2 on the 2003 list.

#25: Julia Vickerman's Creepy Tumblr

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And the internet is forever.

Julia Vickerman was an animator and writer who worked on shows like Clarence and the 2016 Powerpuff Girls reboot before getting the chance to direct her own show, Twelve Forever, revolving around the adventures of an imaginative 12-year-old girl named Reggie. However, before the show even debuted, Netflix fired her, ostensibly due to disputes between her and show staff. Later on, far more disturbing allegations would come out, including a series of creepy Tumblr posts culminating in a post where Vickerman admitted to stalking a 14 year old boy at a carnival. These posts were punctuated with a number of disturbing musings, including "if only his mom hadn't been there", and hashtagged with "pedophilia". These came to light after Vickerman's firing, but obviously they put even more controversy on the show itself, and though Twelve Forever would carry on with a new showrunner, with Vickerman distancing herself from the show, it was still canceled after just 25 episodes, with many blaming the controversy. Vickerman has also written controversial Powerpuff Girls scenes, including a scene with two of the girls twerking. While the scandals surrounding figures like John Kricfalusi and Chris Savino have certainly made headlines, what makes Vickerman's scandal even more disturbing is the fact that these posts were out in the open, while it took years of investigation and allegations to bring down Kricfalusi and Savino. That someone would be so open about such disturbing fantasies is incredibly troubling, particularly coming from the director of a children's cartoon. While Vickerman later stated that she was "just joking" when she made the posts, they reveal a pattern of extremely disturbing behavior. It is a shame for Twelve Forever, an extremely charming and creative show, but one wonders if Netflix may have dodged a massive bullet by cutting her loose so early.

#26: The Socialist Democratic Federated Republic Of Carbombya

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Do the camels get to vote?

There have been LOTS of offensive stereotypes in cartoons over the years, but this just absolutely takes the cake. The Socialist Democratic Federated Republic Of Carbombya was featured in the 1980s Transformers cartoon, and... just look at it. Just look at the name. Apparently based on Libya, with its leader Abdul Fakkadi based on real-life Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Carbombya (shudder) plays an antagonistic role in several early Transformers episodes as a xenophobic, villainous nation frequently working with the Decepticons. It's not just a one-off joke, either: the country's residents are also walking stereotypes, saying things such as "I swear on my camel" and the like. Even back in the 1980s, it's absolutely insane that they got away with this. I know cartoons used to get away with a lot, but this is over the top even for the time. Voice actor Casey Kasem (who was of Lebanese descent) agreed, as he left the show due to the racist stereotypes portrayed in episodes featuring Carbombya. It's especially egregious that a show featuring a character like Optimus Prime, one of the most heroic cartoon characters ever created, could engage in such base racism and stereotyping, but there you go.

#27: The Hunt For The Tiny Toons Stalker

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Pictured: Not the Tiny Toons Stalker, but probably just as real.

I've been picking on Tiny Toon Adventures a lot lately, with three of the last fifteen entries focusing on the show or its behind the scenes issues. This is the last time you'll see Tiny Toon Adventures on the list, but this entry revolves around one of the most bizarre incidents in cartoon history and how it probably never even happened, but the truth is equally as bizarre and dumb. The original rumor stems from a video about a "fan" known as the Tiny Toons Stalker, a furry said to be "obsessed" with the show and with Babs Bunny's voice actress Tress MacNeille, to the point of stalking her and sending her obscene fanfiction. According to the rumor, the letters were so disturbing that it contributed to the original show's cancellation, amidst worries that the show featured too many "sexy" animal characters and that it was riling up potentially dangerous stalkers. No less than two people were eventually smeared as potential suspects for being this so-called stalker, but a later video investigation by a Youtuber named Bernievidz uncovered evidence that these incidents were ultimately apocryphal, and that while there many have been a creepy fan or two in the show's history, the incidents never escalated to the level stated in the original video in which the existence of the Tiny Toons Stalker was first rumored. This is one of those cases where the mere existence of such a rumor is as dumb as the rumored incident itself: it sent shockwaves through the Tiny Toons fandom community, with finger pointing and accusations running rampant. The two fans accused of being the Stalker had their names and reputations dragged through the mud, despite little (if any) evidence existing of any such creepy correspondences. Though the details of the story were certainly believable, with online fandoms certainly having done even worse things in the past, the fact that this story was able to spread so readily with little factchecking is an example of the worst nature of fandom emerging. This story is still being reported as real today despite being debunked by numerous sources, and so the tale of the Tiny Toons Stalker remains a specter of terror in the fandom, a character as well known as any featured in the show itself.

#28: The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang

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'Eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

And this is one of those cartoons I was referring to during entry #30. This animated spin-off of Happy Days saw The Fonz and his friends somehow acquire a time machine and wind up on an odyssey through space and time, searching for a way to get home. This show was back from when the Fonz was on EVERYTHING... t-shirts, lunchboxes, coffee cups, video games, you couldn't escape the Fonz, and you couldn't escape him on Saturday morning either. The cast of Happy Days even reprised their voice roles, but don't let that fool you, this was not a good cartoon in any way, shape, or form. In addition to there being a Star Wars ripoff episode (in episode 2, naturally), we got old West episodes, pirate episodes, Arabian Nights episodes... you know, all the classic time travel cliches all rolled up into one unimaginative mess of a series. The animation is god awful, the comedy is bad, the show is littered with insensitive cultural stereotypes, even the voice actors sound bored. Apart from some limited camp appeal, The Fonz And The Happy Days Gang pretty much represents the worst aspects of animation cashgrabs all rolled up into one, and it mercifully ended after two short seasons (though some aspects of the show would get rolled into a Laverne and Shirley animated series, if you can believe it). Though the Fonz may have jumped the shark in 1977, he jumped over it again and again every time this trash heap came on television.

#29: Spamming One Show All Day, Seven Days A Week

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I guess if you love Teen Titans Go... Merry Christmas?

