Ronald Reagan, Boy George, the ascendancy of Michael Jackson...let's face it. The ‘80s were really, really weird. And nowhere was it weirder than in children's entertainment. Don't believe us? Check out these six episodes from the golden age of half-hour long toy commercials.
Source: Sunbow Productions
By Dan Seitz
6. The Bionic Six Were Meta Before Meta Was Cool
You probably don't remember the Bionic Six, but that's okay. It was the ‘80s, and there were hundreds of cartoons to sell action figures. The only reason we're dredging it out is the truly bizarre series finale.
The basic plot is the Bionic Six and their villainous counterparts get sucked into a cartoon dimension, chasing after an old-time animator who decided to pull a Cartman and went home...to an alternate dimension. The entire episode is an out-of-nowhere Looney Tunes tribute, chock full of the kind of pop culture gags you expect to see on Animaniacs or something that isn‘t pushing plastic held together with rubber bands. The punchline, though, is the final scene, where the show flirts with hipster irony:
It's like they knew metahumor would become the trendy thing, twenty years later. But there's no way they could know that! It's not like they had time machines in the ‘80s! Right?
5. Reefer Madness Starring The Autobots
Being mechanical devices, the Autobots can't do drugs. After all, getting high is an organic chemical reaction, and there's nothing organic about the Transformers. No lungs to inhale weed, no nostrils to do coke, no stomach to digest ‘shr -- oh, wait, no, they did do ‘shrooms:
In "The Return of Optimus Prime," we meet a crazed professor and his daughter. We know he's crazed because, in a galaxy where robots are everywhere and do borderline suicidal things all the time, he decides to test to see if his new spaceship can survive a supernova by taking it for a test drive into one, and bringing his daughter. After dear old dad learns the Autobots are helping his daughter walk again with the help of motorized tighty-whities, he decides enough is enough and unleashes some spores he found that make "any sentient being" violent. Even robots. See for yourself:
By the way, this was written by Marv Wolfman. He created Blade. Further proof every artist has his off days.
Among the things Wolfman doesn't explain: how these spores could "infect' robots, why they make the Autobots blow the crap out of everything, and just where the writing staff were getting what was obviously some primo cheeb.
4. The Smurfs Go Romero On Your Ass
Source: NBC
We won't belabor just how weird the Smurfs actually were. Little blue shirtless men with tails living in mushrooms together should seem pretty strange to you, unless you live in San Francisco.
We also all know the plot of zombie movies. One bites a human, who bites another, etc., until our heroes are besieged in a small locale that can easily be faked on a sound stage, looking for a way out.
That's also the plot description of "The Purple Smurfs." One Smurf is bitten by a fly, turns purple, and suddenly is only able to hop around, saying "GNAP!" and biting other Smurfs on the ass.
From that one zombie Smurf, of course, a horde of zombie Smurfs are born. No, we're not kidding. Purple Smurfs eventually overrun the village, infecting everyone but Papa Smurf, who they corner in his house, when another purple Smurf waits, ready to bite Papa Smurf's tail and leave the Smurf village a desolate, lifeless place, echoing with the sounds of "GNAP!!!"
Sadly, they go for a deus ex machina and the happy ending with a pretty butterfly instead of the awesome next episode they should have done, "Gargamel Under Siege." Gargamel could kill his beloved pet, and then blow himself up to save the Snorks or something. You were so close to an Emmy, Smurfs. So...close.
