MonsterBoy

It seems the older I get the more I regress into childhood. Oh, I pay my taxes and hold a steady job and all of that adult garbage, i'm not irresponsible by any means. But unlike most adults who let life crush the life out of them, when the work day is over and the bills are paid and the garbage has been taken to the curb, my mind switches back, just switches easily like a light, to what can only be described as the open breezeway mind of a child, filled with sugar and cartoons and ridiculously bizarre but nonetheless genuine thoughts, a luxury I had posessed all along but until only recently had returned to me. And with the return of this came all of the memories, things that had been implanted in the circuits and synapses of my brain from so long ago, things that never aged, never changed  or had been updated, but remained bottomless nonetheless, surprising even me as they writhed into the front of my mind like impatient senior citizens in a deli line, all vying to be the next thought in my mind at that particular time. And being a product of the 1980's (yes i'm pawning it all off to being a product of my time. I am a coward)
my time capsule of a brain always has the coolest thoughts for me. And while having a staring contest with my cat last night I realized something. The imagination and designer-drug fueled culture of the 1980's, for the most part, always seemed to have a twist of horror to it.That is, at least whatever I was attracted to did. Going into a Bradley's or a Caldor, browsing the toy shelves, all I ever saw were mutants or monsters or ghoulish inventive playsets, playing my Nintendo with game titles like "Ghoul School" and "Zombies ate my Neighbors", not to mention the movie licensed games, fueling my Saturday mornings with (accompanied by dozens of apple cinnamon Eggos) cereals like Fruit Brute and Frankenberry. Everything seemed to have a subtle if not outright assertion of one or another horror element and it was EVERYWHERE, in more places and more forms than I can stand to write about and I remember and love all of it. But the constant and most available resource for all this saturation for my demented  fixation(as well as the main culprit for the person I am today) were the cartoons.You couldn't always go to the mall or the store to keep constant tabs on the coolest shit out there everyday, but you could always turn on the TV and, unless you were and asshole  who liked "Thundercats" or something dumb, see the coolest and most imaginative shows. And the best part about them was they were horror themed, monsters and mutants in high schools or pizza shops, it was always anything goes, and with those elements in place you could go anywhere and do anything, millions of scenarios and variations, and it was always so cool to look at because the stars of you favorite cartoons were MONSTERS!And monsters are cool!! So, as a deviation from form, I'm going to embark on this pet project of mine and run down the Top 5 most important, influential and detrimental shows that filled my childhood, impacted me the most, and helped me cultivate my love for everything horror into the most extensive and funnest chunk of my life.

5) Gravedale High- Airing on NBC Saturdays from 1990 to 1991 and with only 13 episodes, this was probably the the best example of horror and kid's cartoons coming together. The show starred Rick Moranis as Max Schneider, a human teacher transferred to the institution of Gravedale High, a school comprised entireally of monsters, ghosts, zombies, boogeymen and soforth. All of the classics are on display, all of the Universal Monsters and even Amicus and Hammer nods, but the beauty of the whole show was its overall attitude.It's no big deal that they're monsters, just like it's no big deal that Moranis is a human.He's just a teacher who just so happens to have to do his job at school where the valley girl is a Gorgon creature, the heartbreaker greaser-type is a vampire and the football coach is a massive lumpy cadaver voiced by Jonathan Winters(Fats Brown!). It was one of those shows that was too smart and entertaining for it's own good. It approached this whole attitude so well that it went too far over peoples heads and was subsequently dismissed as the same "sharing is caring, we all learn something in the end" show that people were already choking on by 1990. As for me, I loved everything about it, I loved the renderings of the teenage monsters, I loved the jokes and actions played to the strengths and mythologies of the characters, it was witty and sharp and cool as shit, and I just thank the stars that I still remember why I love "Gravedale High".

