The Most Annoying Kids Shows

[misspiggy5260]

BUBBLE GUPPIES. Nuff said.

 

[CensoredAlso]

It is unfair and inaccurate to dismiss millennials as merely spoiled and entitled. I mean yeah, maybe a bit spoiled in the sense that millennials had it better than previous generations in a lot of ways. But that doesn't mean they're incapable of working hard. That really comes down to the parenting.

And this is old now but it made me laugh when people scolded Mr. Rogers for daring to tell children they're special. Yeah, don't give them rotten kids any ideas! Lol

 

[Drtooth]

That's in keeping with the "Never My Fault" mentality that a lot of people in the older generations seem to have (same reason they blame my generation for being "spoiled and entitled" because of participation trophies, and whatever [that really annoys me, because it's illogical; what were we, as kids growing up during the 90s supposed to do, say "how dare you patronize me?" and throw the award back in the teacher or coach's face? But I digress...]). I'm not saying all Baby Boomers or Gen Xers have that mindset, but it's a pretty common one.

It goes with what I'm always saying about nostalgic cartoon viewers. They always whine about how the previous generation didn't grow up with the oh so special cartoons their generation had (though, utter bullcrap, as most of them have always been rerun somewhere or another). I remember a time when Gen-Xer's where dismissing Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls because they weren't as awesome as the completely terrible 1970's Scooby-Doo and Archie knockoffs. No foolin'. It just seems that these guys are too old to appreciate anything that doesn't resonate with them nostalgically, and won't bother giving them a chance. So we get matter of taste instead of quality, and nostalgically hanging on to some rather awful programming in cases.

Other than that, there's such a hubris with every previous generation thinking they're the greatest thing since scrambled eggs, when in reality, they're just as, if not, more entitled than the subsequent generations. Worse, if they had the same exact technological advanced in their generation, they'd be just as spoiled, entitled, and sheltered as they condemn the youngsters for. Then there's the whole "let's discredit the next generation because they get more tolerant" angle I don't want to go to.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Can I just give Fraggle Rock some credit in this department? That episode where Cotterpin is dealing with the senior citizen Doozers who don't want to let go of their old way of buildings things. I love the ending where the elderly Doozers finally see the modern Doozer constructions and say something like, "We used to dream of building things like this!" I think a lot of older generations would feel this way if they were being honest.

 

[D'Snowth]

The problem with cartoons today is that they really are just really bad, plain and simple. There's really no more meshing of stuff for kids that includes sly humor for adults as well, everything is divided into either kids only, or adults only, and kids only cartoons are really watered-down, sugar-coated, and annoying, while adults only cartoons put no effort into stories whatsoever, it's all about trying to see how much they can get away with and topping themselves at pushing the envelope. That and both ends of the spectrum seem to try too hard at making everything single thing they put into the character the next big meme.

 

[Drtooth]

Bringing this back to the topic...

Like I said, most of the cartoon shows from the 70's can go on this list. It was a dark age of animation. The 80's had most of the same restrictions the 70's shows did, but at least gave us some fun stuff like Inspector Gadget, G.I. Joe (which has a lot more comedic content, even adult level, than it gets credit for), and Garfield and Friends. The 70's was a great time for live action kids' shows, oddly enough. I'm not a huge Krofft Brothers fan, but their shows at the time were superior kid's viewing than the endless barrage of Bubble Gum Pop TV shows.

Specifically, I'm going to say Superfriends (until the 80's seasons... heck, even the Legion of Doom stuff was pretty good). Let's see... the heroes were flat and shared a personality, they didn't even let them fight villains until most way through the series, and only had to contend with well intentioned scientists that had their inventions go wrong. And need I mention the Wonder Twins? or worse, their idiotic pet monkey? Seriously... the Monkey makes all the annoying kid appeal characters from Wheelie to Orko look like George Carlin. It does however have a great deal of camp to laugh at, but I suggest skipping to the Legion of Doom season. It manages to actually be good to an extent. But for something really good, skip to Legendary Super Powers and Galactic Super Powers Team.

Then there's the 1980 Kwicky Koala show. I get that there's some intense burning hatred of The Wacky World of Tex Avery because it's an in name only series that's barely an homage. But at least barely an homage manages to have Tex Avery levels of cartoon gags. It comes off like the lousy 1960's Looney Tunes cartoons (Yep... I went there). I can't fault the show so much as the insane level of censorship and media watchdogginess when the show came out. It had the potential to probably be funny if they were allowed to do something. But it's just sad the hated in name only dubious homage to Tex Avery series is actually closer to Tex Avery than characters he actually created. I mean, they're on the level of unfunniness as the Filmation Droopy shorts.

