What obscure cartoons/media from your childhood do you remember?
What obscure cartoons/media from your childhood do you remember?
I remember having quite a few VHS tapes from a company called "Just For Kids", that had some of the neatest shows.
"Sherlock Hound", "Kissyfur", "Foofur", "Seabert", and quite a bit more. My siblings and I loved animals, so this got us interested right away!
I also grew up in a religious household, so Christian videos were standard for us.
Did you know that there was a bible-story-centric anime called "Superbook"? Used to watch it all the time! There was also "McGee and Me", "Secret Adventure", and "Adventures in Odyssey". Used to listen to the "Adventures in Odyssey" radio show all the time!
"The Donut Man" was a Barney-esque Christian show for kids, too.
What obscure things did you watch growing up?
It's technically a Disney Movie, but Brave Little Toaster was a bizarre move we used to watch all the time as kids. Up there with movies like Flight of the Navigator or Short Circuit or Batteries Not Included in terms of rewatchability for us. Tried watching it with my kids a year or two ago and I feel like I don't know how my parents could have let me watch it as a kid. So dark. So weird.
To this day I am still extra cautious with the vacuum cleaner cord because of that scene where the vacuum runs over and vacuums up his cord! That movie had some really intense scenes!
Right?! I remember taking extra care to never lose my blanky because of that movie.
The junkyard car song from that movie has to be one of the most soul crushing, depressing songs ever
https://youtu.be/-UfsEj7AOGI. (Seriously, dont watch if you are very depressed)
Thanks for sharing. I was gonna look it up to refresh my memory. Soul-crushing indeed.
Oh god... so that's where my depression came from!
Being born in the early 90’s in a country neighboring Russia, you could find quite a lot of bootleg or otherwise weird VHS-tapes of Soviet-era cartoons that had made it across the border back after the Iron Curtain collapsed, usually at flea-markets or in bargain-bins.
I remember we used to have quite a few of them, most were just collections of different Russian cartoons from like the 70’s and 80’s. A few I’ve managed to track down, like Nu Pogodi! The rest of them I’ve tried to find with the limited details I remember, but haven’t had any luck.
I don’t know how obscure it is, but I loved watching KaBlam! It was weird animated shorts in a variety of styles. My favorites were the shorts made with stop-motion and action figures.
There was a lot of made in Canada cartoons. Flying Rihno Junior High, 6teen, and Being Ian for example.
Canadian animation is wild, and so much of it is unknown outside of the country.
I remember seeing a short called "La Salla" on Canadian TV when I was a kid. Caused me a bit of childhood trauma lol
Totally. Every once in a while I think about what an interesting legacy creators of those shows leave. A lot of the time they only worked on one show and it stays obscure for those didn't view it when it initially aired and outside of the country. Yet over a decade later people still look back fondly.
What was La Salla about?
Canadian animation was fantastic!
Ryan Larkin was briefly going to be the future of animation, and then he crashed and burned. The handful of shorts he managed to create are INCREDIBLE though.
Jam the Housnail.
I thought for the longest time it was a fever dream. That it didn't exist. I could never find it anything related to the godforsaken thing on any Canadian channels list of cartoons they aired. My family thinks I am joking when I mention how horribly this show plagued my thoughts over this years, but I had been searching for a decade.
Anyway apparently it's from Japan and I probably watched it on Veoh or something, because it's on my anime list now and I finally found out what it was called last year.
My dad would often record shows off TV to VHS for us, and looking back we'd end up with some pretty obscure stuff.
One cartoon that I've tried repeatedly to find again over the years was a kind of anthology of various Grimm's fairy tales. The animation was sort of rotoscoped in places, and I later found out they were Soviet-era cartoons, but the art from some of the stories really stuck in my brain.
In particular there was a story about some kind of ice mountain, and I think two children had to go there for some reason and confront the kind of dour king who lived there. All I really remember is the image of the mountain itself, that was very geometric and sparkling. All I've ever been able to find was one of the short tales from the collection about the Fisherman and the Golden Fish. The imagery in general stuck with me:
Old Soviet cartoons are so absolutely beautiful! I really do hope you are able to find them someday.
There is a video about Soviet animation, if you haven't seen it already!