Remember when networks used to play different shows at different times every day? You'd turn on Nickelodeon, and the average day's programming consisted of a couple dozen different shows. Same with Cartoon Network, and the Disney Channel. These days, you're lucky if you see more than half a dozen different shows in a day, as most kids' networks now spam the same show over and over again, sometimes only showing one thing all day. For Cartoon Network, it's usually Teen Titans Go. For the longest time on Nickelodeon, it was Spongebob Squarepants, with the occasional Fairly OddParents or Loud House marathon. Marathon... marathons used to be special. It used to be, people looked forward to seeing their favorite show two hours in a row. If a network was showing the same thing all day, it was an event, accompanied with things like interviews and trivia quizzes. Now, to paraphrase, "it's just Tuesday". And... I get it, to some extent. If a show's killing it in the ratings and showing it over and over again puts butts in seats, then it can be a good business move, at least in the short term, to do just that. But scheduling like this cuts down heavily on programming diversity. Remember the days when you'd change the channel and stumble on your new favorite show? Spamming programs like this doesn't give lesser known shows a chance to shine, and if the show you're showing repeatedly begins to decline in the ratings, it can take down your whole network's numbers, leading to firings or worse. Fortunately, these days networks seem to have taken that lesson to heart, and Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network are both trying out more programming, but modern viewers still have painful memories of when it would seem like months would go by without anything but Spongebob and Teen Titans Go on their screens.

#30: Toons In Space!

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I'm pretty sure if someone tried using that font today, Disney would sue.

This is another one that actually appeared on the original 100 Dumbest list, ranking #87 overall and thus ranking #2 amongst kids' television events. While I don't quite have "Animation studios (but mostly Hanna-Barbara) go for a quick cash grab by ripping off Star Wars and sending their IPs to space" as high as #2 on my list, it's still pretty remarkable, in a very bad way, just how many cheap Star Wars space knockoff cartoons were launched in the months after the film's release. I've already touched on Jabberjaw and how there were so many Scooby-Doo knockoffs in the 1970s, but this is even more shameless, with cartoons like Josie and the Pussycats and Yogi Bear getting space-themed knockoffs, cartoons like Space Academy and Space Sentinels being hastily thrown together to capitalize on the Star Wars fad, and the failed Partridge Family sci-fi cartoon, Partridge Family 2200 AD (which was canceled in 1975), getting a name change to Partridge Family In Outer Space and having its re-runs thrown back on Fred Flintstone and Friends. The Star Wars ripple effect continued for YEARS thanks to the success of the sequels, with Gilligan's Planet being made in 1982 as an animated remake of the original live-action show, but with space aliens and sci-fi themes. None of these space cartoons were any good, and none of them lasted very long, as kids were smart enough to distinguish between the Star Wars movies that they liked and these hastily thrown together cartoons that they hated. This was TV animation at its absolute nadir, by the late 70s and early 80s studios were just throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, and very few things did. You haven't heard the last from this era either, there are a couple more cartoons that are even worse than the space craze, and they'll be showing up even higher on this list...

Here's the previous topic for quick reference:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80493929

And for those who don't want to go through that whole topic, here's a quick summary of 100-31.

#100: The Owl House Gets Canceled For "Not Fitting The Disney Brand"
#99: Mr. Rogers (Inadvertently) Flips Off A Crowd Full Of Children
#98: Whenever The Contestant Couldn't Put The Shrine Of The Silver Monkey Together
#97: Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest Producers Claim Jessie Won't Be A Damsel In Distress, She Ends Up A Damsel In Distress On Very First Episode
#96: The Chloe Bourgeois Saga
#95: Sid The Science Kid Looks For His Friends
#94: Disney's Brand Spanking New Doug
#93: Cartoon Network Recasts The Powerpuff Girls
#92: Captain Planet Meets Hitler
#91: Butt-Ugly Martians
#90: 4Kids Sings The National Anthem
#89: No Such Luck (The Loud House)
#88: Pinky, Elmyra, & the Brain
#87: Zevo-3
#86: Rugrats Sequel Ruined By Creepy Artstyle
#85: R-Rated Saturday Morning Cartoons
#84: Clarence Creator Can't Keep His Hands To Himself
#83: The Mighty Mouse Cocaine Scandal
#82: Steven Universe Canceled Over Gay Wedding
#81: Steven Universe Fan Artist Driven To Suicide Attempt For Drawing Rose Quartz Skinny
#80: Crash & Bernstein
#79: Arnold Takes Off His Helmet On Pluto
#78: The Zenon "Zequels"
#77: Double Dare 2000
#76: Star Butterfly Commits Magical Genocide
#75: Totally Spies And Its Many Fetishes
#74: Nickelodeon Screws Over Micah Wright
#73: I've Got Batman In My Basement (Batman: TAS)
#72: Worldwide Day Of Play
#71: Corporal Capeman
#70: Big Bad Beetleborgs
#69: Katy Perry On Sesame Street
#68: Plop Plop (Teen Titans Go)
#67: Disney Continues Sonny With A Chance After Demi Lovato Leaves
#66: Buffalo Gals (Cow And Chicken)
#65: The Voltron: Legendary Defender Shipping Controversy
#64: Well Excuuuuuse Me, Princess!
#63: Jabberjaw
#62: The Legend Of Korra Moves To Friday Night For Season Two
#61: Re-Animated/Out Of Jimmy's Head
#60: Everyone Drops The Ball On Class Of 3000
#59: Arnold Betrays Iggy (Hey Arnold)
#58: Loonatics Unleashed
#57: Nick Studio 10
#56: The High Fructose Adventures Of Annoying Orange
#55: Last Horizons (TaleSpin)
#54: Those Gushers Commercials Where Kids' Heads Turn Into Fruit
#53: Hammerman
#52: Obscene Broadcast Signal Intrusions On Preschool Programs
#51: Arthur Same-Sex Couple Controversies
#50: Caillou
#49: Butch Hartman's Fall From Grace
#48: Ted Turner's Temper Tantrum Dooms SWAT Kats
#47: Mr. Meaty
#46: Bizarre Anti-Drug Commercials
#45: Nick Or Treat
#44: Sesame Street Moves To HBO
#43: The Kids On Liberty's Kids Don't Age
#42: Voice Actors And NFTs
#41: One Beer (Tiny Toon Adventures)
#40: The Cancellation Of Invader Zim
#39: Arthur's Big Hit (Arthur)
#38: Planet Sheen
#37: I Love L.A. (Alvin And The Chipmunks)
#36: Blossom's New Boyfriend
#35: The Charlie Adler/Tiny Toons Dust-Up
#34: Characters Whose Sole Purpose Is To Make The Protagonists' Lives A Living Hell And Who Never Get Punished
#33: Dexter's Rude Removal
#32: Fred: The Show
#31: John Kricfalusi Blows It, Then Things Get Way Worse

Hello again, and welcome to the second topic for my latest project, The 100 Dumbest Events In Children's Television History!