And on that subject... The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly show. Okay, Mumbly isn't bad, but you kinda really have to take it as a biting parody of Columbo with cartoon gags. I kinda like that one. Grape Ape, I'm not a huge fan of, I wouldn't say it's terrible so much as meh.... but the Tom and Jerry cartoons are an insult to the greatness of the classics. Again, because of the times and they weren't able to do anything so I do feel sorry for that much. But they're painfully unfunny and watered down (stupid, as they still reran the original T&J cartoons... who the heck were they protecting?) Say what you will about the Chuck Jones, Gene Dietch, and Filmation T&J shorts, at least they were still zip chase cartoons and they had their moments. Only thing worse than Tom and Jerry show Tom and Jerry is... that stinkin movie!

 

[beatnikchick300]

It goes with what I'm always saying about nostalgic cartoon viewers. They always whine about how the previous generation didn't grow up with the oh so special cartoons their generation had (though, utter bullcrap, as most of them have always been rerun somewhere or another). I remember a time when Gen-Xer's where dismissing Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls because they weren't as awesome as the completely terrible 1970's Scooby-Doo and Archie knockoffs. No foolin'. It just seems that these guys are too old to appreciate anything that doesn't resonate with them nostalgically, and won't bother giving them a chance. So we get matter of taste instead of quality, and nostalgically hanging on to some rather awful programming in cases.

I try not to do that; I try to give credit where credit is due; I think Nickelodeon's Sanjay and Craig has promise, and I liked Penguins of Madagascar (although it's been on hiatus for over a year; not really sure why that is). Also, I dislike a lot of Nickelodeon's more recent shows for being too mean-spirited (like Spongebob and Fairly Oddparents in their later seasons, and anything produced by that comedy black hole Dan Schneider), but I acknowledge that a lot of the shows I liked as a kid (Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, Salute Your Shorts, to name a few) weren't exactly paragons of good values, nice characters, or even sophisticated humor. The difference though, is that I think those three '90s Nick shows were at least clever and funny enough that I didn't notice that it was just people being jerks; a lot of Nick's more recent shows seem to operate under the assumption that people just being jerks is funny, BECAUSE they're being jerks, rather than them just being jerks on a show that's funny. And at least the jerks on those shows (like Ren and Mr. Bighead) usually got what they deserved, unlike Nickelodeon's new rash of Karma Houdinis.

Also, I should point out that the Nostalgia Filter is a problem among '90s kids, even though many, like me, have legitimate reasons for not liking newer stuff. For instance, when Rocket Power was on the air, I never went to a cartoon forum that didn't have five or more people bashing it. Now it seems everybody loves it. What gives? And a lot of people around my age in different places online will jump all over me for saying I hated that, Catdog, Jimmy Neutron, and The Powerpuff Girls (I liked it when I was a teenager, but I think the really stupid things about it outweigh the good, and it's a show that has way too much Protagonist-Centered Morality).

 

[Drtooth]

The problem with cartoons today is that they really are just really bad, plain and simple. There's really no more meshing of stuff for kids that includes sly humor for adults as well, everything is divided into either kids only, or adults only, and kids only cartoons are really watered-down, sugar-coated, and annoying, while adults only cartoons put no effort into stories whatsoever, it's all about trying to see how much they can get away with and topping themselves at pushing the envelope. That and both ends of the spectrum seem to try too hard at making everything single thing they put into the character the next big meme.

You're serious?

No the problem is they don't appeal to you personally. They have nothing but sly adult humor (I could list too many), their pop culture referencing has to be stealth and sly (Shrek and the Selter/Freiberg movies ruined pop culture humor), and the restrictions of what you can and can't get away with are pretty lax, and if they aren't, the show actually makes fun of them. Matter of taste. On the upside, we're not getting anything as cynically corporate as Street Sharks. Even the toy based cartoons are getting better. Well... not Littlest Pet Shop. It's loud and obnoxious.

Only bad cartoons, barring preschool shows (and even then, they're coming back), out there are crap like Johnny Test.

 

[CensoredAlso]

You guys are both right, lol. There's some cartoons that still try to raise the bar (Rescue Bots is pretty clever). There's some cartoons that are utter nonsense and kids only like them because everyone else in their class likes them, lol.

 

[D'Snowth]

There's some cartoons that are utter nonsense and kids only like them because everyone else in their class likes them, lol.

This was SpongeBob when I was in middle school. I was the only one in school who didn't like SpongeBob, so that just gave me another reason to be the odd one out.