Board 8 > The 100 Dumbest Events In Children's Television History- Part 2 (The Top 30)

(+) Yeah! (+)

htaeD posted...

Shoulda gone with Hottimus Prime

Should have just given the Matrix to Ultra Magnus, considering he gave us the greatest line in Transformers history:

https://youtu.be/_1mF2s9zpBE

Also in 1990, how do you not put Michaelangelo on the cover art

MysteriousStan posted...

Not mentioned in that writeup is that the backlash to Optimus's death was so great that they rewrote Duke's death in the G.I. Joe movie that was released a couple months later. Instead he falls into a coma. Just imagine if G.I. Joe had released first, would Optimus's fate have been reversed?

Also I absolutely loved the Transformers movie, Optimus's death be damned. Probably cause I knew he comes back so I wasn't traumatized like so many others. But I had my parents rent that movie so many times from Blockbuster that they eventually just asked if we could buy it from them lol. It was easily my favorite movie as a kid (and still is to some extent) and I certainly had all the lines memorized. Good times!

top 5 orson welles performance dont @ me

masterplum posted...

That can't be real

It is! And really looking back as an adult I think Rodimus is actually a pretty good character. He's this young Autobot who's been thrust into a leadership role, and just not any leadership role, he's following in the footsteps of the Optimis Prime. Post movie he is uncertain in his decisions as a leader and constantly comparing himself to Optimus. Despite having been chosen as his successor, Rodimus has a serious case of imposter syndrome and could have been a much more interesting character. Hasbro didn't do themselves any favors in how they introduced Rodimis either but as a kid all you see is this guy who replaced one of the most beloved characters of all time constantly whining about not being good enough. And so the kids never really warmed up to him and while Rodimus is still a Prime he certainly takes a backseat to Optimus is all further Transformers shows...if he appears at all!

It's pretty wild how widespread the war on drugs got.

Is that Slimer and Alf? I was two in 1990, but weren't ALF and Ghostbusters already past their prime?

TheRock1525 posted...

top 5 orson welles performance dont @ me

One of my favorite pieces of movie trivia is that the Transformers movie was Orson Welles's last credited movie role! He actually died a month or so before the movie came out and was on record as saying it was basically complete nonsense lol

Anagram posted...

Is that Slimer and Alf? I was two in 1990, but weren't ALF and Ghostbusters already past their prime?

The ALF cartoon about his adventures on Melmac was still going at least

Real Ghostbusters was past its prime but still thats an iconic name to get

You want past their prime, look at the Chipmunks and the Smurfs

Jakyl25 posted...

I hate that the Smurfs are not size-accurate to their show though

does it bother you that Kirby isn't size-accurate to Smash

also is ALF considered a kids' show because I'd love to see the Dinosaurs and/or ALF ending on this list

Dinosaurs is FINE and even if it's not there's no way on earth it's top 5 material for this list.

Underleveled posted...

Dinosaurs is FINE and even if it's not there's no way on earth it's top 5 material for this list.

a children's show ending with the imminent global extinction of the entire race which was caused by the main character of the show is some messed up stuff

TheRock1525 posted...

Should have just given the Matrix to Ultra Magnus, considering he gave us the greatest line in Transformers history:

https://youtu.be/_1mF2s9zpBE

I mean the toy was basically Prime anyway

#4: CN Real

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/0/5/AAAG8cAAEpK1.jpg
CN Real is going to shred!... the ratings. Whenever any of these shows are on.

