Saturday Morning Cartoon: He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is Analog Agent Benjamin coming at you this week with…. He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special

Every knows about the classic Christmas Specials cartoons like A Charlie Brown Christmas & Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, but back in the 80’s the one you would remember was the He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special.

I think that it was also one of the few specials at the time that tried to give some info on the religious background of Christmas (even if it was only for one minute), if any show on TV today tried to do that, it would land the makers of that show in hot water.

Does anyone else think that it was odd that Aliens from another world would celebrate Christmas?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Nutcracker Fantasy

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is Analog Agent Benjamin coming at you this week with…. Nutcracker Fantasy

When you are a kid, you remember seeing an odd animated Christmas special or movie on TV that you never knew the name of, but you would always remember it because it was so weird. For me, that movie was the Nutcracker Fantasy.

The real weird thing about this movie is that while it does look like a Rankin-Bass special (like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” & “The Year without a Santa Claus”), it is not, it was made by a Japanese movie company called Sanrio. But its director, Takeo Nakamura, did worked as an animator on the Rankin-Bass special, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”.

From what I know, this movie has not come out on DVD here in the U.S. yet, and you can only find it on old VHS videos for sell on eBay. But because it’s so rare, the price for it can go anywhere from $60.00 up to $200.00.

Did you ever see or hear of this movie as a kid? Did you think it was too scary to be a Christmas cartoon? What do Nutcrackers have to do with Christmas anyway?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: The Hobbit

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is Analog Agent Benjamin coming at you this week with…. The Hobbit

Since the new live action movie is coming out, I thought it would be cool to do a topic about the classic animated version of it that came out back in 1977.

I remember seeing this movie on VHS Video back in the 80’s, and ever since then I have been a big fan of fantasy movies like The Lord of the Rings, The Last Unicorn, The Flight of Dragons, The Black Cauldron, & The Dark Crystal.

What version of The Hobbit do you prefer, the cartoon version, or the live-action version?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: The Trap Door

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is Analog Agent Benjamin coming at you this week with…. The Trap Door

If you were to ask me what was the best Clay Animated cartoon that was on TV in the 80’s, I would say it was The Trap Door.


This was one of those British cartoons that you could also see on weekday mornings before you had to go to school, and it aired alongside other UK cartoons like Danger Mouse & Count Duckula. What I really liked about this show was that it was more animated than any other Clay Animated show that was on TV at the time. Even the stuff in the background was moving around with all kinds of weird things & bugs. I also really liked all the odd looking monsters that came out of the Trap Door in every episode.

If you saw this series as a kid, what was your favorite episode or monster in the series? Did you ever wonder what “The Thing Upstairs” looked like?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Skeleton Warriors

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. Skeleton Warriors

Skeleton Warriors was one of those shows that was trying to get the same type of fame as He-Man, only to completely fail instead.

The show itself was very forgettable. Everyone at the time had long since moved on from He-Man onto shows like TMNT, and even then when this show went on air the time of the TMNT series was ending (much to the thanks of shows like the Power Rangers). So the show also had to deal with bad timing as well. I also could never really find Skeletons all that scary as a kid; to me they were just a run-of-the-mill stock bad guy you could find in any video game, comic book, movie, TV series, or toy line at the time.

What do you guys think about the idea of having Skeletons as the main bad guys for a cartoon series? Is it creepy to see skinless people as main characters?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: USA Cartoon Express

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. The USA Cartoon Express

While not really a Saturday Morning Cartoon line-up, The USA Cartoon Express was still a very big part of my childhood back in the 80’s.

Every weekday I had to try and force myself to get out of bed at 6:30 AM in the Morning, so I could get ready for another long day at school. The only good thing to come from this was that I could watch about an hour of classic cartoons from the 60’s & 70’s just before my Mom had to take me to school. It was think to this line-up of shows that I found out about classic cartoons like Scooby-Doo, Space Ghost, the Flintstones, and many more. And when the 90’s came around they started showing re-runs of cartoons from the 80’s as well. Sadly, when Cartoon Network went on the air in 1996, the USA Network canceled it and replaced it with re-runs of shows like Silk Stockings & Weird Science the Series.

