There are heaps and heaps of memorable cartoons that we woke up with every Saturday morning! What about those one-off series that we remember watching but managed to bury underneath all of the Thundercats, He-Mans, Scooby-Doos and the like? Well, lets get into where my memories lead me to and see if you have any memories of them…
I tried to make sure to keep away from cartoons based on or launching popular toy brands. It’s just too easy, right? Also, if you recall a cartoon show yourself, make sure to comment on Twitter and let us know what shows you remember from this crazy forgettable category! Don’t worry, ‘toons – Just because we may not have appreciated you then doesn’t mean there’s not a huge pool of fans all over the Internet today!
1. Wish Kid – 1991
by DiC Animation
Surprisingly enough, there was never a Home Alone cartoon which could profit off of Macaulay Culkin’s star power (see what I did there?) and so that meant that casting directors everywhere were frothing to find something they could shovel towards kids in the early 90’s. With that in mind, Culkin plays young Nick who catches a falling star with a baseball glove and ends up being able to grant wishes with said glove. That’s it. That’s the show. One note. Not too shocking that Wish Kid didn’t last longer than 13 episodes before Culkin was off making more box office gold and the cartoon was consigned to Saturday Morning history.
2. ProStars – 1991
by DiC Animation
Another one-off DiC classic, ProStars didn’t last longer than one season. The thought that was there was a lot of hype behind Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson and Wayne Gretsky in the sports world and with their merchandise flying off the shelves, this was another way to get their names and faces in front of kids. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as all of that because while older kids were budding sports fans, many younger kids still had no clue who these three fellas were. The show aired for four months and then was never heard from again.
3. The Biskitts – 1983
by Hanna-Barbara Studios
I was a slight toddler when this show came out and I remember it, mind you, but I mostly remember the show that was in development to take the formula and do it better. That show?: The Gummi Bears. While Hanna-Barbera only had one season of this show before it faded off into obscurity, Disney later launched a very similar show with bears rather than dogs and saw huge success. Six seasons as opposed to The Biskitts’ one is pretty telling, right? Still, it was kind of cute.
4. My Favorite Martians – 1973
by Filmation
Lou Scheimer, of He-Man and She-Ra fame, didn’t start with those two intergalactic royals. He had been producing cartoon series for decades with Filmation, and one of those was a series based on the popular television show My Favorite Martian to bring the characters to the younger kids. It follows the formula quite well, despite bringing in more characters (thus the Martians, plural) and even utilizing scripts from the television show with some editing. It had 16 episodes before people realized maybe the idea of Martians wasn’t nearly as fun as space heroes. Womp-womp. (Segments would later re-appear along with other Filmation ‘toons as part of The Groovie Ghoulies and Friends.)
5. Hammerman – 1991
by DiC Animation
I don’t know what to tell you here. The show lasted all of six episodes and was based on MC Hammer having magical shoes that talked. They had eyeballs. There was so very little else to discuss about this because I watched all of the available shows while writing this and I’m still at a loss. He and the shoes fight crime and help kids while splicing in his own personal lyrics into his quips. Yeah. Well, it happened. MC Hammer was literally everywhere in the 90’s.