The year was 2009, and Cartoon Network was still reeling from the effects of the 2007 writer's strike, as well as just being in a down time in general. Imports of Canadian cartoons like Total Drama Island and 6teen had managed to stem the bleeding a bit, but the channel was still way down compared to rivals Nickelodeon and Disney, which were dominating the ratings with iCarly and Hannah Montana. Cartoon Network execs had been noticing for some time that live-action sitcoms on those channels had been doing quite well, and they'd even tried their hand at a live-action/animated hybrid of their own (see #61) to no avail. So, with live action surging and animation seemingly waning, Cartoon Network began to put together a block of their own live-action shows to challenge Nickelodeon and Disney. Enter... CN Real. And did this block consist of sitcoms too? Perhaps digging into their stable of voice actors with live-action experience (Liliana Mumy, Sean Marquette, Tara Strong)? Actually, no. It was a block consisting entirely of reality shows and one game show. And... all of them were atrociously bad, with the possible exception of the ghost hunting show The Othersiders which was merely okay. The rest of them? Survive This was a Canadian reality show about kids trying to survive in the wilderness with a dollar store Bear Grylls. Brain Rush was an awful game show with kids trying to solve quiz questions on a roller coaster. The less said about Bobb'e Says, the better. Dude, What Would Happen? was a horrible Mythbusters ripoff starring teenagers. Destroy, Build, Destroy was a competition show involving two teams of kids who had to smash up objects and rebuild them into a vehicle to compete against each other, hosted by Andrew W. K. Speaking of Andrew W. K., he was the informal "mascot" of CN Real, and even performed a two and a half minute rock song to promote the brand, complete with stunt bikers, fire breathers, and massive speakers blaring awful music while he screamed about these shows as if they were the second coming of "Must See TV". This video, along with probably three or four of these shows, could each be top 100 list entries on their OWN. Together? CN Real was a hideous, massive flop from the moment it debuted in the summer of 2009, with ratings plummeting almost immediately in the first few weeks. Rarely has a network's experiment in brand expansion been so thoroughly and decisively rejected by viewers so soon into its lifespan, but within weeks the shows were all moved to a single block so as to isolate them from the rest of the network, and though a couple of them would linger into 2011, they'd be gone from the network within a few years, just in time for an animation renaissance led by Adventure Time to save Cartoon Network and consign CN Real, mercifully, to the dustbin of children's television history.

You say that the 2007 writers strike was one of the contributing factors to CNs temporary downfall, but the people that write for cartoon shows (usually) actually arent a part of the WGA (for some dumb reason I cant wrap my head around), so most cartoons (including Chowder and Flapjack) continued production as normal. (Ironically, Out of Jimmys Head was one of the casualties of the strike.)

The real catalyst of CN Real was the Boston Mooninite incident, which couldnt be on the list due to its origins being from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It should honestly be an honorable mention though due to its effects on all of CN.

_Keeby posted...

The real catalyst of CN Real was the Boston Mooninite incident, which couldnt be on the list due to its origins being from Aqua Teen Hunger Fo

What was this?

There was viral marketing for the show that included a Lite Brite made Mooninite character placed under a bridge somewhere IIRC. Being a strange device with its own source of power, someone called it in as a bomb. Bad look for Adult Swim

Anagram posted...

What was this?

ATHF put a bunch of litebrites around Boston in a guerrilla advertising scheme and people thought they were bombs

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/4/5/AAcM16AAEpLd.jpg

Jakyl25 posted...

Bad look for Adult Swim

bad look for the fucking idiot cops who thought it was an IED because of their similarities of a circuit board and wires

Andrew WK was on an episode of ATHF too. CN really loved the guy.

at the time I didnt get it, but Ive seen him live a few times now and kind of love him.

Don't you dare disparage my Andrew wk

Best concert I have ever been to

In response, an ATHF episode called "Boston" was made. Adult Swim was wary of airing the episode and Turner Broadcasting ultimately forced them to pull it. An unfinished version leaked online years later (voice acting complete but a lot of rough animation and even some storyboards thrown in as placeholders) and the creators were pissed. Apparently the complete version was screened for the first time ever at an event earlier this year.

masterplum posted...

Don't you dare disparage my Andrew wk

Best concert I have ever been to

he was the last show I saw before Covid happene. New Years Eve. It kicked ass.

Jakyl25 posted...

Ill never get over the name Rodimus Prime

Wait, that's not a Family Guy gag?

#3: Scrappy-Doo

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/6/AAAG8cAAEpL8.jpg
Does he get too much hate these days? Maybe, but he still set his IP back 20 years.

