Even though the original post is over a year old, the first list of the World’s Blankiest 80’s Cartoons was never complete. Here are a few more of the blankiest 80’s cartoons, including some ideas from my sister:

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers – I have fond memories of this TV show. One of my favorite characters was Monterey Jack, a mouse who loves cheese (very tricky, Disney, using an actual cheese for the name of a character). I think we must have watched this show right as it came out (many of the others we only watched after they had been in syndication for a while) and I thought it was pretty cool that these two established Disney characters now had their own detective show, and the fact that Chip dresses like Indiana Jones certainly didn’t hurt things.

Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears – We didn’t watch this show a lot, but I remember it very distinctively. Actually, come to think of it, I might just remember it because they advertised it like crazy, which is typical of Disney. I do remember that one of the characters was voiced by the same actor (Lorenzo Music) as Garfield in Garfield and Friends. I didn’t buy it.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe – He-Man was an awesome show. As a kid, I always thought he was a lot like Superman, only better. By day he’s just the mild-mannered Prince Adam, but the power of Grayskull transforms him into the awesome He-Man (wow, that name sounds really dumb now, although I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with him for making fun of his name). Despite the similarities with Superman, it was He-Man’s enemy that set him apart. Skeletor was awesome, just look at the guy. He was a purple muscleman with just a skull for a head, but he was no dummy. The great part about this show was that it was so easy to pretend you were He-Man: all you needed was a pair of red shorts and a big sword. It surprises me that I didn’t do that more often.

My Little Pony – We rented a few of these episodes on Netflix for my daughter to watch, and she enjoyed them a little bit, although she definitely likes playing with her knock-off pony toys. Like Rainbow Brite and many others, they had their own movie. This show definitely appealed to little girls who were into hair and fancy things, though, and the toys carry on that tradition today. Hasbro was the creator of these toys, though, so maybe after they stop making Transformers and G.I. Joe movies (which are based on their other toys series) they will move on to My Little Pony. Just maybe.

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh – One of the highlights of my young life (if you read my journal, at least) was meeting Winnie the Pooh in the mall when I was a kid and getting some stickers and a poster for this show. When I was flipping through channels a while ago, I noticed that there was a new Winnie the Pooh show on TV, but it had a little girl in place of the beloved Christopher Robin. I’m sure it’s all about a new generation or whatever, but I had to flip the channel immediately for fear of corrupting my two young daughters. Lots of 80’s TV shows have come back, but I can’t think of any that are better than the originals. A. A. Milne would be rolling over in his grave… if he hadn’t already done so back when his widow sold his characters to Disney.

Pound Puppies – this was one of a few 80s cartoons that also had a movie that came out with it, and it also belongs to the category of TV shows inspired by toys. There’s nothing wrong with that, though, as the movie, Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw, brings back lots of good memories of the summer movie series we used to go to when we lived in Missouri. At the beginning of the summer my mom bought punch passes for all of us that would get us in to see a movie every week or so during the day. We always brought popcorn and other snacks as we watched the movies. I can’t think of any of the other movies that we saw that summer, but I do remember seeing the Pound Puppies movie.

Rainbow Brite – This is one of the shows that Beth had to remind me about. Apparently the 80s had lots of cartoons that were for girls as well (I mean, besides She-Ra, which boys were allowed to watch because He-Man could show up at any time). Anyway, I definitely remember my sister watching this show. There were lots of girls (and maybe some boys too?) riding on horses and they had little sidekicks called sprites. That sounds right. OK, now I had to look it up. So Rainbow Brite was the leader of a group called the Color Kids, who each had a Sprite for a sidekick. Their main enemy was Murky Dismal, who had a typically clumsy sidekick called Lurky (who wasn’t really that bad, he just hung with the wrong crowd). Anyway, Murky has pretty much the greatest backstory ever:

Murky is the main villain from The Pits. In one episode it is revealed that, as a toddler, he colored on the walls with crayons, markers, paints, rollers, and finally an industrial airbrush. His mother made him wash off “every bit of color, if it takes all day, if it takes the rest of your life,” leading Murky to his hatred of color as an adult. He loves to invent devices to create gloom clouds which remove color and make people hopeless. He is constantly trying to capture the Color Kids or take Rainbow Brite’s Color Belt. His full first name is Murkwell. –From Wikipedia

The Real Ghostbusters – Unlike another 80’s cartoon called Ghostbusters (which I only vaguely remember), this one was based on the popular movies, and because of all the marketing promotions, kids liked this show more. Later on, they figured out that kids really liked Slimer, so they renamed the show “Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters”. Interestingly, Lorenzo Music voiced Bill Murray’s character from the movies in this show, and Bill Murray went on to voice Garfield, Lorenzo Music’s most well-known character, in a couple of movies.

