SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON SPOTLIGHT: THUNDERCATS

Agreed on all except the voice acting. It was the weak point in what was actually a pretty damn decent show.

Also, Mumm-Ra is still the best villain any of these shows would ever see. Basically, an Egyptian supervampire. And that transformation sequence is still insanely great in all its melodramatic glory.

The guitar in the opening theme is really pretty insane at times.

I remember stumbling across this the week it debuted (it ran Monday through Friday) with no idea it was coming and really getting hooked on it. Most of my friends broke along the Transformers/GI Joe divide, but I was Thundercats all the way.

It would take me years to appreciate it, but yeah, that is pretty damn great.

Awkward dance club moment aside, Batman Beyond still holds the title for most bad ass introduction to a kid's cartoon, though.

Julian Casablancas singing Thundercat theme:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnARpop__ao

Obligatory "Did you know the Thundercats theme was written by James Lipton?" post.

This show was, in some ways, obviously trying harder than most vaguely Star Wars-ish comic book fantasy cartoons of the mid-80s. The visuals were more ornate (though not necessarily better animated) and the world was a lot richer and more imaginative. But there were some major pitfalls, the voice acting being the biggest (I particularly like the apparently 75-year-old woman who voices all the female characters including Cheetara, and the way that the two Thundercat kids are obviously being voiced by adults in a simpering tone of voice). There's also the fact that the show had about four musical cues that they used OVER. and OVER. and OVER. One of which was the show's theme song, with lyrics, whenever they sprang into battle.

And Snarf. Oh, fucking Snarf. Aren't they doing a remake of this show, and didn't the creative team insist as one of their first orders of business that Snarf wouldn't talk? These guys clearly know what needed fixing.

Of course, this is the only 80s cartoon I've even seen recently. I'm sure most of the criticisms of this show would apply to a lot of other cartoons of the era, but it really does show what a massive sea change Batman: The Animated Series and some of the early-90s Disney cartoons represented for kid's cartoons. The medium really did step up its game to the point where it's hard to watch anything from before that.