Back in 1979, Scooby-Doo was in trouble. After a decade on the air and numerous spinoffs and specials, the show had seemingly run its course, and was on the verge of cancellation. To save the franchise, a new character was introduced, by the name of Scrappy-Doo. Scrappy stood in stark contrast to his uncle Scooby. He was brave, aggressive, assertive, almost reckless, charging into danger and taking everyone around him with him. He was just what the doctor ordered to mix things up, and ratings actually improved during the season he was introduced. Scrappy-Doo, on his own, was not the problem that almost killed the Scooby-Doo IP. The problem with Scrappy, and what led to the 1980s being the worst period in Scooby-Doo history (with the exception of the 13 Ghosts Of Scooby Doo series, which was great DESPITE Scrappy), was that once he saved the show, everything began to revolve around him. Fred, Velma, and Daphne were jettisoned, and the show shifted its format from a grounded mystery show about normal human criminals in masks to a show about the supernatural, with real ghosts and real vampires and real monsters... and here Scrappy was, still charging in at them, much to the annoyance of viewers. You know that classic Simpsons episode, when Poochie showed up on Itchy and Scratchy? That was Scrappy-Doo during many of the 1980s shows that featured him. "Whenever Poochie's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, 'where's Poochie?'" That was Scrappy-Doo. His personality evolved throughout the various 1980s shows, but executive meddling made this evolution inconsistent at best, and with such a polarizing character now the focus of the show, Scrappy became the focal point of not just the on-screen action, but a lot of the off-screen action as well. The series became more formulaic than it ever had even during the doldrums of the 1970s, with Scrappy continuing to shout his catchphrases, charge at villains, and get Scooby and Shaggy (or sometimes the others, but mostly Scooby and Shaggy) into trouble. Even when they succeeded in mellowing Scrappy out, it just didn't work, because a lot of the comedy of the show was lost as a result. Try as they might, with spinoffs and movies and specials, it just wasn't possible to make Scrappy Doo work, and most fans still preferred the classic cartoons before Scrappy came onto the scene. If they'd been able to integrate Scrappy into the full cast and develop his character in concert with the original five, it might've taken, but instead, Scooby-Doo took on a life of its own, with Scrappy as the focal point of just about everything, until eventually new writers began working on Scooby-Doo projects in the late 80s and early 90s and wrote Scrappy out of the show. It wouldn't be until 1998's Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island that the IP was fully revivified in a way that even made the use of supernatural creatures fit in, but Scrappy was nowhere to be seen, and the 2002 live-action film put the nail in his coffin for good. There's been an effort to rehabilitate Scrappy-Doo in recent years, and to anyone who enjoyed his character, that's totally fair. Scrappy wasn't the problem, but the lazy writing he enabled and the overly aggressive revamping of the original formula to accommodate him nearly killed the franchise. The 1980s Scooby-Doo writers failed Scrappy-Doo, and they're the ones to blame for his demise, not the haters. In the end, Scrappy-Doo became a symbol of too much change, too quickly, and that's a recipe that can doom even the most beloved children's IPs.

I was thinking this was number 1

I am a Scrappy hater.

I never had a problem with Scrappy as a kid. Scooby-Dum was, well, a much dumber new character.

I haven't watched anything with Scrappy as an adult, so maybe I'd feel differently now.

NFUN posted...

ATHF put a bunch of litebrites around Boston in a guerrilla advertising scheme and people thought they were bombs

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/4/5/AAcM16AAEpLd.jpg

That's amazing.

Also shout out to A Pup Named Scooby-Doo as my personal 90s revitalization of the IP

Ohh Scrappy Doo yeah that's a good one. That said, I did quite enjoy Ghoul School and The Reluctant Werewolf as a kid and watched them both multiple times. So I didn't quite hate him or the actual supernatural elements of Scooby-Doo but I do understand the hate he got.

Scrappy is a totally fine character that needs to be written well.

He was not written well.

As a kid Scrappy was hilarious to me
But yeah

RySenkari posted...

The series became more formulaic than it ever had even during the doldrums of the 1970s

Impossible.

NFUN posted...

bad look for the fucking idiot cops who thought it was an IED because of their similarities of a circuit board and wires

The poor schmucks that were hired to actually place the devices were literally arrested and an overzealous prosecutor wanted to hit them with serious charges. They eventually got off with community service though.

Yeah, I wasn't bothered by Scrappy when I was a kid either. But I was never a big Scooby Doo fan to begin with, so maybe my feelings would have been different if I religiously watched the show.

I was a big fan of Scooby Doo as a kid; I had like all the original series recorded and would watch them ad nauseam. Scrappy... never bothered me that much? But I also didn't really like him. I was a lover of a show that contained him though, 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo, though it was mostly for Vincent Price.

Called it (see post 69).

Scrappy was awful not because of his character, but because the show shifted to "shorts" focusing on Scooby, Scrappy, and Shaggy, as opposed to full episodes featuring the whole game, and those weren't funny at all. They usually didn't feature bad guys in masks and were, as you said, extremely repetitive, with much less depth. Kid me actually watched for the last part of the intro to see if it was one of the full-gang episodes - which weren't bad, because the focus was more diversified, and Scrappy is fine in small doses - or one of the ones I refused to watch. Thankfully, they added Daphne back after a couple years, and that improved things some. But 13 Ghosts is where things took off, and it's a shame that never got to finish (despite Flim-Flam being one of the most "whatever" characters ever). Having Vincent Price as essentially himself was glorious.

