Halloweekend ‘93 pt. 1

Wooo! Its October, baby!

Now here’s a diamond in the VHS rough. I dug out an old tape of Saturday Morning Cartoons (you know, back when that actually meant something). But not just any old tape of SMCs. This was one of the annual, pre-Halloween Saturdays, where you got a whole morning full of animated goodness shoving the Halloween spirit down your gullet. And I loved them for it. The only other holiday to get a regular special is/was Christmas.

Anyway, FOX Kids used to be one of the 800 lb. Gorillas of Saturday Morning programming for a couple years. It had a loaded line up of X-Men, Spider-Man, Eek! The Cat, Taz-Mania (and later The Tick and Carmen Sandiego) and others. It also had some shows that made me want to throw a shoe through the TV screen, but that’s beside the point (and they're probably on the tape) In 1993, the FOX Kids line up was running at full steam and life was good.

Well, the tape doesn’t start with FOX Kids. It starts on a different channel to catch most of an episode of Transformers. OK, Transformers: Generation 2, which was basically the same exact Transformers episodes, only with goofy CG transitions between scenes and a new credit sequence. Anyway, the episode du jur features a couple Autobots and Decepticons getting stuck in Medieval Times, where Starscream almost conquers Europe with Ramjet, Rumble & Ravage while Spike, Hoist & Warpath don’t really do much to help until a wizard kickstarts their metallic hearts with electricity. Warpath was almost a cool Autobot in my eyes. After all, he was a tank and had a weapons system that made some sense, but his penchant for onomatopoeia made him sound like a dork. And Hoist was just a tool with a gun for a right hand. Why? Doesn’t matter, he’s playing second banana to Warpath in this episode anyway. And despite Starscream actually being a serious threat in this episode, his whining and bitching reaches new heights when victory is snatched away from him. I’m serious, he gets beaten about five minutes before the end of the episode, and everything that comes out of his mouth from that point on is whining. Starscream’s a dick.

I'm not even going to start ranting about just how horribly flawed the episode is from a historical perspective, but that's like saying "dolphins can't snap their fingers." Yes, you could go into the "whys" of it, but its not worth the time. More to follow shortly.