Thanks for making the last topic such a huge success, I can't believe it's about to hit 500 before even reaching the top 25. I've decided to just go ahead and start this topic even though that one still has a few posts left, 30 is a nice, neat, even number and it'll be good to have a topic just for the top 30.

To recap some of the information from the last topic:

This project is inspired by a book I learned about on TVTropes:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory

The idea for my list came when I was thinking about what moments in the last 20 years (since the book was published) would make the list if the book was updated for 2023, and it evolved into my own ideas for a list based exclusively on children's television, which has had its own share of dumb events over the years.

-As mentioned before, this will be an American-centric list, as I'm too lazy to research all the dumb children's television events from around the world. Therefore, potential top-10 worthy moments like the Pokemon seizure incident, Jimmy Savile getting away with everything he got away with, and the Xuza Park fire won't be on this list. However, shows that originated overseas but air on American television are fair game, as long as the dumb event had something to do with the show's American airing (therefore, a bad foreign show coming to America could make the list, but a controversy caused by a foreign show exclusively in that show's country of origin would not make the list).

-It involves children's television only, so general audience shows, even if their audience is mostly children, won't count. Therefore, the Flintstones Winston commercial or anything having to do with shows like Full House or Boy Meets World wouldn't make the list. I bend this rule a couple times for certain reasons, however.

-It involves TELEVISION, so events like Janet Waldo being recast for the Jetsons movie or the Jem live action movie producers using clips of the cartoon's fandom to promote their crappy movie also don't count.

I'll be starting the top 30 hopefully sometime this morning, so 5 or 6 hours from now. In the meantime, feel free to predict what you think the top 30 might be!

Toph
Amaterasu

#31: John Kricfalusi Blows It, Then Things Get Way Worse

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It says something when Ren and Stimpy isn't the most fucked up thing you've ever done.

John Kricfalusi is the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, a controversial but exceptionally popular show that during its heyday in 1992 and 1993 was Nickelodeon's most popular show and one of the highest rated shows on all of cable. Kricfalusi himself was a talented animator with a distinct, if disturbing style, a proponent of all things old-school animation, whose warped sensibilities struck a chord with Gen X and early Millennial kids alike. Unfortunately, this warped mind of his led to numerous clashes with Nickelodeon over the direction of the show, with production delays galore, some caused by Kricfalusi's exacting style, some caused by Nickelodeon's lengthy approval process. Whatever the reason, these production delays and Kricfalusi's abrasive personality annoyed Nickelodeon to the point where they were willing to kick him to the curb despite his show being at the absolute height of its popularity. Though the show would continue for three more years, many fans state it wasn't the same afterward, despite their personal distaste for Kricfalusi's style. In later years, Kricfalusi would work on other animated productions, while occasionally crawling out of the woodwork to criticize contemporary cartoons (sometimes in quite insulting ways). If this were the end of the story, he'd be a borderline case for the list, but of course, for him to be so high up there has to be something else, and that something else is recent accusations of sexual harassment and abuse of underage staffers on his show, along with accusations that he possessed illegal material. While these allegations haven't been formally proven, they're disturbing nonetheless, and with numerous people corroborating them, it adds a further stain on Kricfalusi's reputation, with his lawyer admitting to a brief relationship with a 16 year old girl but denying the other charges. Though he apologized for some of these transgressions, many see the apology as non-sincere, and now John Kricfalusi is known as a cautionary tale in the industry, how hubris and failure to adequately deal with one's mental issues can lead to not only damaging one's career, but the lives of those around them as well.

#32: Fred: The Show

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"What the hell are you doing out here, Fred?!"

Fred: The Show is a Nickelodeon sitcom based on the webshow starring the character of Fred Figglehorn, played by Lucas Cruikshank. It was created after two successful movies based on the character also aired on Nickelodeon. Its main character is the eponymous Fred, who basically relies on the same shtick that made his webshow famous: his obnoxious and grating voice and his manic behavior (though these have been toned down slightly for the show). Fred has to deal with the trials and tribulations of everyday life, with a dash of the bizarre. Almost immediately, Fred: The Show had to deal with abysmal reviews and declining ratings. The webshow was incredibly polarizing, hordes of kids loved it but plenty of other people hated it, and Nickelodeon first had Fred appear on iCarly (in an episode that could in and of itself make this list and is at least an honorable mention) before signing him to a multi movie deal. The movies themselves were god awful and the show was worse, especially since it asked its audience to like one of the most annoying fictional characters ever conceived. Even during serious moments (which were few and far between), Fred's annoying voice made it almost impossible to sympathize with him. Maybe Nickelodeon wanted something to compete with Annoying Orange, which, say what you will, was at least successful. Fred: The Show had steadily declining ratings throughout its run, and barely made it six months before being canceled. Fred's stint on Nickelodeon lasted right around six and a half months, and as Yoda would say, "Not short enough it was."

#33: Dexter's Rude Removal

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This was never going to live up to the hype.

One of the most famous cartoon "urban legends" of the last 25 years was the existence of a "secret", banned episode of Dexter's Laboratory called "Rude Removal", or "Dexter's Rude Removal", in which Dexter and Deedee had the rudeness removed from their bodies with a machine that created rude "clones" of them that went around swearing and mooning and flipping the bird. For a while, we didn't even know if the episode existed, and those who swore it did all had different versions of what the episode was like, some with more cursing than others, some with more sexual innuendo, etc. When Adult Swim debuted, we thought we might see the banned episode wind up on there, but no luck... at least not for many, many years. Meanwhile, there were rumors of that special comic convention panel who'd gotten to see it, but those were just that, rumors, unconfirmed and possibly apocryphal, and it wouldn't be until 2013 that we finally got the episode online, with the curse words beeped (though they may have been beeped already when the episode was shown off at a convention in 1998). The result? The episode is exactly what we thought it was... plenty of bleeped swearing, but no nudity or anything like that apart from Dexter mooning the camera on the title card. It was in the eyes of many, a disappointment... definitely rude and definitely out there for a Dexter's Laboratory, but the epic swear and sex fest that some fans swore up and down it was? Not even close, even if the bleeps had been removed. It's "Sailor Mouth", but not quite as witty. Was it nearly what the urban legends had built it up to be? No, and ultimately it serves as a medicore episode of the original show. Why it was made despite knowing standards and practices would likely block it, I don't know. It ultimately turned out to be much ado about nothing, but perhaps that's our fault for building it up in our minds to be much more vulgar than it actually was.

