So I though it'd be fun to grab stuff I liked as a kid and look at the revived version(s) thanks to the magic of Youtube. Of course, I encourage ya'll to join in as well since I'm sure I missed some.First of all, I'm leaving Transformers out of this because, let's face it, that particular franchise has never left, at the very least sticking around with a pathetic withered stab in the toy market (Transformers.....that don't transform?) I'm fousing more on stuff that was big, died off, and came back from nowhere.
What got me thinking about this was my contemplating whether or not I should rent that new Speed Racer movie (I decided not to, for now anyway) but somewhere in my mind I had this funny feeling that I saw a different Speed Racer series as a little kid in the 90's, as opposed to seeing the reruns of the old show in the 80's. I thought maybe I was crazy, but lo and behold, Youtube comes through.
....huh, I guess that's why I forgot about it. <.< However, what I didn't know anything about was the remake of the original series that was apparently on Nick in the early 2000's. o_O
Neither of these had much success (clearly....) but eh, now I know I wasn't insane and made it all up as a youngin'.
G.I. Joe was neat too, because while the line itself never went away, the smaller action figures versions did kind of wane, and the various cartoons they tried to bring it back up again are also rather odd. First of all, I vaguely remembered the show having a different theme song at one time or another, but wasn't quite clear....sure enough, I found it.
That said, I also remember the newer show they tried to pass off, which was essentially GI Joe and all it's badly animated 80's cartoonishness meets......uh, well, badly animated 90's cartoons.
Never saw more then a few episodes of this, and clearly, neither did anyone else since the thing didn't last very long at all, until they opted to just keep re-running the 80's show. They did a couple of CG "movies" that came packed in with toys, but eh. Also, while I don't watch it and am basically indifferent to it, I have to say...
There's something kinda.....weird about G. I. Joe as an anime. As in, storyboarded and animated by the production company Gonzo (Full Metal Panic, Samurai Seven).
Anyway, there was also that ill-fated He-Man revival of the early 2000's - but before that, there was also the series about He-Man....IN SPAAAAAAAACE!!!!!
...okay okay it's the future, not space, but meh, close enough. I vaguely remember seeing this show as a kid and I remember just wondering WTF was going (albeit with less cursing). Other then He-Man (Now with pants!) and Skeletor (Now with eyeballs!) it seemed like pretty much a totally different show. Admittedly, the originalshow itself has aged pretty badly, worse then even Transformers and Voltron, but this was pretty much a new low. Still, I have to give credit to that newer series from earlier this decade for having kind of a sense of humor about everything, though ti ultimately failed because while it had its heart in the right place in remaking the show into something somewhat more believable, it totally missed the mark that Armada grasped - the all important audience of kids who buy the toys.
Still, it probably deserved to get an ending.
Anyway, the last thing I have is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a pretty good example of an evergreen franchise. While the 2003 revival wasn't nearly as huge as the origial crazed fad was, it was still pretty successful and actually pretty well written. To be perfectly fair, it's a better show in terms of actually being, ya know, good then the old school show that runs purely on nostalgia and its tounge-in-cheek 4th wall shattering sense of self. I actually find that it can actually get a little too complicated for the target audience, but then again, maybe it's a decent show because it doesn't treat the kids as a bunch of morons. I didn't like the new intro at first, but it grew on me, especially the revised versions. Still, as far as the old show goes, there was that weird revised opening that is....well, not great and not nearly as catchy as the more well known song, but.....it's not so bad now that I hear it again.
....yeah, I lied, that sucked and is probably partof the reason I tend not to remember anything beyond the first 8 seasons of the old show. Suddenly that newer opening does sound better.
What I liked is how it revises itself depending on what happens in the show. After the fall of the Shredder in the 3rd season, they changed it up for the 4th season by changing a couple lines.
C'mon the "We Shreded Shredder!" line is funny. Still as the 4th season went on, a couple lines and animation had to be changed again when certain events took place that invalidated them...
Whil a lack of a greater budget unfortuantely did not allow this to the 5th "Lost season," this small amount of thought into a little detail in the intro is actually pretty neat to me, and it shows that the show's producers (that is, the people who actually work on the show and not just back it) actually cared about what they were making, something pretty hard to find nowadays in.....well, anything. Still, everythign has a stumbling block:
...yeah, not much of a fan there. Still, as I said earlier, the show itself has lasted pretty long and been well recieved, so well that it's the longest running animated series of the decade at over 150 episodes - in fact, it's still going on right now:
So yeah. How 'bout you guys - what properties that you held near and dear to your heart have been revived nowadays?
