Added: 995 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Nerdcore | 21 Comments

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<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/17638/21-Awesome-Kids-TV-Shows/'>21 Awesome Kids' TV Shows</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

These are all driven by nostalgia, by a compulsive lurch towards more seemingly innocent and carefree days. If I watched them now I'd probably be driven insane by their nonsensical drivel and stupid dubbed voices, but it's worth a shot. If only to have a drugged-out experience without ingesting any dangerous chemicals.

Because all great kids shows must somehow be slightly creepy and disturbing when seen as an adult, must possess an underlying sense of unease. A permeating, stifled horror must abound - an intangible otherness. It's because they sneak into your developing infantile mind and linger there like a half-remembered dream, like a restless ghost, until you watch a clip and a torrent of forgotten memories comes crashing down upon you like some badly stacked alphabet blocks. With that in mind, let's peel away the layers of memory and regress...

Mr Benn
Off he went into the changing rooms. What in God's name was he going to turn into next? A caveman, a police man, now he's a gladiator, a clown, a leather-bound gimp? Wat? Noooo, that last one was from the adult version.

Fraggle Rock
Jim Henson, and an Uncle Travelling Matt who'd pop up on a whim outside Buckingham Palace giving some jip to the Queen's Guard. Not sure it gets any better than that. If it does then let me know. It also had one of the funkiest intros ever.

Sesame Street
The characters ranged from the awesome to the annoying; from a boggle-eyed, abyss-mouthed, cookie-devouring fiend; a moody sh#t who lives in a garbage can; a mathematically obsessed vampire to Elmo. Elmo, the Muppet equivalent of a whimpering, whiny lame dog that needs to be shot. The shows also features endless celebrities making cameos. Ranging from the sublime like Johnny Cash to the awesome, like Stevie Wonder playing Superstition. Marvellous stuff. It was, and is, an incredible feat of programming, and according to the First lady, appearing on it is one of the best things you can do.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
Prince Adam and Cringer were a slight on the whole Masters of the Universe, erm, universe. But by Orko's floating ballbags once he'd raised that sword to Castle Grayskull; he had a tan, he looked slightly more homoerotic (if that's possible), which can only mean he was a badass, Skeletor-shitting, barbarian muthaf#cker, muthaf#cker!!! He. HAS. THE POWERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! F#ck the new adventures. F#ck 'em. Awesome intro as well.

ThunderCats
Lion-O was a douche-bagger who licked his own misshapen ugly cat-butt for dinner, and got a thrill out of it. But the rest were cool, oh, apart from Snarf. I hope he gets impaled on the eye of Thundera and has to survive in the wild with his wound somehow turning into a cancerous growth that contracts AIDS and leprosy, while he begs for death for all eternity! It was also about the villain with this one. Mumm-Ra and his awesome Ancient Spirits of Evil incantation. One minute he looks like my granddad covered in sawdust, seconds before he gets a bed bath. The next he's an everliving conjurer of badassness sent down from planet MuthaF#ck.

The Magic Roundabout
These were repeats when I got round to watching them, but still, that haunting opening carousel music will forever be embedded in my mind. La, la-la-la...And Dylan the rabbit, and the eternal myth that they all represented different drugs. It was created by a French advertising executive, so that's a lie. What, Brian's smack is he? I suppose Dougal was your mum being gang-raped by an army of Hell's Angels after a 5-month ketamine binge? Somehow, I don't think so.

The Banana Splits
Like a 70s psychedelic hounds of lovefest. Watching it now it looks the Marx Brothers dressed up in costumes to film some manic furry pr0n while looking up The Monkees' asses through a kaleidoscope.

Knightmare
At the time a virtual reality, sidestep-to-the-left, sidestep-to-the-right, epic adventure. A role-playing game writ large, there were dungeons, chests of treasure, weapons to find. But it also seemed like one of the most difficult games to make any progress in. Did anyone ever complete it? Or get past the first few rooms? No matter, the host with his beard and commanding voice is a role model to us all. And the death scene where kids would fall to their doom into the pixelated abyss below while the skull came looming towards the viewer, that was real. Parents lost children.

The Muppet Show
Jim Henson, featured three times for being such a hairy-puppet creating legend. He was probably a degenerate furry who was three-timing Miss Piggy with Gonzo and Fozzy bear, but let's not sour his name. Here's Gonzo with John Cleese.

G-Force: Guardians of Space (Or Battle of the Planets)
Western children's introduction to the thrills of Japanese anime, but without the weirdness, sexual undertones, school girl knickers and tentacle pr0n. Fast paced, they were like 5 Batmans flying about, with one of them being a little bit on the podgy side. You've got to have a little comic light-relief though and who better than a fat kid. LOL.

Transformers
They were robots in disguise.

Willow The Wisp
Like the tripped out imaginings of a Dali dream sequence seen through the eyes of a paranoid, booze-addled thespian. Tragically they've made a new series minus the voice of Kenneth Williams. This proves God is about as real as Big Bird's dick, because he would never let something like that happen.

Dungeons & Dragons
Who didn't fancy Sheila, the Thief? She was only supposed to be 13, but I was even younger at the time, so she's the pedo. Plus it had a baby unicorn and another great bad guy in Venger, and who could forget the Lynchian Dungeon Master, with eyes that were as warm and inviting as the Caribbean Sea.

M.A.S.K.
Or Mobile Armored Strike Command who'd battle heroically with V.E.N.O.M. (Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem). This is how you merchandise toys. I'd watch this show and then throw myself onto the floor, wailing while demanding that I get every toy available this instance while ripping the hair from my reddened scalp. My girlfriend won't put up with it any more.

Hart Beat/Take Heart
Awesome art shows for kids: Tony Hart. Morph. The gallery. Blessed be those names. I used to know a guy that looked just like Morph's buddy Chas. He had jaundice.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Where would the world be without this cartoon, the original one? Without some heroes in a half shell, and that would be deeply tragic. I don't know if anyone every read the more adult comics by Mirage Studios but they were awesome too. Honest. They'd have lots of crazy artists and loads of freaky stuff would happen. So, cowabunga, and extra anchovies on that pizza doooooood!

The Flumps
What were they? Who knows, they looked like clumps of dried reanimated sh#t in woolly hats. I used to love them though, just don't put them near your mouth.

Dogtanian
On for all, and all for one. This taught me about French history. Basically they're all dogs.

Bagpuss
Emily, that saggy old cloth cat and his little mice mates. Hearing the intro for this one is like being swept away on a wave of longing, fondness, and wistful reminiscence. It somehow managed to be terribly sad while also being delightfully magical. Its creator Oliver Postgate, also responsible for Ivor the Engine and Clangers amongst others, died last December, which makes it even more poignant. Boohoo, I'm off to weep for humanity...

The Mysterious Cities of Gold
This series seemed to go on forever, and I don't remember how it ended. Did they ever find those mysterious cities of gold? What was going on with that flying eagle contraption? What was the physics behind that? All these questions. We're all children of the sun though, so be brave! I like to think it's still going on, they're still out there somewhere, searching...

The Moomins
Freaky Finnish madness adapted from Tove Jansson's comic strip. Watching an episode was like witnessing a ghost ship commanded by albino hippos crash through your living room wall who kidnapped you into a twilight world of haunted stop-motion. That's the one I remember, the stop-motion one, but I know a cartoon was made in the 90s as well. The stop-motion one was creepy, fey, bemusing, eccentric and bizarre. Everything a kid's show needs.

Added: 995 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Nerdcore | 21 Comments

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