I also don't know why you didn't mention A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, which did the "puppy" thing properly (in the late 80s/early 90s) by making it farcical. That is still the funniest Scooby series and it's because the new writers recognized what made the series click while making fun of what didn't.

The Boston Mooninite Incident would probably qualify as #1 dumbest on an expanded list of all television since 2003 or whatever. An entire city government just doubling down on being wrong step after step after step, and nobody with power or influence being willing to say this is fucking stupid so they all continued to go through the motions as if this had real legitimacy as a plausible terrorist attack.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

But 13 Ghosts is where things took off, and it's a shame that never got to finish

it technically has now!

Oh yeah I also meant to mention: the whole arresting people at the adult theater thing is a tactic cops use to persecute gay men as it is a common cruising spot. Masturbating at the adult theater is fully expected behavior.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6ubNqkhfVU

#2: American Networks' Treatment Of Anime In The 1990s/Early 2000s

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/7/5/AAAG8cAAEpNf.jpg
Calling this "Saban Moon" is an insult to Haim Saban.

In the early 1990s, stories began to pop up in the entertainment dirt sheets that anime was generating a massive profit outside of Japan, as countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and Italy began airing certain shows, setting record ratings on their various kids' networks. American networks had been eyeballing anime even longer, and plenty of shows had already made the jump to our shores, including Speed Racer all the way back in the 1960s. Now, mega-hits like Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z were making headlines all over the world, and localizing them was a stone cold no-brainer... but at the same time, the country was still in the grip of a post-1980s Satanic Panic, and with the talk show circuit and 24-hour news networks all too eager to fill their airtime with aggrieved "soccer moms" calling for bans and boycotts of any shows that stepped over the line, these networks were caught between a rock and a hard place: importing these anime shows would win them millions of viewers, but would also subject them to boycotts and lawsuits from powerful pro-censorship political groups. So, what did the networks that wanted to import anime do? All sorts of things, hardly any of them good. Before Sailor Moon even came to the United States, a group called Toon Makers tried to produce a live-action pilot that would air in lieu of the anime, but their pilot was quickly shelved and when it was finally dug out of mothballs, it became the product of immediate infamy and arguably a top 10 entry on this list in its own right. The official dub wasn't much better: entire episodes were cut, the music was changed, the voice acting was spotty, and many Japanese cultural references were excised. Dragonball Z was treated somewhat better, but even that show had to deal with the fact that no one could ever "die": either they'd be sent to "another dimension", or in one infamous case, after a plane was blown out of the sky, Tien remarked that he could "see their parachutes" and that they'd be "okay". Other shows had names of characters Anglicized, digital bikinis awkwardly painted on, blood awkwardly censored, characters' entire personalities changed or characters given terrible accents, awkward jokes forced into scripts, and characters' motivations completely altered from their original context. One Piece, a later example, had some infamous changes in the dub, including a character's dead mother being "thrown in a dungeon", amongst other ill-advised alterations. While some of these changes were ultimately necessary (nudity would've been out no matter what the current political climate was, and some blood and gore did need to be censored for kids' networks), most were overreactions to perceived complaints, with scripts and action scenes being altered simply to remove "imitatable behavior". In one particularly infamous example of LGBTQ+ censorship ultimately making things even MORE scandalous, the characters of Haruka and Michiru, known to be lovers in the original Sailor Moon dub, were changed to COUSINS to explain their affectionate behavior (which itself was censored very little), which is... quite telling of certain American values. The mistranslations, overly aggressive censorship, and outright butchering of popular anime not only defaced the original work, but tore a massive rift in the American anime fan community that has yet to fully heal to this day: purists who objected to any censorship of anime and who rather would've had these shows not localized at all, versus fans of the censored anime who were just happy to be seeing these shows in any form and found themselves in the awkward position of defending these ridiculous cuts. The treatment of anime by American kids' networks set anime back more than a decade in the United States, and only with the advent of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block finally allowing for minimally censored anime to air on basic cable did the wounds inflicted begin to heal, though anime only started to truly recover in the mid 2000s or so, once localization companies finally began to figure out how to air anime with only minimal censorship while still meeting broadcast standards for kids' networks. There are still some poorly localized anime to this day, and though many of us have fond memories of watching the butchered versions of our favorite shows back in the 1990s, it's with tremendous gratitude and a sigh of relief that anime no longer faces aggressive censorship like it used to when for most of us, the heavily censored versions were the only option.