#34: Characters Whose Sole Purpose Is To Make The Protagonists' Life A Living Hell And Who Never Get Punished

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She's reading all the hateful comments and it's just giving her more energy.

There's a certain kind of character present in a lot of kids' comedies, both live action and animated. You know the ones, the ones who are always picking on the protagonists, bullying them, pranking them, messing with them... and yet they always get away with it, no matter what they do. The protagonists try to tell an authority figure and no one believes them, or even worse, they get blamed for everything themselves! We've already talked about D.W. earlier on the list, but at least D.W. got punished sometimes... these characters NEVER get their comeuppance, or if they do, it's a slap on the wrist at best. I'll list two of the worst examples here, but there are many: Megan Parker from Drake and Josh is perhaps the most infamous of this type of character, and she's easily in the running for most hated fictional character ever. She torments Drake and Josh to no end, and even has spy equipment in her room so she knows where they are at all times. Her parents never catch her or punish her for her behavior, and she often makes bad situations worse, such as in the episode "Tree House" where she refuses to help the two escape a tree house they accidentally trapped themselves in, and even taunts them with uncooked food and cancels their dates. Then there's Bendy, from Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. He only appeared in one episode (that was later revealed to be non-canon after all the fan backlash), but he still made an indelible impression, etching himself as one of the most hated cartoon characters of all time. He pranked the entire Foster's house, getting all the imaginary friends confined to their rooms, and even after being exposed for his deeds, he just ran off after pranking Wilt one last time. Characters like these are an example of some of the sadistic comedy employed by kids' show creators, and while this type of comedy has its place, it's rare to do correctly without pissing off viewers. Writers have utilized this trope a lot less in recent years, but the fact that it took them so long to figure out that we just don't like characters like this shows just how dumb this trope was.

#35: The Charlie Adler/Tiny Toons Dust-Up

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If you wanna be in Animaniacs, here's a list of everything the Warners will be allowed to do to you...

Back in 1989, a then rising star voice actor named Charlie Adler was cast as Buster Bunny, one of the two lead roles on a new cartoon called Tiny Toon Adventures. Originally, Adler wasn't going to be cast, but the show's producers and voice director Andrea Romano convinced Spielberg to cast him due to the energy he brought during his audition. For several years, Adler played Buster with tremendous energy and joy, and was a highlight of the show's excellent voice cast. Then, things fell apart when Animaniacs went into production, and despite his performance on Tiny Toon Adventures, Adler wasn't offered an audition for the new show, despite numerous other members of the Tiny Toons cast, including co-star Tress MacNeille, being given major roles. Adler was furious, and not only accosted producers over what he claimed was "shabby" treatment, but wrote numerous angry letters and publicly disparaged figures such as Andrea Romano, despite them championing him before. He also quit the show, leading to John Kassir succeeding him as the voice of Buster Bunny. One of the most impactful and wild controversies revolving around a voice actor in animation history, there's some blame to be had on both sides here. It's wild that a place couldn't be found for a talented voice actor like Charlie Adler on Animaniacs, even if it would've required the creation of a new character. The man has carried entire animated series before (see: Rocko's Modern Life, Cow and Chicken) and certainly deserved an opportunity. At the same time, his reaction to losing out on an Animaniacs role comes off as incredibly unprofessional, especially when there were other jobs out there he could've had. Adler's actions after realizing he wouldn't be cast in Animaniacs are a damn good way to get yourself blacklisted, and it's very fortunate for him that his career continued pretty much unblemished, apart from losing his Tiny Toons role. He'd go on to one of the most prolific voice over careers of all time, would become an accomplished voice director (coaching such future voice stars as Lacey Chabert and Kaley Cuoco), and overall seems like a pretty decent guy all things considered, so maybe he was just going through some stuff at the time and took it out on the Tiny Toons producers? Either way, both Warner Bros. failure to find a role for a talented man like Charlie Adler and Adler's unprofessional response add up to one of the most bizarre voice acting related incidents of all time, and one of the dumbest things to happen to an otherwise stellar voiceover career.

#36: Blossom's New Boyfriend

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He's only the 3rd creepiest Jared though.

One of the most controversial aspects of the rebooted Powerpuff Girls was the character of Jared Shapiro, Blossom's elementary school crush in the new series. Though created to be the same age as Blossom, he usually looked and sounded quite a bit older than her, and it was heavily suspected that Jared was actually based on one of the show's writers, the man who also ended up voicing him on the show: Jake Goldman. Goldman didn't help these rumors when he had an interview enthusiastically proclaiming Blossom to be his favorite Powerpuff Girl. Though a later interview with another staff member for the show would deny that Jared was based on Jake and that he wasn't a romantic stand-in, fans largely don't buy this explanation, and it's hard to blame them considering how old the character looks and sounds, and just the very fact that he's voiced by the guy he appears to be based on. It also doesn't help that there's another particularly creepy Jared out there (who, if I was doing a list of the 100 Dumbest Moments In Fast Food Promotion would be #1) who also happens to look a lot like this guy. It's just not a good look when there are in-show fantasy sequences of this character with huge blown-up muscles looking like a grown man while Blossom makes heart eyes at him. Even if the character of Jared Shapiro is entirely innocent, and he very well could be, there's a phrase out there that says "avoid the appearance of evil", and this character does absolutely nothing of the sort. In this time when creepy behavior is being called out more than ever, this character was extremely ill-advised in a number of ways, and it's hard to claim ignorance when he checks off so many boxes.

#37: I Love L.A.

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To be fair, walking all over Los Angeles isn't half as bad as driving all over Los Angeles.

