Popular Nostalgia

Count Duckula was another cartoon that I grew up watching in the late 1980s and early 1990s – enjoy the episode above – I hadn’t remembered the intro was quite so long!
This was one of my favourites, probably because it was pretty dark and macabre.
Count Duckula was made for four series and there are 65 [...]

Reboot was a Saturday morning cartoon in the mid-nineties, when the internet was still very new. It was based on internet features and was drawn in futuristic block-style 3D. The series used loads of words from computing to name the characters. The humanoid characters were “sprites” living in “Mainframe”. They faced a threat from the [...]

Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? was a Saturday morning cartoon series that was shown in the early nineties. It featured the adventures of Zack and Ivy, two teenage siblings who worked as ACME agents and, aided by the Chief, had to stop Carmen and her gang from stealing artifacts.
Most children of the nineties remember [...]

The 90’s cartoon series was shown on Saturday morning TV and was very similar to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. It included lots of movie in-jokes and B-movie skits.
The evil Dr Putrid T. Gangreen has created an army of mutant killer tomatoes to help him take over the world. During the mutation process he throws out [...]

A group of adventurers go on a quest to collect the Thirteen Treasures of Rule, which possess the power to stop  “Dark Water” from consuming the alien world of Mer. The Darkwater is like a sticky oil with a mind of its own – attacking good things and choking them.
Because of problems in production, there [...]

The Yogi Bear cartoons were on in the early 90’s and whilst I remember them, I don’t remember much. Yogi, and his best friend Boo Boo, lived in Jellystone National Park stealing “pic-a-nic baskets” off holiday makers.
The original cartoons were around in the 1950’s and every decade thereafter. Park Ranger Smith would occassionally arrive to [...]

Mighty Max was an off-shoot of the Polly Pocket toy line and was aimed at boys. The plastic playsets are now worth a fortune to collectors as some of the pieces are so rare. The “Doom Heads” amongst other toys, sparked a trend for including a playset inside the head of a character.
An animated TV [...]

Snow White was the first full length animated feature to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history. If you’re in any doubt about how a woman should behave, check out the Disney 1930’s idea of female etiquette. It’s brilliant. Move like a ballerina and clean as though [...]

The CBS executives hated this feature when they saw it because it had readings from the Bible, jazz and children’s voices, but it was a hit. Linus recites a reading from the Gospel of Luke (whilst carrying his blanket) under a spotlight and we all know what we forgot over the last two weeks:
Charlie Brown: [...]

I remember Potsworth & Co. with fondness from my childhood, but a look back at the video shows that, compared to today’s cartoons, it was a pretty budget affair, which relied on good storylines.
In the USA, it was called Midnight Patrol: Adventures in the Dream Zone – what a mouthful! Potsworth & Co. is a [...]

In the 1930’s, David Low drew Colonel Blimp cartoons for the Evening Standard. The Topical Budget, a weekly comic commentary ran for almost six years, from April 21st, 1934 to March 16th, 1940. One morning, Low read a Colonel’s letter to the newspapers, protesting the mechanisation of the cavalry and insisting they must wear spurs [...]

I can’t believe we haven’t had The Raccoons featured in this Popular Nostalgia website, I mean it was Saturday morning gold when I were a wee laddie.
BBC One mornings, before your mums and dads got out of bed were made all the more enjoyable/tolerable by The Raccons while we waited for Going Live to come [...]

Let’s croak some toads!
Captain Bucky O’Hare was the early 90’s cartoon character who graced our screens with an intergalactic battle against space toads. Remember the psychic cat “Jenny” who could read minds through the purple jewel on her head or the mad eye duck who could shoot with four arms at a time.
For those of [...]

Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil battle it out with Angelica in the sandpit. My abiding memory of Rugrats is that everyone used to know how to play the theme tune on the piano. Angelica also got on my nerves. The babies talked in silly toddler speak with lots of missing teeth and spittal – getting [...]

The cartoon series that most of us will remember ran from 1983 until 1990 and was a US production. The popular 80’s cartoon “Alvin and the Chipmunks” – featured the Chipmunks as a band with Alvin as the popular, good-looking one, Simon as the intellectual and Theodore as the cute baby-faced brother. Dave was their [...]