4) Attack of the Killer Tomatoes- The name says it all. Why the hell WOULDN'T  this show have appealed to me?! Huh?!HUH?! DAMN YOU!!  Based on the 1979 John DeBello film of the same name, AOTKT aired on Fox Kids Saturdays and ran for technically 2 seasons between 1992-93, the second season changing art styles from the first and being animated with the same technology used for the Phillips CDI game console. Anyone who knows what I'm talking about also knows then why the show was cancelled. But anyway, this was another show that sort of sabotaged itself with it's brilliance. The show focused on the denizens of San Zucchini California, and more specifically Captain Wilbur Finletter, fearless tomato killer and our hero of the first two films, though the show's stories revolved closer around the adventures of Wilbur's nephew Chad and Chad's tomato/girl friend Tara as they battle the angry(not mad, just angry) scientist Dr. Gangreen, progenitor of the killer tomato outbreak and voiced to my absolute delight by John Astin. The show was a total riot, exuding the same "we know exactly what we are" type of humor that made the films so much fun, skewring themselves, popular culture and monster films in general somehow all the while inexplicably maintaining that same off center cult aesthetic the films exuded, and the cartoon medium was a perfect tool for the stories' many incarnations of the tomatoes themselves. But more importantly this cartoon needs to be noted as the exposure that got me into my fascination with the horror and cult films I am consumed by to this day. Had it not been for this show I would have never found out about the movies, I would have never gone to Tommy K's cult section to rent the films, I would have never proceeded to research, pursue and devour the rest of their cult section, all the resulting time spent in there would have never led me to the horror section, I would have never repeated the process and my life would not be a hideous spiraling vortex of vhs tapes and illegally pirated dvd's, and that is how I saved Christmas.Wait...no, don't wait. I DID save Christmas, you damn robbers. And I owe it all to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

3) Toxic Crusaders-Probably the most puzzling choice for the medium of children's cartoon programming, we have the short lived but highly marketable and very fun "Toxic Crusaders". Based on TROMA Studio's 1984 alarmingly violent, cruel as venom and fucking hilarious film "The Toxic Avenger" this show was the perfect antidote to the heavyhandedness and pure uncut boredom of "Captain Planet" and it's "hey kids, let's recycle and shit" ilk.Taking it's premise from a film that featured the murder of a seeing eye dog, bullies who engage in the "sport" of running over children and no less than two dozen graphic maulings my a giant mutant, this should have been the very last subject in the world to be made into a kids show. But it's just that logic that stands to augment my whole reasoning for doing this essay. As opposed to today's mentality, back in the 80's and 90's television executives seemed to have the same thought process as your average fan-film making or fan-fiction writing supergeek of today's culture , in that if something is cool you want to see more of it and you want to see it continued and expanded upon but also rendered in different ways to see how much of the creative gambit you can cover, kinda like how they put Casey Jones, hockey mask and all, into the first Ninja Turtles movie. Did they have to?No.Could they have and fucked him up royally?Absolutely. But they did and they didn't, because THEY were fans and THEY knew how to do it right, staying true to something dear to fans while also keeping it fresh and relevant.And with that in mind, DIC entertainment gave us our cartoon of topic running from 1992-1993 and featuring a full length cartoon film to promote it, and if anyone has ever had one of those "wouldn't it be cool if.." moments while watching any of TROMA's films you know the Toxic Avenger has a lot of room for creative expansion and input. Inkeeping with the established mythology of the film, the show introduced us to the big bad Doctor Kilemoff, emissary of  Planet Smogula, the alien world built on pollution, and his plans to conquer the galaxy for his race by trashing every planet in the stars.So when the good doctor sets his sights on Tromaville, "Toxic Waste Dumping Capital of the World", he finds quickly he's  first got to get through The Toxic Crusaders, super hero mutated monsters looking to clean up the likes of Kilemoff and his wicked deeds.Lead by the shows inaugural mutant, The Toxic Avenger, the team set about thwarting the Smogulans with their mutant abilities and a triumphant cry "It's Clean-up Time",(or, "I hope I don't get hurt", whichever you prefer) and battle from Tromaville to planet Smogula and all points in between to secure a better tomorrow. Pretty straight foward in the plot and wholesomeness, the beauty of this show is the aforementioned source material for one, and a great case of style over substance for another. Sure the message is fine but I for one am more apt to recycle and shit if a giant monster dog man named Junkyard, a two-headed surfer dude/mad scientist, a plant-man super patriot and the Toxic Avenger himself are telling me to.The monster heroes were intricate, creative, big,ugly,detailed to within an inch of their lives and just plain old cool looking and just based on the three pronged premise of wanting everyone to hate Captain Planet in favor of these guys,exposing children to the TROMA culture and creating inspiration for some of the coolest action figures ever, this show was the greatest public service message of it's or any time.So the next time your in trouble, look to the horizon and maybe, JUST maybe, THE TOXIC CRUSADERS will be there.