This 1980s Alvin and the Chipmunks episode wasn't so much an episode as it was an 11-minute torture session that we were all forced to sit through, and exemplifies both a big problem with the 80s Alvin and the Chipmunks and just a lot of kids' cartoons of the time in general. In this episode, Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and Dave went to Los Angeles, where Alvin learned that their rival Dan the Dog (who is never mentioned in the series again, naturally) is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Determined to get that star for themselves, Alvin and his brothers pound the pavement all over Los Angeles, determined to be seen in the right places by the right people to get their star. This results in a series of misfortunes for the brothers, with a good chunk of it set to Randy Newman's "I Love L.A.". They get soaked, they get laughed at, they get yelled at, and as they walk, their feet get all sore and blistered. Still, they manage to get in with some influential power players, but even more unfortunate coincidences take place, and they're forced to go back to their hotel room. However, as they're about to give up, Dave gets a phone call... it's the Walk of Fame committee, wanting to award them a star after all! But, unfortunately, as a condition of getting that star, the three chipmunks would have to walk in a parade... and it's just not possible with their feet as blistered as they are. They lose the star, which goes to Dan the Dog instead, and that's the end of the episode. This was just a terribly sad episode that inflicted cruelty upon cruelty on the main characters. I suppose it was supposed to teach a lesson about how you should obey your parents or something (Dave told them not to go before they went out into the city), but did the episode have to teach that lesson so cruelly? This was a frequent problem with Alvin and the Chipmunks episodes, which often had endings where the chipmunks got in trouble or lost something because they broke a rule, and a lot of cartoons at the time did the same thing. Again, this is supposed to teach kids a lesson, but kids don't watch cartoons to learn lessons (except educational cartoons, but those teach actual valuable lessons usually), they watch cartoons to escape, and seeing Alvin and the Chipmunks suffer for 11 minutes of a Shoot the Shaggy Dog scenario isn't remotely entertaining, it's just cruel, and "I Love L.A." did it more cruelly than any other episode of the series, and perhaps any other episode of the 80s.

#38: Planet Sheen

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Unfortunately, the show has nothing to do with Martin Sheen or Charlie Sheen.

In 2010, a spinoff of the popular Nicktoon The Adventures Of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was released, focused on Jimmy's friend Sheen and his adventures in outer space. It came as a result of the studio's failed attempts to get their astronaut-themed pilot picked up after shopping it to a variety of networks, mostly because it starred an adult instead of a kid. They retooled the pilot into a Jimmy Neutron spinoff focused on Sheen and Carl, but Nickelodeon wanted a show focused on just Sheen (the creators got around this by having Sheen befriend an alien who's pretty much an exact copy of Carl). The show focused on Sheen's adventures after getting stuck on an alien world four trillion light years from Earth, and his efforts to build a rocket ship and go home. While doing so, he battled hostile aliens, went on strange space adventures, and attempted to win the affections of a pretty alien girl (while another alien girl crushed on him). It was formulaic, predictable, and boring, but what of course made it truly annoying and tough to sit through was that it focused on Sheen, probably the most reviled character on Jimmy Neutron. His antics grated on viewers all episode long, and many found themselves hoping Sheen would never make it back home. Of all the characters from Jimmy Neutron to get their own spinoff, having it be focused on Sheen (at Nick's insistence, no less) made the show the worst it could've possibly been. Carl would've been better. Cindy and Libby would've been better. But with Sheen at the helm, this show was destined to fail, and sure enough, it only lasted one season. That means that canonically, Sheen's still out there, four trillion light years from Earth, trying to get home... and no one here misses him.

#39: Arthur's Big Hit

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"Rip the mic, Rip the stage, Rip the system! Arthur was born to rage against 'em!"

"Arthur's Big Hit" is the most infamous episode of the PBS animated series Arthur, enraging and entertaining fans for nearly a quarter of a century at this point. In the episode, Arthur spends a week working carefully to build a model plane, only for D.W. to come along and throw it out the window, after being repeatedly told by Arthur not to touch it. Arthur gets pissed off and punches D.W. on the arm, and D.W. whines to her parents, getting Arthur in trouble. Now, we're supposed to see Arthur as being in the wrong here, and... yeah, I can understand that, it's not okay to hit your little sister no matter what she does. But when your episode has most fans on the side of domestic violence, you've clearly done something wrong, and here, the writers have clearly missed the plot, with D.W. not only refusing to show remorse for her actions, but facing no punishment at all. Instead, Arthur is grounded for a week and all of his friends start hating him, no matter how much he tries to explain himself. Later on, Binky is peer pressured to punch Arthur, and he does so, making Arthur feel guilty and finally apologize to D.W. D.W. in turn apologizes to Arthur (but still doesn't get punished for smashing his plane), and it's a sort of half-apology in which she also says that he should give her a break because she's young. If the message that the episode was trying to send is that hitting people is wrong, most fans didn't get the message, because replies and reviews of this episode are still littered with "D.W. deserved it" and "D.W. deserved worse" posts. And, of course, there's the memes... so many memes, from Arthur clenching his fist being a popular reaction post, to Arthur's punch being changed into a Falcon Punch that sends D.W. into orbit. Not only did the writers fail to convince viewers of the moral of the episode, but the episode became a meme factory, and now remains a hilarious example of how fans can create their own meaning for an episode if the writers don't do a good job conveying their message.

#40: The Cancellation Of Invader Zim

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Pictured: Cosplayers storming Nickelodeon HQ.

Invader Zim debuted in 2001 and immediately became one of Nickelodeon's most controversial shows, while also cultivating one of its most devoted cult fanbases. Its blend of surrealism and dark comedy may have been a bit too much for the show's intended fanbase (though, I would argue, not any worse than what Ren and Stimpy got away with for years), but which attracted an enormous periphery fandom. Despite the controversy, Invader Zim was beloved by critics, and surely could've found its audience if given the chance. However, it would never get that chance, as Nickelodeon would cancel it in early 2002, less than a year after its debut and after just 27 total half-hours had been produced. Fans immediately launched a campaign to save the show, with letters and petitions, but it wasn't to be, and Invader Zim immediately became a cult classic upon the end of its run. Just why was the show canceled? A mix of factors, including low ratings and the aftereffects of 9/11, combined with the show's rather large budget would ultimately doom Invader Zim, but regardless of the business reasons for canceling the show, many fans still believe Invader Zim got a raw deal, especially when shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which also enjoyed a strong periphery demographic, were promoted much more heavily and became successful. That so many people loved the show, that critics regard it as one of the best cartoons of the 2000s, is evidence to the fandom that Nickelodeon should've promoted it more, should've figured out a way to make it work, should've fought less with the creator over content... or at the very least, that Invader Zim should've been picked up by another network, possibly Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. Regardless of what one thinks of Nickelodeon's reasons for canceling the show, Invader Zim represents an incredible amount of lost potential, and is a sign that sometimes shows can find a strong audience and yet still not achieve any measure of conventional success. It would get a streaming exclusive movie later on, but the show's devoted fans still maintain that it deserved so much more.

Midna
Davy
Frank

Xeybozn posted...

Of course they don't. Constantly redoing character designs to show children growing realistically is incredibly difficult. I can barely think of any shows that even try it.

