Okay. Get ready for this one. I think I caught one of the prime examples of absolute garbage- and I want to use a certain word that rhymes with fit, as in the fit of rage I experienced catching some of it- but can't use that term here. Anyway it was the most prime example of pure, unadulterated garbage that I can't even begin to call it annoying so much as soul crushing, and quite possibly one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life in the field of animation, if you can call it that.
WILD GRINDERZZZZZ!
Okay... I TOTALLY owe Rocket Power an apology. That was the less cynical, abusively X-TREEEEEEEEEEEME Totally Radical toy selling series. WOW! I haven't seen a toy commercial show that blunt and pandering, ever. Street Sharks is better. Heck, Bratz wasn't as cynical hard sell. There is NOTHING redeeming about this series. Nothing at all!
Where to begin? The characters are the flattest, most unlikable, most stereotypical things in animation. Of course, they have to have a stereotype Street gangsta type that's actually quite offensive. There's an emo kid that sounds like an old Jewish woman (poor Cam Clarke getting roped into this thing, you can tell he's not having any fun) And that Dog... THAT DOG!!! It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. And he farts! Unironically. GAWD! They make you want to reach into the television set and strangle them. They're that freaking awful. And the character designs... I've seen horrible CGI that looked like a freaking Impressionist painting compared to that. The flash is also awful. Not the worst, actually, but still ugly.
To say the attempts at story and humor, and essentially anything basic to a kid's cartoon are feeble. I mean, there's humor in Johnny Test occasionally. And YES... Johnny Test is comparatively Animaniacs on their best episode. THAT"S how bad this thing is. You just get farting dogs talking slang (like an old white person) and the emo kid reminding us that he's emo... oh and "I got sand in my underwear." Yok yok yok! And from the plot of the series I got, they want to skate on everywhere and everything. Including (and this is the DUMBEST thing I've seen unironically used in a cartoon series) converting skateboards into surfboards so they can skate at sea.
I'll let that sink in...
They put SKATES on SURFBOARDS so they can SKATE the OCEAN, unironical about how completely pointless and useless it is. Yep. It's that kind of show. And it doesn't even come off as cool so much as stupid. And guess how much of this I endured? Like 4 minutes before I found what I did with the remote. You see I had Nicktoons on (I got cable now, by the way... no XD or Hub, but EVERY Nickelodeon network) and was cleaning at the time, had to dig frantically for it. There was also an element of "this can't possibly be this bad," but I would have turned it off after 5 seconds (where I confirmed it couldn't possibly be that bad. it's FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR worse than that), if I didn't stupidly bury it under a pile of stuff unintentionally (I thought I had it on the desk).
And I know what you're thinking. This is a kid's cartoon to sell toys. Yeah, so isn't Transformers. A series that began in 1984, racked up 5 (with a 6th on the way) Western series, 10 Anime series (4 of which were dubbed in the US, 3 of them just got released on DVD), 5 movies, countless comic books (too lazy to count them), and only had temporary lulls in popularity. It's a cultural phenomenon, and while it had its off moments (the Unicron Trilogy is the only thing the fans all agree that sucked), it always managed to be fun. Wild Grinders has crappy toys (the kind of skateboard figures you could get as Happy Meal Toys), and an even crappier cartoon. Making something crappy and saying "aw, it's for kids" is like making one of those lame parody movies, putting the worst effort into it and saying "Aw, it wasn't meant to win awards." Suck is still suck.
I mean, I have found redeeming values in even the most hated of cartoons. Loonatics actually had some good episodes and concepts second season, for example. But this is...well... think of something AVGN said about a video game. That wouldn't begin to describe it. There are probably worse cartoons, but I can't think of any right now. Not even Yo Yogi. And that's BAD.