2)My Pet Monster/Mad Scientist-Yep, i'm cheating, but I don't have to answer to you because theres nobody reading this. This is a tie, making this a technical Top 6, but only on the premise that both of these shows were awesome and both of them were criminally short lived.So we'll just dive right in to this so I can actually finish it before I publish it this time. My Pet Monster is first, and like Gravedale High this was one of those concepts that was right on. Based on a children's doll of the same name made by Mattel, this stood as probably the most detrimental and healthy of ideas for little kids in it's time.Every kid wants a monster for a pet and if you didn't ,even briefly, then either you are a liar or you have some Flowers in the Attic shit going on and I just can't be bothered. The show, released by HighTop video from 1989 through 1990,centered around two kids and their pet monster.Nothing to it right?Well hold on, spinach chin. Like a good joke, you had to have been there.Watching this show was kind of a cathartic experience for kids, it exemplified to them what it was like to have a pet monster( and remember we're talking about stupid little kids like me, so these things were real to them) and was sorta like a fill in the blanks for their imagination.You have the groundwork laid out but what would you do with a pet monster, how deep would the rabbit hole go with a monster in your life?Would it be scary, or adventurous or goddamn zany or what?Well if your own imagination ever stalled on you you were always able to refer to My Pet Monster, in my opinion the closest thing to HONEST mass marketed childhood imagination and a testament to a long dead time when there were still enough smart encouraged imaginative dream headed kids to justify such a cool idea.The Mad Scientist on the other hand was just petulant fun.Featured here and there on the TX Critter Cartoon Power Hour from that shows run from 1988-1991, this was the second show on this list to be inspired by a line of toys and the two 45 minuet cartoons that comprise the entire lifespan of the show were as brainless and irredeemable as they came, just two cartoons based around the manic suggestions and ideas of the titular Mad Scientist and the shows insistence that we come along and experience it whether we wanted to or not.This represented every kid who ever wanted to see that would happen if they turned a horseshoe crab upside down.It was about discovery, but the the kind of discovery that's only relevant to a child, and it was the show that had me convinced that a mad scientist was an actual occupation.If the essence of  My pet Monster was the wholesome Cheerios your mom made you eat then The Mad Scientist was the half pound of sugar that you poured on top while she was on the phone with her back to you.Well, this has deteriorated into nothing but a 25 year old miserating about wanting to be 5 again so lets move this along to the grand finale