The only reason it's dumb on Liberty's Kids is because it's supposed to be taking place over a real historical period of time. And, like I said, they had SO many guest stars on this thing. They were clearly trying with most aspects of the show, it just blows my mind that they couldn't have at least tried to age the main characters and not break immersion.

#41: One Beer

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Brilliant satire, or the worst segment in Tiny Toons history? Get back to me after I've had a few.

It's clear that the Tiny Toon Adventures writers were dragged kicking and screaming into doing some kind of anti-drinking PSA, and the result was "One Beer", the ending segment of the episode called "Elephant Issues". Using peer pressure as the prompt topic, the episode shows Buster Bunny and his friends Plucky and Hampton finding a beer and chugging it down. The rest of the episode is a lesson in surreal extremism, as Buster and his friends prove to be the ultimate lightweights, getting stone cold drunk after just one sip of beer, and proceeding to make drunken passes at the girls before getting in a car and driving it off a cliff. The entire time, the episode is poking fun at just how insane it is for this to be happening, and Buster and the gang even make jokes themselves about how this is very out of character for them but it's something they're being forced into. In the end, of course, everything that happened (including the three driving off a cliff and DYING) is revealed to just be a show for the viewers, and that they hope they get to do a funny episode next time. Is this a bad episode? It's certainly funny, albeit bizarre, and yet, even though it's clearly satirical, the episode still manages to be quite disturbing, not knowing at times whether it wants to scare kids or entertain them. Viewers have actually commented on how the episode made drinking look cool and would make them want to drink, despite the exaggerated consequences Buster and friends face for doing so. The episode courted controversy from the moment it first aired, even though it was trying to send a message against drinking, and was banned for a time from certain networks. While it's clear exactly what the show's writers were trying to do (a satire of moralistic anti-drinking episodes in cartoons), the satire at times hit a bit too much on the nose, and sailed over the heads of a lot of young viewers, who saw the episode as just a straight up anti-drinking episode and got disturbed by its contents, while some parents weren't so happy to see the Tiny Toons chugging beer either. Though brilliant in the eyes of some fans, "One Beer" sent entirely the wrong message to others, and stands out as the most memorable and infamous Tiny Toon Adventures segment ever aired.

#42: Voice Actors And NFTS

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TARA! *presses face into window* TARA, NO! DON'T DO IT! *bangs head against window* TARA!!!

NFTs, or "non-fungible tokens", got a lot of press a few years back, most of it quite bad. A form of blockchain currency, NFTs use the blockchain to generate a unique "token" that can be freely transferred via a digital medium, with a secure record of ownership that can't be forged or altered due to the intense data calculations involved in its creation. They're INCREDIBLY bad for the environment, due to the massive amount of computational resources involved in making them, but while crypto enthusiasts have been searching for a way to make them more environmentally friendly, they remain quite controversial, seen by many as an exploitative cashgrab even beyond the environmental concerns. So, when several popular cartoon voice actors, including Tara Strong, Troy Baker, and Michaela Dietz started mulling them over, their fans were... quite upset, to say the least. Criticism poured in, and while Dietz relented quickly, doing more research and backing out of her plans to do NFTs, Baker doubled down for weeks until finally agreeing to back off his project. Tara Strong, on the other hand, continues to work with NFTs, alongside longtime co-star/friend Greg Cipes. Despite both actors on the record as being environmentally aware, they've continued to push these NFTs, though there's been no recent word on any of their projects as of late. NFTs have been soundly rejected by the overwhelming majority of cartoon fans, and though tech companies and influencers continue to push them, there's not been any real news of a cartoon NFT project getting off the ground, making these voice actors' decision to back them extra baffling.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

That's a bad complaint and any time someone uses it against any show I call it a bad complaint.

This is not The Simpsons. This is a show where the whole idea is that 12 years of history has passed.

#43: The Kids On Liberty's Kids Don't Age

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Wait a minute, I thought there could only be one Highlander!

Liberty's Kids ran on PBS from 2002 to 2003, but even though it only got 40 episodes, that was by design: the series was meant to chronicle the American Revolution from the perspective of three children: James, Sarah, and Henri. Apart from a few unfortunate missteps (Aaron Carter rapping during the opening theme for example), the series was a critical success, and remains a staple of classroom history lessons to this day. It's a great show and probably one of the best educational cartoons ever made, which makes one creative decision by the writing staff glaringly stupid: the three young protagonists don't age (or barely age, depending on if you squint) throughout the entire series! While 12 years of war and revolution and politics go on all around them, the three kids remain the same age throughout, learning a few life lessons along the way but not maturing at all. In a series that strove for realism and historical accuracy, this breaks immersion in a spectacularly glaring way. And, yes, the show is called Liberty's Kids, so it makes sense to have the protagonists stay kids, but in that case, why not introduce younger characters later on and have the original three take on mentor roles? Maybe later in the war James becomes a soldier in the American army himself? In a show that took great strides to show its work, a show that spared no expense on bringing in guest stars and celebrities (Walter Cronkite was a series regular, for goodness sake), bringing in three new young characters should've been no problem. Keeping the three protagonists the same age throughout the series not only breaks immersion but also is a waste of excellent story opportunities that they could've involved the older group of kids in. Overall, Liberty's Kids was a success regardless, but the decision to have the protagonists apparently be immortal Highlanders or something is a glaring pimple on the face of an otherwise beautiful educational cartoon.

#44: Sesame Street Moves To HBO

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Though I WOULD be willing to pay the monthly fee just to see Cersei become a regular on the show.

Sesame Street has been a staple of children's television ever since its inception in 1969. As one of the most important shows in the history of PBS, Sesame Street has entertained millions of children and their parents, and has accomplished a number of groundbreaking firsts throughout its history. From its beginning, the show has been focused heavily on trying to reach as many underprivileged and marginalized children as possible, and has been available on free public broadcasting for its entire history, funded with donations and public money, so that any child with a television set can view it and learn from it. That changed in 2016, when Sesame Workshop announced that the show would begin airing first run episodes on HBO, a premium cable network only available for a monthly fee. Though all episodes would eventually be available on PBS, this was obviously seen as a harsh blow to children whose families couldn't afford HBO and would have to wait to see the new episodes, with much of Sesame Street's promotion now focused around the pay TV network. With the move to Max, a paid streaming service, in 2020, Sesame Street has become even more exclusive, and while all new episodes are still shown on PBS eventually, the move to pay TV stands as a slap in the face to everything the original show stood for. It's both a sign of the increasingly troubling lack of funding for public broadcasting in this country and also the tendencies of companies to chase the money no matter who gets left behind, in this case the very marginalized childen that Sesame Street was created for in the first place.