Ah, nice, I'll definitely check it out. I really enjoyed Hedgehog in the Fog too. The layered animation was amazing, but also the translation into english was really funny sometimes
"A fox has ensconced himself in my house!" Lol
Also, if you're looking for beautiful old animation, there's stuff by Lotte Reiniger that's amazing. She would do these elaborate stop-motion paper cutout animations that were brilliant. My favorite was the Adventures of Prince Achmed. It's all public domain now too, so you can find it on youtube:
Very haunting images, have you tried tracking these cartoons down as an adult?
I have! Every now and again I'll think of it and sit down to try and find the anthology we had. And that's actually where I got the screenshots from. There is a copy of "The Fisherman and the Fish" story on youtube.
Unfortunately I cannot seem to find the one I really want of the ice/glass mountain (the mountain kind of looks like the image above from what I recall). I plan on looking for the VHS at my parents house and getting it digitally scanned it if it's still in ok condition.
We had this VHS we watched as a kid called "How Come?" And I don't even really remember what it was about. But I think it was educational? The only thing I could find about it online was this ebay posting of the VHS: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hMEAAOSwNsVfWTMT/s-l400.jpg
Beakman’s lab. In Chinese
Does anyone remember a show that featured a big record man who clacked wooden spoons together? He was terrifying haha, he would say "NOW HERE'S THE BEAT"... (I think this might be a Canadian show)
Also, anyone remember 3,2,1 Contact on PBS?
I have a nostalgic soft spot for the old Sonic Adventures. He sure loved his chili dogs.
Not sure how obscure it is, but I used to watch Liberty’s Kids on PBS all the time.
There was one made in stop motion called "Bumpy in the night". Just two seasons, but it was fun. I liked it.
Have you rewatched it? It's like a fever dream. Hahaha I loved that show.
My brother and I remember this cartoon we had on VHS from our childhood. Every time we mention Seabert to anybody, they have no idea what we're talking about. It's about a guy and his seal going on adventures, often in the desert...
I used to enjoy this series of VHS tapes in the late 80s called "Terrific Trips" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrhVMYKOhvQ
I swear - there used to be a segment on CBC kids where children would submit short films they had made. The mascot was an electric wall outlet; I have not been able to find anyone else who remembers this but it was definitely real because I have a number of home movies I wanted to submit to it.
Idk how obscure it is, but I was just looking for Zoids Chaotic Century last night and couldn't find it on any streaming service, so I checked Amazon for a DVD copy only to see people want $150+ for used copies of the show... Sucks that it's so hard to find now!
Johnny Bravo, Dexters Lab (the OG), Scooby Doo... Those were the days.
Not sure I’d call those “obscure” though, lol
oh dang i didn't see "obscure". I guess they might be obscure to the younger generation :)
Has anyone here watched Centurions? It was such a cool concept. I'm surprised there hasn't been a remake or something of this.
I used to when I was a kid. I don't remember too much about it.
Big bad beetle borgs! So fun and no one I know watched it!
This show was awesome. I thought it was better than Power Rangers.
We also had a few of the "Just For Kids" VHS tapes growing up and it took me ages to track down info about the company down when I randomly remembered them a year or two ago. I absolutely loved "The Elmchanted Forest" as well as "Sampson and Sally" and "Katy and the Katerpillar Kids."
From what I found Just For Kids had bought the rights to some obscure Eastern European films from the 80's and dubbed them into English before they disappeared themselves which was a disappointment to me given the fond nostalgia I had for their movies. Took me forever to find the films I remembered because of that, but I did eventually.
I remember a few. I'm thinking they could be considered obscure to some degree, but mostly because I live in Europe. But I remember 'Mighty Max,' 'Captain N: The Game Master' and 'The Toxic Crusaders.'
'Toxic Crusaders' has an absolute banger of an intro song. XD
https://youtu.be/mf2_g52p__Y?t=13
The singer goes so hard.
Oh man, Captain N was my jam back in the days.
I named my stuffed bear Kissyfur! Did anyone else watch the Get Along Gang?
I had one of the dolls, the lamb! (One of the get along gangers)
I remember the toy but I have no memory of the cartoon haha
no way, I have never seen the merch!
