Thank you, Gatehouse News Service Guy! Thank you for sharing your condescending thoughts on an art form you clearly have not bothered to learn anything new about since you were scarfing Frosted Flakes in front of "Maia the Bee".So anyway, as of right now, both "Worst Cartoon" polls have been tallied and winners have been chosen. "Worst Cartoons Ever" has picked "Rubik the Amazing Cube". "Rubik" is notorious online because it is the best artifact of a time period in the late-70's/early-80's when you could make a cartoon about anything. It looked like this:
Meanwhile, the unfortunately-named Topless Robot blog's winner for worst cartoon episode ever is a particularly angsty episode of "The Littles": Now, really, I shouldn't worry too much about these choices because they're each all part of a silly contest and it was all really just a few people's opinions right? Yet, it sticks in my craw because, honestly, get past the nature of the title character and "Rubik" isn't all that different from every damn "The Adventures Of Some Kids and their Pet Walking Talking Deus ex Machina" cartoon of the era. And the worst I can say about "the Littles" ("Here Come the Littles"is available on DVD so I just added it to the top of my Netflix queue to check and see if my nostalgia filter is strong with this film) is that the first ten seconds of the main titles are what the Uncanny Valley looks like.
Anyway, being an animation fan means that I have seen worse. Far, far worse. (And hell, those are just from within my lifetime.) Just off the top of my head: The 60's Looney Tunes, like this not-Chuck-Jones-involving Wile E. Coyote short. Any and all of the various "This is where 'The Simpsons' ended for me" episodes. (For the record, mine is "Lisa the Skeptic". Great idea for "The X-Files" but damned bizarre for "The Simpsons".) The various prime-time series that sprang up in the wake of "The Simpsons", of which "Capitol Critters" is probably the most astonishing. A whooooole lot of series from Hannah-Barbera (how many times can you recycle the basic idea behind "Scooby Doo" anyway?), Filmation, and Ruby-Spears. More than a few cartoons based upon real people, such as "Pro Stars". "Fraidy Cat", "Caillou", "Dino Squad", "Father of the Pride", "The Mighty Ducks", "Free Willy", "Mega Babies", "Loonatics". All the DTV rip-offs of other movies. And a lot that I have nicely repressed. The only real problem is trying to decide what the biggest waste of celluloid I've ever seen is. Let us wash off the nerd rage and awful cartoons with this little slice of happy: 