She-Ra: Princess of Power – I’ve already mentioned that She-Ra was one cartoon that featured a girl that a boy would be fine watching even if he didn’t have any sisters. I know that my sister had a She-Ra action figure (or does this count as a doll?) that she got to use while my brother and I played with He-Man and Skeletor. She-Ra is actually He-Man’s twin, so obviously there are a lot of similarities between the two.

Shirt Tales – When we were kids, my mom sewed a bunch of stuffed animals from patterns for all of us, including several Care Bears (there must have been between ten and twenty which was awesome because we could line them all up for a Care Bear stare) and a few of the characters from Shirt Tales. Just like the Care Bears were based of popular American Greetings cards characters, the Shirt Tales were based off of characters created for Hallmark. I only remember watching the show once or twice, but I thought it was awesome because it featured one of my stuffed animals. I also remember that they had a really cool car that they drove around in, which according to Wikipedia, is the “STSST (Shirt Tales’ SuperSonic Transport) which could operate as a car, jet, boat, submarine, and just about any other form of imaginable ride”. Nice.

Smurfs – I have fond memories of the Smurfs, and Gargamel was one of my favorite villains. This was another show that we rented recently from Netflix, and it was kind of funny to go back and watch it again. We enjoyed that the Smurfs could use the word “smurf” as any type of word, but depending on the context they used it in it often sounded like those innocent little blue creatures were swearing. I was also surprised to find out that Smurfette was originally created by Gargamel, and she wasn’t always the sweet little thing she is now. How smurfy of them.

Snorks – I loved the Snorks, and I wanted to be just like AllStar. He was your typical Renaissance Snork, who, “as well as being athletic and heroic, he’s interested in Science and also an inventor”. Not too bad for a little underwater creature that hung out with seahorses. When my mom used to take use to the genealogy library at church when we were little, we rented a tape of Snorks from the nearby Dillon’s supermarket one time, which was totally awesome. Personally, I think the Snorks were much cooler than the Smurfs, and interestingly, they were both created in Belgium.

Strawberry Shortcake – this may have been the first of the 80s cartoons to feature characters that were created for greetings cards. I remember my sister being a big Strawberry Shortcake fan, and she even had a Strawberry Shortcake bike, which was the same bike I learned to ride on. From my perspective, this was one of the more tolerable girl cartoons, and even today my three-year-old daughter knows who Strawberry Shortcake is. Be warned that watching this show can make you hungry, though, although you wouldn’t want to eat Strawberry Shortcake or any of her friends like Huckleberry Pie, Blueberry Muffin, or Lemon Meringue. Even though they have delicious-sounding names, it’s still considered cannibalism.

If the 90’s were about music, then the 80’s were definitely about cartoons, at least when viewed through the eyes of my elementary-school self. I used to love watching these cartoons, and in some cases, I still do. Here’s a bunch of them I remember fondly:

Alvin and the Chipmunks – My favorite was the cartoon movie, in which they got to travel around the world. My brother, sister, and I always watched that one when we were kids, possibly because it was recorded onto one of our favorite VHS tapes of all time, which also had our own copy of Star Wars.

Captain N: The Game Master – I loved this show, probably because it was pretty much an extended Nintendo commercial. If memory serves me (and it might not, given that I spent much of my childhood watching TV and playing video games) this was one of my favorite shows because the main character was magically transported into his TV where he was part of the video game. It doesn’t get cooler than that.

Care Bears – Say what you will, but this show was awesome, and so were its two 80’s cartoon movies. My mom sewed stuffed animals for us of nearly all of the characters (again, if memory serves, there must have been at least a hundred… or maybe just a couple of dozen…). My siblings and I used to get out all the Care Bears and line them all up to do their patented Care Bear Stare against Shredder or Cobra Commander or some other evil action figure, leaving the villain helpless.

C.O.P.S. – This show is about fighting crime in a future time. Although it was in some ways just another 30-minute toy commercial, this show had a great cast of good guys vs. bad guys. A year or so ago I bought a copy of the first season for my brother and I must say that I’m jealous. The shows were still interesting and funny (in a retro sort of way), and I remembered most of the important characters and even which minor characters that had been my favorites as a kid. I remember playing outside in the yard pretending that we were these characters, and I can definitely say that happened more than once.

DangerMouse – What I remember most about this show are the theme song (very awesome) and the sidekick that always said “Oh, Crumbs”. These two facts alone make this show worthy of being included in this list. Also it was British.

DuckTales – Another cartoon that produced another great movie. I’m not sure how many ways Uncle Scrooge could lose his money or how many times Launchpad McQuack could crash a plane without losing his job, but we always tuned in to find out.