What was your favorite classic cartoon in The USA Cartoon Express line-up? Did you want to take a ride on the USA Express train?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: The Pirates of Dark Water

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. The Pirates of Dark Water

The Pirates of Dark Water was a great series, I must have seen every episode of that show about a hundred times.

I always thought this show was a very good example of how a good fantasy series should be handled. It was set in a brand new world, it had a great cast of heroes & villains, and there was a grand quest that set the tone for the series. The only bad thing I could think of about this series was that it ended before the quest was done.

Was anyone else here disappointed when the show was canceled? Why didn’t they just finish it?!

Saturday Morning Cartoon: C.O.P.S

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. C.O.P.S

This was a cool show, unlike other cartoons at the time (most of them about Super Heroes), this show was about everyday heroes (Cops) fighting crime–in a future time!

Like many shows at the time, they had PSAs at the end of each episode that gave lessons about the law. But what made the ones for C.O.P.S different was that some of them stared the bad guys giving the lessons. Now that was the one thing about this show that got my attention. It’s like if the good guy tells you that stealing and lying is wrong, then it’s no big deal to you because you already know it’s wrong, but if a bad guys tells you it wrong, then you pay attention. And that’s the one thing I always found odd about the PSA’s for C.O.P.S.

Did anyone else also find it odd that they had some of the bad guys doing the PSAs for the show? Did you also find it odd that they changed the name to Cyber Cops when the live action Cops series went on the air?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Captain Planet and the Planeteers

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. Captain Planet and the Planeteers

This is one of those shows that I loved as a kid, but now hate as an adult.

The show had a group of teenagers with super powered rings that could summon a Super Hero called Captain Planet. The show also had an important environmental message at the end about recycling, saving endangered wild life, and stopping pollution.

When I was a kid I thought this was a cool cartoon, but that all changed one day when an environmental lecturer from L.A. came to my small farming town school. He came to the class room and started showing an episode of Captain Planet where it showed one of the villains using a crop dusting helicopter to poison crops. After the episode was over, he gave a lecture on how crop dusters were poisoning crops and that farmers should use lady bugs & venus fly traps to kill unwanted bugs on their crops (which anyone can tell you is total BS). The thing is, my Mom & Dad were crop dusters, and I and ever kid in my class was shock to hear this. For the whole school day, just about every kid in my class gave me the evil eye. When I got back home from school I asked my Mom if we were the bad guys. When she asked what I was talking about, I told her what happened at school that day, and she hit the roof. She then called my Dad at work and told him what happened, and then they both called every farmer & crop duster they knew in town and everyone had a few “choice” words they wanted to say to the principal of my school and the environmental lecturer the next day. After that day, I lost any respect I had for that show.

Remember Kids, the Power is Yours… to turn off the TV when this show is on.

Now, did anyone here think it was lame that the main super hero of the series would lose his powers if he ever got dirty?

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Capitol Critters

You start to hear the sounds of the morning, the wind rustling the leaves, the chirping of the birds and that’s when you realize what day it is–Saturday! Cartoons! All week long you’ve been starved of cartoons, and now it is your time to feast! You throw off the covers, shove your feet in your slippers and sprint downstairs!

Grab that big bowl of C-3POs, adjust the antennae and plop down on the floor for your weekly dose of animated fun!

This is Analog Agent Benjamin coming at you this week with…. Capitol Critters

Back in the late 80’s & early 90’s the Fox Network was making a lot money off of the Simpsons, so it was only a matter of time before the other networks wanted to make their own version of the Simpsons, only to fail at it. One of those failures was Capitol Critters.

The best way I can sum-up this terrible show is that they took the world of “An American Tail”, set it in the modern day times (the early 90’s), and then took out everything that made that movie good and replaced it with Sex & Racism jokes and made every character into a negative stereotype (like making Cockroaches as stereotypes for Blacks & Hispanic people, and Rats as stereotypes for White Trash from Jersey).

I just wonder how something like this show even got on TV in the first place.

Did anyone here ever see this terrible show when it was on?