#45: Nick Or Treat

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This is why every drama professor's first lesson is to "enunciate".

From 1985 to 2002, Nickelodeon intermittently ran a promotion during Halloween called "Nick Or Treat", in which kids would send in postcards to register to be called during a three hour window during the week of Halloween. If called, and the kid said "Nick Or Treat", they'd be given the chance to win cash and prizes. These phone calls would run live on Nick alongside Halloween themed programming, and overall, it was a pretty fun and memorable promotion, a great way to get people watching Nick. Seemed harmless enough, right? Well... let's rewind a bit, and think about that phrase, "Nick Or Treat". Now, we all know that kids aren't the best at enunciation, and if you get a call on Halloween when you're thinking you're going to win a prize, you're going to be talking all fast and excited... and when you're fast and excited, words tend to run together... and... yeah. You could honestly hear every year some kid accidentally saying a very bad word, and sometimes even the ANNOUNCERS would say it. There's a memorable video from 1992's Nick or Treat where the announcer, who sounds a lot like Don Pardo (it might've even BEEN Don Pardo, way to jeopardize a legendary career by the way), DEFINITELY slurs the first two words together and honestly I'm amazed that didn't kill the promotion then and there. This thing went on as recently as 2002... in all that time, no one caught anything, no one said anything... you do notice in later years of the promotion that at the very least the announcers and hosts are sure to enunciate and make sure they say "Nick... OR... Treat...", but some of the kids still get a bit too excited and turn Nickelodeon's live broadcast into Xbox Live for a few seconds. The promotion quietly ended in 2002, when either it ran its course or someone finally said "Hey, uh... if kids don't say it right it sounds REALLY bad and could get us in a lot of trouble". Honestly, when I was a kid even I didn't notice until I saw a video later on and said "holy shit" to myself. The fact that this was allowed to go on for so long and nobody ever said anything is honestly one of the luckiest breaks Nickelodeon has ever had, this thing should've been caught in 1985.

#46: Bizarre Anti-Drug Commercials

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If you're seeing snake men walking in the street, you've had too many drugs already.

Back in the 80s and early 90s, the powers that be launched an all-out assault on drugs in America, believing that there was a radical epidemic of drug use threatening America's youth. This meant that kids watching Saturday morning cartoons were bombarded with a slew of anti-drug commercials, some straight forward, and some just plain bizarre. Amongst the most memorable (and terrifying) was a commercial where a drug dealer gradually transforms into a snake, because of course all drug dealers look scary and otherworldly, right? There was another commercial where a bunch of kids parade around singing "drugs, drugs, drugs!" in an upbeat, sing-song tone, apparently this commercial was supposed to help kids differentiate between "good" drugs (i.e. medicine), and "bad" drugs (i.e. coke and weed). Seemingly, the only real effect this commercial had was to send kids into school hallways marching in a line and singing "drugs, drugs, drugs!", so... good job, I guess? Then there was that series of commercials with a variety of celebrities amidst a serious black backdrop, talking about the serious effects of drugs (particularly crack). There was one particular commercial in this series that relates to an incident we may read about further up the list, so I won't spoil that one... but these are just a few of the most memorable and wacky anti-drug commercials that embedded themselves into kids' memories. And... look, of course they were well-meaning, nobody wants kids doing illegal drugs, but in their haste to scare kids straight, the people who came up with these commercials really didn't think about how kids might interpret them, and it truly shows in some of the wildest and dumbest anti-drug commercials of the time.

#47: Mr. Meaty

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As if Ren And Stimpy wasn't bizarre enough...

Mr. Meaty started its life as a series of shorts airing between Nickelodeon programs in the mid 2000s, much like how Pete and Pete got its start in the 90s. And, also like Pete and Pete, those shorts proved popular enough to make into their own show... a show now considered to be one of the weirdest, grossest, worst shows Nickelodeon has ever put together. Inspired by teen comedies like Beavis and Butthead and The Ren And Stimpy Show, Mr. Meaty is a puppet-based show that takes place in a fast food restaurant, and follows the surreal adventures of two teenagers who get into all sorts of shenanigans while dealing with the typical teen concerns. The show quickly became infamous for its bizarre, nonsensical episodes, including but not limited to: a girl's nose getting blown off in a zit cream accident and replaced with meat (which causes everyone to want to do the same, believing it to be a new fashion craze), one of the boys getting a tapeworm infestation, a viral video that causes one of the boys to die of embarrassment (literally), one of the boys summoning aliens to get revenge on their childhood bully... and just so much random, mean-spirited and gross humor that it's a shock the show lasted as long as it did. Mr. Meaty has been largely forgotten today, but those who remember it have been left with bad memories and gross nightmares.

#48: Ted Turner's Temper Tantrum Dooms SWAT Kats

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He was the only villain they couldn't beat.

SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron was a popular action cartoon in the mid 1990s, appearing in both syndication and on the TBS cable network. Its mix of nonstop action and fun characters made it one of the best received cartoons of its day, critically and commercially. Though it wasn't quite as popular as its contemporary action shows such as Power Rangers and X-Men, its fame was building with every passing month, and 1995 was set to be a full-on marketing blitz for the show, with toys and other merchandising tie-ins ahead of a planned third season. However, that third season never materialized, because the show was canceled in early 1995 despite its high ratings. Fans searching for answers soon happened upon a Congressional hearing and later interview conducted by Ted Turner, who was at the time the man in charge of all Turner programming, including animation. Turner had repeatedly railed against the level of violence on contemporary kids' shows, and according to some reports, had SWAT Kats (among other shows) canceled in order to save face and to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy. It's not confirmed that this was the entire reason: Turner may have been railing against other shows such as Beavis and Butthead and Power Rangers, and may not have canceled SWAT Kats entirely for those reasons. However, given the show's ratings and incredible merchandising potential, it does seem that Turner's anti-violence crusade was at least part of the reason. Of course, given the fact that Captain Planet had been running for years before SWAT Kats, and The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest would be signed off on less than a year later, it still seems hypocritical of Turner to pull the trigger on this show so rashly. Was this just a spur of the moment decision, a mad scramble to look good in front of Congress? Ted Turner's not someone who's known for always being level-headed. If so, the cancellation couldn't have come at a worse time. With Power Rangers about to plateau (and eventually decline), Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men: The Animated Series both starting to wane in popularity, and Cartoon Network about to enter millions more homes, SWAT Kats was poised to become perhaps the biggest action show of the second half of the 1990s, a potential flagship show for Cartoon Network's upcoming Toonami block and a merchandising juggernaut. While we'll never quite know Ted Turner's exact rationale for pulling the plug on this show, it remains one of the most baffling cartoon cancellations in history, and one of the worst timed as well.

