We got it all together now, gang! The Fonz, his dog he named Mr. Cool, and the good group. One flaky time machine, and… a future chick name o’ Cupcake.
Oh, now the gang got zapped into that time machine, and they’re like travellin’ through time! My my, ooh they do not dig where that machine is going, but they sure do hope to get back to 1957 Milwaukee!
Oh, G.I. Joe. When you’re keeping a blog about baffling cartoons, this one is a monolith. But where do we even begin?
We both decided that this episode was as good a place as any. See if you can figure out what’s going on here. Haha, no I’m kidding. Even if you watch from the start, there’s no explanation. All we know is that a deranged millionaire has kidnapped random cast members, put them on an island with a candy forest, and told them to get to the chopper first if they want to live.
But what’s up with this island? Who is this guy? How did he manage to kidnap Cobra Commander? Watching this episode from the start won’t help you answer any of these questions anyway, so let’s just jump straight to halfway through the episode, where the action is really getting inexplicable.
In 1986, Ruby-Spears produced an action cartoon created by (and starring) Chuck Norris: Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos. If it was still 2005, that’s all I’d need to write. That’s also about all I’d be able to write. It almost vanished from existence as soon as it had aired (apart from a 1989 VHS release), making it very difficult to find any information or footage from the show.
Thankfully, the guys at Adult Swim managed to track it down in 2006 and re-broadcast all five episodes, albeit at 5:30am. So now it’s out there and it’s fairly common knowledge that it really does exist. There’s still no DVD release, but at least it’s all over YouTube now if you can’t find it on Adult Swim.
Is it worth watching though? Well yeah, of course it is, especially when you have drinks and friends around. But I’d have to say that it’s nowhere near as awesome as you’d expect the result of a Norris/Ruby-Spears collaboration to be. It has a lot of great moments, but they’re interspersed with a ton of dialogue and slow scenes that kind of bog it down. This show should have been wall-to-wall illogical karate action!
In fact, here’s how I think it should have turned out:
Captain Planet and the Planeteers was an overly-positive, fairly preachy cartoon reminding kids to write their congressman. Unlike Widget the World Watcher, who actually taught kids to clean up their act, Captain Planet taught kids that pollution was caused explicitly by six villains worldwide, and that Captain Planet would always come to kick their arses, so don’t bother doing anything.
Those chirpy Planeteers get themselves into a situation in this particular episode when Linka (the ‘Eastern Europe’ representitive with the power of VIIIND – take note of the Red Star on her belt buckle) goes to visit her cousin Boris who lives in Washington. Turns out that Boris has met up with the villainous Jeff Goldblum Verminous Skumm, who is supplying the local population with a drug called “Bliss”.
Okay, you say – that’s fine. They’re teaching kids that drugs are bad and not to do them. Yes. Yes they are. But the Planeteers aren’t finished with their moral Jihad just yet. To really ram that message home, let’s watch the video below and skip to about 7:00 in:
Yes. Not only does Linka’s cousin Boris DROP DEAD, but then:
GO PLANET!
The Planeteers chant Captain Planet’s cry – over his STILL WARM CORPSE.
Videos | Rusty | July 30, 2009 | 
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alien friend, gazoo syndrome, Globetrotting, Hanna-Barbera, jar-jar syndrome, spin-off, timetrotting, wat, welkerphonics, what do kids know