Garfield and Friends – This show was great. I think I actually liked the U.S. Acres part of the show more, mostly because of Roy the rooster. That guy was crazy. Also, Binky the Clown was crazy (and had a voice surprisingly similar to Roy’s). This show generated the greatest birthday song of all time (as sung by Binky “Heeeeeey Caaat!!!!” the Clown):

“Happy birthday, happy birthday, whoop-dee-doo, whoop-dee-doo! May your day be pleasant, open up your present. Just for you! Just for you!

We watched this show religiously on Saturdays growing up, and we still quote it to this day. That’s staying power.

G.I. Joe – Although most of the characters went through months and months of training, none of them could shoot a laser weapon. OK, maybe it’s the lasers that were defective, but either way, there were never casualties in the world of G.I. Joe. That’s the world of 1980s children’s television: every show must have a moral and no one can die (with the notable exception of one Optimus Prime from Transformers). Even with all that, little kids don’t know the difference, and so my brother and I used to pretend we were Duke or Snake-Eyes all the time. I don’t remember pretending we were transforming robots very often (that’s what action figures are for).

Heathcliff – When you hear the name Heathcliff, do you think of a character from Wuthering Heights, a former All-Star pitcher in Major League Baseball, or a cat? I usually think of the cat, and it’s all thanks to his great song. Perhaps it should be added that I never think about the character from Wuthering Heights. Thanks a lot, Heathcliff. I’ll never get that song out of my head.

Inspector Gadget – What kid didn’t love Inspector Gadget? With the voice of Don Adams from Get Smart and powers that RoboCop would envy, Inspector Gadget was the best crime fighter ever. Except for Penny and Brain, of course. I think it’s also a requirement for these shows to have awesome theme songs. Inspector Gadget was no exception.

M.A.S.K. – This show rocked. If you haven’t seen it, you’re really missing out. Of all of these, it’s only second to Transformers, and that might just be because I was actually able to collect some of the Transformers toys when I was young. You see, my brother, our neighbor Tyler, and I were obsessed with this show and we wanted all of the action figures. We each had a favorite character, and each character on the show had his own helmet that gave him super powers. We watched reruns of this show on WGN, and by the time we were really into it the toys had come and gone from the stores. Every morning we searched through the classifieds for people selling these toys, but tragically, my brother and I never found them. Our only consolation is that now we have poor-quality recordings of the show… why, oh why don’t they release this on DVD?

Muppet Babies – A little-known fact about this show is that it actually launched the careers of Howie Mandel and Dave Coulier. Plus it was based on a scene from The Muppets take Manhattan. I do still have one question from when I watched the show originally, however. Where on earth were these childrens’ parents?

Snorks – These amazing creatures had snorkels on their heads, which must have been for breathing. Wait, no, that can’t be right, they were all the way underwater. Odd. I remember a few things about this show, mostly something about an octopus.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – I remember when my friend brought his new favorite toy to show and tell, a Ninja Turtle action figure. Everyone (at least all the boys in the class) were really excited to see this cool toy, but I wondered to myself why it took all of them so long to catch on, and why I hadn’t brought my Turtles into class before. I can still remember my excitement after walking out of the Wal-Mart with my new favorite toys. This show gave us the best arcade game of all time, and two-and-a-half great movies (TMNT was actually pretty good, and I try to forget the third movie because it didn’t have a cool rap from either Vanilla Ice or M.C. Hammer).

ThunderCats – I’ll always remember a trip we took to visit my relatives in Nebraska, but aside from a cool childrens’ museum we went to, the only thing I remember about this trip was that my cousins really liked ThunderCats. Tragically I never was able to watch them much as a kid, but I certainly remember Lion-O and Tygra fighting against the evil whats-their-names.

Transformers – This show is definitely back, thanks to its former popularity among the children of the 1980s. This was the king of 30-minute toy commercials, and if you didn’t have Transformer toys as a kid, you weren’t cool. My grandma used to go to garage sales a lot, and she had a knack for finding lots of these toys discarded by children whose parents didn’t recognize the coolness factor of having every Transformer ever, especially the ones that were part of larger robots made up of four or five Transformers. This was definitely my favorite 80’s cartoon, and I’m even the proud owner of all of the box sets that made up of the original series. That’s right, Hasbro. Your 30-minute toy commercials worked.

Voltron, Defender of the Universe – Although he was always the lesser of the transforming robots in my mind, Voltron was still a great show. In college a bunch of us found some old Voltron tapes and watched them, which made us the coolest people on our dorm floor. The plots are familiar and the endings were cheesy, but isn’t that what the 1980s cartoons were all about?