1)The Real Ghostbusters-That's right, junior Ghostbusters, I did it, I dropped the big one, the 18 Mega-Ton big daddy manifestation itself, the show that ate your precious Thundercats for lunch and picked it's teeth with the bones of He-Man, the most important thing in the world to me (ages 2 thru 16 ), the best thing ever, The Real Ghostbusters. With it's premier on ABC Saturday mornings on September 13th 1986 and with a six season run along with 2 spin-offs as well as being in syndication, the show followed the continuing and seemingly bottomless adventures of Peter Venkman, Ray Stanz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore(along with their newly anointed yet perpetually irritating mascot Slimer) and is arguably the best example of a film successfully translating into children's television in any and every respect.Picking up directly where the first film ended, the debut episode "Ghosts R Us" sees the Ghostbusters returning from their Gozerian rooftop rumble with their flight suits caked in dried marshmallow man and no worse for the wear, wherein they trade their protonically charged uniforms for the iconic color coordinated uniforms that would go on to define the show's characters. And just to signify without doubt that the show was here to stay, the genius of the episode is on full display as we learn the marshmallow goo is a supernatural irritant that when stored too close to their containment unit bonds with the spectral energy and gives birth to the anti-Ghostbusters, green ghostly dopplegangers of our heroes who have come to fuck them up.It's at this point that you knew you were really privy to something special being handled by very talented people, because by now the Ghostbuster phenomenon was in full swing and the last thing anyone ever expected after the showstopper that was a 100 ft. marshmallow man was something as wild as our aforementioned scenario, and it only got crazier and more commendably creative from there.Needless to say the Ghostbusters rise to the challenge and put their evil counterparts out of commission, but in the six years that were to follow the Ghostbusters would go up against everything from the Boogeyman, the Spirit of Halloween, The Deep Ones of Lovecraftian lore and even the Devil itself, always coming together with their individual strengths and smarts and some honestly too-smart-for-cartoons logic to show every opposing prehistoric paranormal bitch exactly how you do things downtown. But to the credit of the horror elements in place here, this show offered some of the honest-to-God scariest things anywhere,cartoon or otherwise,whether it be the overall tone of real dread and possible doom, the completely mold breaking conceptualizations of the ghost and monsters, right down to the choices and uses of music or even the talents of the voice actors chosen to fill the roles, it can be said today as could have been said back then that the show pulled no punches, never got too cutesy with it's ghosts and whenever possible opted to convey real fear and all the corresponding emotions to the point of most episodes being the kiddie equivalent of a soap opera where you were totally invested and engrossed whether you knew that's what you were feeling or not.It played on that oh so perilous line of entertaining with visuals and  cheesecake while somehow eliciting a full gamut of emotions from an audience that couldn't care two fucks about anything outside of having to get up and go watch tv somewhere else because your dad wanted to watch "Soul Train" now, which is tantamout to say that it absolutely was it's own smart approachable animal, always was, and that it never sat back and set out to condemn or condisend emotion or intelligence or attention just because it's target audience were at the most underdeveloped stage of these things that only fantastic entertainment can make you feel. And aside from being the incalculably priceless continuation of a story that needed to keep being told (a huge leap of faith by itself considering the amount of notice and care taken of brilliant material nowadays.Save Todd and the Book of Pure Evil!!! ) and the fact that not only was it given blessing to continue and grow however but that it was nurtured so easily and carefully from a respectable distance so as not to over-homogenize any naturally occurring "magic", it really was a very important thing to many little MonsterKids, myself obviously one of them.This show did exactly what Roger Ward was hollering at little Mel Gibson about.It gave us back our heroes.Not so much as to tell us to go out get a ph.D in proton based psychics and hunt ghosts, but to say that nothing, no matter how big or bad or ugly, NOTHING in your life couldn't be busted.It showed you fear and it showed you perseverance in the face of abject fear, your heroes got scared and they got discouraged and they most definitely got knocked on their asses, but then they pulled back, put their heads together, and with the first bar-slide of the theme song creeping in to rev up the final showdown it gave us a glorious tingling tears in your eyes get up and fight finale, it translated into your mind as something that wasn't confined to the fictitious cause and effect parameters of a cartoon show  but as to say that the life  ahead of you is going to be horrifying, life is going to show you terrible things whether you want to see them or not, that things are gonna be bigger and badder and tougher to beat every new day fraught with personal demons and monsters and ghosts of all shapes and sizes and faces and powers over you. But that if you can stand up strong no matter what, no matter the odds or the size or the doubt in your mind, if you can find the tools and the talent, you just might be able to tear your own positron colliding path of beautiful blue and orange right through the darkness and horrors of the life ahead of you and scream to the skies "Nobody steps on a church in my town!"...No,wait..I mean(ahem).."I ain't afraid of no ghosts." But then again, this is just one MonsterBoy talking.

At Last,
The End