The thread title says all. What are your favorite cartoons that got little or no attention from mainstream viewers? I'll start.
Sonic The Hedgehog (1993-95, ABC)- Not the craptacular syndicated series, but the "way-past-cool" Saturday morning version (also referred to as SatAM). It had great animation, slick characters (Jaleel White, A.K.A. Urkel, was an excellent choice for Sonic's VA; he literaly nailed the character down solid!), and an awesome plot (especially in season 2). The series itself was based more on the characters and storyline from the Archie Comics series than the videogame itself. The story for STH was somewhat darker than most everything else shown on Saturday mornings at the time: Dr. Robotnik has taken over most of the planet Mobius, converting once-thriving forests and villages into factories and wastelands. To make matters worse, he's also enslaved, or "roboticized" most of Mobius's citizens. The only thing standing in Robotnik's way of total planetary domination are a few freedom fighters, scattered accross the planet. One of these rebel bands contain a blue hedgehog who's capable of running at incredibly fast speeds. That hedgehog's name is none other than Sonic. Every week, the blue blur, alongside a two-tailed fox named Tails, a mechanical genius walrus named Rotor, a half-robot, half-rabbit named Bunny Rabbot, and a royal guardian named Antoine, would battle against the evil forces of Dr. Robotnik (whether they were SWATbots, mechanical creations, his assistant, Snivley, or Robotnik himself, Sonic and friends would stand tall against them). However, there were a few things that set this show apart from anything else out on Saturday morning TV at the time. For one thing, Sonic wasn't the leader of the team; in fact, the leader was Sally Acorn, princess of Knothole village, and the team's tactician (how many cartoons back then had a female leader? Very few, and this was one of them). Also, not all of the team's exploits were successful; in one episode, the Freedom Fighters manage to stop Robotnik's minions from digging up a powerful crystal (barely), but they end up losing the brainwashed Uncle Chuck (Sonic's uncle) in the process.
At first, the series took an "episodic" approach (meaning that they just showed non-continuity-related episodes), but as the first season drew to a close and the second season began, the episodes became more "interconnected". With each new episode, viewers learned more about Mobius, it's people, and it's history (an entire two-part episode was dedicated to Mobius' pre-Robotnik days, and how Dr. Robotnik took over). The final episode of the second season (The Doomsday Project) was what many call "the single best episode of the series".
*SPOLIER WARNING*
In that episode, every freedom fighter still around led a last-ditch assault on Robotnik's Doomsday Tower.
*END SPOLIER WARNING*
The last episode of season 2 ended on a cliffhanger, and on the week after that last episode was aired (June 4th, 1995), it was replaced by Free Willy: The Animated Series (for me, this day shall forever live in infamy, aside from the fact that I first saw the King of Fighters '94 for the first time at a local arcade and became a Neo-Geo fan). The third season of STH was never aired, and in it's time slot stood an hour of Free Willy (BOOOO!) A few days after the series was pulled, I wrote a letter to ABC Network broadcasting, asking why the series was pulled from its lineup. Six and a half years later, there's still no reply.
There are three possible reasons why the series was cut short:
1) Fox Network's Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was in the same time slot as STH, and was unable to match them ratings-wise (the Power Rangers were very popular back in the day), thus resulting in their cancellation.
2) During the Disney-ABC Network merger back in 1995, all non-Disney shows (with the exception of Reboot) were thrown out of the mix (STH being one of them).
3) DiC (the animation studio responsible for STH) ran out of money to keep the series going, and thus, the series went under.
Six and a half years have passed since Sonic the Hedgehog was cancelled from ABC. And what has happened since then? ABC's Saturday morning lineup is still all-Disney, DiC tried a new Sonic series, Sonic Underground, in 1999 (but that failed miserably), and the old SATam series remains incomplete (however, Archie Comics did intergrate many elements of the animated series into STH comic book continuity in early 1997, but that was thrown aside in 1999, when Sega "forced" Archie to switch over to Sonic Adventure continuity, thus ruining continuity once more (and you thought that X-Men's continuity was confusing) (dont'cha just love big companies who hold power over all creative decisions?).
Good luck trying to find any episodes on VHS, because the few that were released were limited in number, and are now out-of-print. USA Network did re-air the old STH SatAM series in 1996, but that (along with USA's Cartoon Express) was de-railed in 1997 in favor of a more "extreme" cartoon line-up (extreme being Wing Commander and Mortal Kombat).
Even though the series has long-since been (unfairly) cancelled, it still remains one of my favorite (under-rated) cartoon series of all time.