The fact anime has become more mainstream and acceptable these days does my heart good. Always felt I needed to hide my enjoyment of anime as a kid and teen, which is ridiculous of course, people should enjoy what they enjoy freely.

Also crunchroll put out a podcast Anime in America that was really interesting and I'd recommend.

No clue what number 1 is gonna be at this stage

Yeah I didn't hate Scrappy as a kid but I have no idea what I'd think of him as an adult.

Cmon Searsssssssss

RySenkari posted...

purists who objected to any censorship of anime and who rather would've had these shows not localized at all, versus fans of the censored anime who were just happy to be seeing these shows in any form and found themselves in the awkward position of defending these ridiculous cuts.

Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon were kinda a big deal so it's hard to say what the anime landscape in the US would even look like if the shows just got skipped over. Like do the networks still jump on the Naruto train anyways or just let that pass by as well? Although, once we reach the streaming era, anime on TV kinda dies anyways so maybe things would be about the same as they are now just with fewer calls for Goku to be added to Smash.

#1: The Reign Of Dan Schneider

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/7/AAAG8cAAEpN_.jpg
How could Nickelodeon have let this guy go for 25 years without realizing that something was afoot?

In 1988, a young, somewhat obscure sitcom actor named Dan Schneider co-hosted the Kids' Choice Awards, where he met Albie Hecht, who was then a development executive for Nickelodeon. Several years later, Hecht, who'd been promoted higher up in the company, hired Schneider to help develop a sketch comedy show called All That. From that point on, he became one of the company's most important and influential creative minds, working on All That, Kenan and Kel, The Amanda Show, Zoey 101, Drake And Josh, iCarly, Victorious, Sam and Cat, Henry Danger, and Game Shakers. Most of these shows were massive hits for the network, and many of the kids who starred on these shows went on to even bigger and better things in the industry. Schneider seemed to have his finger on the pulse of what kids wanted to see and hear, and his work brought in billions for Nickelodeon, making him practically untouchable. Unfortunately, this may have enabled him to perform unthinkable and unspeakable acts on his young actors and actresses, though these allegations remain only rumors at this point, and there's a few things about him we know for sure. We know from Jennette McCurdy's book that he can be somewhat of an on-set tyrant, working young actors for long hours and belittling them during show production. These allegations are related to the reason Schneider was let go from Nickelodeon in 2018, but they're not even close to the worst allegations about him. We know that Schneider seems to have a fixation on feet that most of his critics have identified as a fetish. He's frequently filmed and posted pictures of the feet of his young actors, and more than once on social media, he's asked his young fans to send him pictures of their feet. While it may be possible to dismiss this as just being a quirky facet of Schneider's sense of humor, it's still intensely disturbing that he has such a fixation on young people's feet, even in the unlikely event that it's simply an innocent fixation born from his comedy stylings. He's also known to have employed adults who later have turned out to be sex offenders at his "acting camps", where he sent many of his young actors after hiring them. We've seen numerous instances of sexualization of young female actors, a bit on iCarly but mostly on Victorious, including some disturbing behind the scenes footage where Elizabeth Gillies scrambles to cover up her co-star Ariana Grande before Schneider can sneak a peek under her skirt. There are rumors surrounding both Jamie Lynn Spears (who left Zoey 101 after becoming pregnant at 16) and Amanda Bynes (who has had well documented mental health struggles in the years since she appeared on Dan Schneider's shows) that are too vile (and potentially libelous) to mention here. Dan Schneider, unlike many of the figures on this list who are here because of personal scandals, has not been in any way confirmed to be a sexual predator, but the evidence of and testimones from numerous former employees who came forward paints a picture of him that's as ugly as just about anything else on this list. Even if Dan Schneider's bizarre behavior can all be explained away by a mental health quirk, it would still be disturbing enough to require an explanation that we've never fully received. The most likely story is that Schneider is a pervert who, even if he never got "physical", still has to account for his disturbing actions, if only to clear up these terrifying rumors. The fact that Nickelodeon gave the keys to the kingdom to this man for nearly a quarter of a century is disturbing, horrifying, and well worthy of being called the dumbest event in the histoy of children's television.

yeah I don't think anything else could've been #1

RySenkari posted...

How could Nickelodeon have let this guy go for 25 years without realizing that something was afoot?

why would you do this

I didnt think it would make it since it didnt really impact the show or anything, but shoutout to Eddys (Ed, Edd & Eddy) VA Tony Sampson for dumb shit cartoons did. All he wanted was a slight raise and the production company threatened to blacklist him so he ended up leaving the voice acting industry.