#49: Butch Hartman's Fall From Grace

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The man who created your childhood... then ruined it!

Butch Hartman is an animator whose distinct artstyle and writing have allowed him to produce a string of animated hits, mostly for Nickelodeon. These include shows like The Fairly Oddparents, Danny Phantom, and TUFF Puppy, and despite criticisms of each of these shows circulating through many animation circles, he's cultivated himself a fandom of millions who grew up on his shows and enjoy his work. Indeed, he's still working today... but despite his continued success, he's also managed to cultivate a reputation for controversy that has followed him for a number of years, mostly due to his rather strict and strange views on Christianity, including a professed belief in faith healing that some have decried as advocating for quackery. He also started a streaming service called OAXIS that many people donated to, not realizing it was a front for a radical Christian streaming service and ministry. OAXIS, despite reaching its goals, has not yet been launched, causing some to accuse Hartman of fraud. He's also made disturbing remarks on topics such as voice actor Mary Kay Bergman's suicide, including a statement in which he blamed Tara Strong for the tragedy. He may or may not have been joking, but even so, that's a really fucked up joke to make, especially considering his longtime friendship with Strong. He's also been accused of tracing and art theft, perhaps most infamously plagiarizing another artist's work to create an Attack on Titan commission, which eventually led the artist to file a lawsuit. These controversies, among numerous others, have devastated Hartman's reputation in the animation community. Despite all this, he continues to get work, and recently produced a live action remake of The Fairly OddParents for Nickelodeon (the latest of several).

#50: Caillou

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Whoever came up with this show should be grounded grounded grounded.

Caillou is a Canadian children's cartoon that made its way to PBS Kids a few years after its Canadian debut. It didn't take long once it came to America for parents to notice that unlike in other children's shows, where the protagonist learned a lesson, Caillou was frequently a spoiled brat who didn't get punished or learn anything from his actions, and spent most of his time whining or tormenting his baby sister Rosie. Whenever Caillou wasn't being a brat, he engaged in boring flights of fancy that did little to entertain young audiences, while parents had to endure some of the most torturous, boring scenes ever placed in a children's television show. The supporting cast isn't much better, and oftentimes episodes just consist of a series of boring sequences and activities that barely have any overall relevance or theme. Though the show proved to be a hit, which is why it lasted so long both here and in its native country, this only served to anger parents further, and Caillou has been unfavorably compared to shows like Fancy Nancy and Pinkalicious, both of which have drawn ire from parents as well, but not nearly to the degree that Caillou has. Of course, Caillou might perhaps be best known for its crudely animated parody videos created using the website GoAnimate, and despite these videos making even less sense than Caillou, they're also a hell of a lot more entertaining. When Caillou finally ended in 2010, parents rejoiced, though the show lives on in reruns to this day, introducing new generations to this spoiled little bastard.

#51: Arthur Same-Sex Couple Controversies

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Sweet Home Alabama, where this episode didn't air.

The long-running PBS cartoon Arthur has featured some of the most groundbreaking episodes in children's television history, most notably a 2019 episode in which Arthur and friends' beloved teacher Mr. Ratburn finally marries his boyfriend in one of the first same sex wedding to air in a children's cartoon. The episode was applauded by most, and while there was some controversy in the news, it largely aired without incident... except in Alabama, where that state's PBS affiliate refused to let the episode be shown. Incredibly, they decided for all Alabamans who enjoy PBS that the episode just wasn't "appropriate" for children, even though no sexual content of any sort appeared in the episode. Notably, they also refused to air an episode of 2005's "Postcards From Buster", which showed lesbian couples in Vermont. That episode kicked up a stir that went all the way to the Secretary of Education, which caused PBS to withhold the episode from most of its affiliates except the ones who specifically requested it, with the Secretary of Education even demanding that PBS return federal broadcasting funds. It boggles the mind that such harmless episodes could cause such a stir, even back in 2005, but thankfully society has progressed since then, and most people at least got to see "Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone" without any interference from the powers that be.

#52: Obscene Broadcast Signal Intrusions On Preschool Programs

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"It's okay, mom! The star of this show's also named Handy Manny!"

This event has probably been seen by the least amount of people on this list, happening only briefly for Comcast customers in a few New Jersey towns, but for those kids unfortunate enough to be tuned into Playhouse Disney's Handy Manny program on May 2, 2007, they were treated to a most unwelcome surprise: hardcore porn accidentally inserted into the broadcast signal for the program. This is obviously a massive mistake and something that should never happen, but it did, people surely got fired, kids surely got traumatized, and irate parents were left wondering just how in the hell something like that could happen? Well, it's happened in other places too: the on-demand kids' channels in Raleigh got switched with programming from Playboy TV for two hours on a March morning in 2010, and a Dish Network feed of the movie Lilo and Stitch was replaced with porn in 2012. Again, this is NOT something that happens often, but when it does, heads roll, companies get fined, parents get mad... and years later, people read about it on the internet for a laugh.

#53: Hammerman

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You can't touch this... not that you'd want to with a ten foot pole.

It's hard to overstate just how fast MC Hammer got big in the early 1990s. So big, in fact, that by the fall of 1991 he had his own Saturday morning cartoon, in which he voiced an ordinary man who could use magical shoes to transform into the rapping superhero Hammerman. It's as bad as it sounds: the opening theme song alone (which goes on for more than a minute and explains not only the current Hammerman's backstory, but the previous one's as well) qualifies as a top 100 dumbest moment, and it only gets worse from there. Hammerman battled various villains to uphold justice and protect the innocent... the show had a bit of a social justice theme, but unlike Captain Planet, which addressed these issues in a somewhat over the top and campy way but still had some serious moments, Hammerman was unrelenting with its camp, and I can't name a single Planeteer I don't like 100 times more than Hammerman. The show was a failure from the word go, getting canceled after just 13 episodes. It's not like a rapper can't make a good cartoon (we just got done talking about what a shame it was to lose Class of 3000 so early), but this was an annoying cash grab and even MC Hammer seemed bored of making it by the end of the theme song.