More under-rated favorites coming soon...
Sonic The Hedgehog (1993-95, ABC)- Not the craptacular syndicated series, but the "way-past-cool" Saturday morning version (also referred to as SatAM). It had great animation, slick characters (Jaleel White, A.K.A. Urkel, was an excellent choice for Sonic's VA; he literaly nailed the character down solid!), and an awesome plot (especially in season 2). The series itself was based more on the characters and storyline from the Archie Comics series than the videogame itself. The story for STH was somewhat darker than most everything else shown on Saturday mornings at the time: Dr. Robotnik has taken over most of the planet Mobius, converting once-thriving forests and villages into factories and wastelands. To make matters worse, he's also enslaved, or "roboticized" most of Mobius's citizens. The only thing standing in Robotnik's way of total planetary domination are a few freedom fighters, scattered accross the planet. One of these rebel bands contain a blue hedgehog who's capable of running at incredibly fast speeds. That hedgehog's name is none other than Sonic. Every week, the blue blur, alongside a two-tailed fox named Tails, a mechanical genius walrus named Rotor, a half-robot, half-rabbit named Bunny Rabbot, and a royal guardian named Antoine, would battle against the evil forces of Dr. Robotnik (whether they were SWATbots, mechanical creations, his assistant, Snivley, or Robotnik himself, Sonic and friends would stand tall against them). However, there were a few things that set this show apart from anything else out on Saturday morning TV at the time. For one thing, Sonic wasn't the leader of the team; in fact, the leader was Sally Acorn, princess of Knothole village, and the team's tactician (how many cartoons back then had a female leader? Very few, and this was one of them). Also, not all of the team's exploits were successful; in one episode, the Freedom Fighters manage to stop Robotnik's minions from digging up a powerful crystal (barely), but they end up losing the brainwashed Uncle Chuck (Sonic's uncle) in the process.
At first, the series took an "episodic" approach (meaning that they just showed non-continuity-related episodes), but as the first season drew to a close and the second season began, the episodes became more "interconnected". With each new episode, viewers learned more about Mobius, it's people, and it's history (an entire two-part episode was dedicated to Mobius' pre-Robotnik days, and how Dr. Robotnik took over). The final episode of the second season (The Doomsday Project) was what many call "the single best episode of the series".
*SPOLIER WARNING*
In that episode, every freedom fighter still around led a last-ditch assault on Robotnik's Doomsday Tower.
*END SPOLIER WARNING*
The last episode of season 2 ended on a cliffhanger, and on the week after that last episode was aired (June 4th, 1995), it was replaced by Free Willy: The Animated Series (for me, this day shall forever live in infamy, aside from the fact that I first saw the King of Fighters '94 for the first time at a local arcade and became a Neo-Geo fan). The third season of STH was never aired, and in it's time slot stood an hour of Free Willy (BOOOO!) A few days after the series was pulled, I wrote a letter to ABC Network broadcasting, asking why the series was pulled from its lineup. Six and a half years later, there's still no reply.
There are three possible reasons why the series was cut short:
1) Fox Network's Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers was in the same time slot as STH, and was unable to match them ratings-wise (the Power Rangers were very popular back in the day), thus resulting in their cancellation.
2) During the Disney-ABC Network merger back in 1995, all non-Disney shows (with the exception of Reboot) were thrown out of the mix (STH being one of them).
3) DiC (the animation studio responsible for STH) ran out of money to keep the series going, and thus, the series went under.
Six and a half years have passed since Sonic the Hedgehog was cancelled from ABC. And what has happened since then? ABC's Saturday morning lineup is still all-Disney, DiC tried a new Sonic series, Sonic Underground, in 1999 (but that failed miserably), and the old SATam series remains incomplete (however, Archie Comics did intergrate many elements of the animated series into STH comic book continuity in early 1997, but that was thrown aside in 1999, when Sega "forced" Archie to switch over to Sonic Adventure continuity, thus ruining continuity once more (and you thought that X-Men's continuity was confusing) (dont'cha just love big companies who hold power over all creative decisions?).
Good luck trying to find any episodes on VHS, because the few that were released were limited in number, and are now out-of-print. USA Network did re-air the old STH SatAM series in 1996, but that (along with USA's Cartoon Express) was de-railed in 1997 in favor of a more "extreme" cartoon line-up (extreme being Wing Commander and Mortal Kombat).
Even though the series has long-since been (unfairly) cancelled, it still remains one of my favorite (under-rated) cartoon series of all time.
More under-rated favorites coming soon...
