The 1990s were a wild time when it came to kids’ TV shows, with many of the most popular entries pushing the boundaries of sense, sensibilities, and indeed what should be shown to children. For anyone who grew up in the 1990s, with these Saturday morning cartoons becoming a part of a routine, these shows potentially seem less wild, but looking back, it’s hard to see how we missed it.
Between a dark and macabre sense of humor that often pervaded these shows, and on occasion even some adult humor or provocative messaging spliced into the stories, these shows can seem like a fever dream. It’s hard to imagine any of them being made today, but in the 1990s, this is apparently what passed for quality kids’ TV.
Key Insights
- Unique Themes: The 1990s kids’ TV shows featured bizarre and surreal themes that are hard to imagine today.
- Dark Humor: Many shows incorporated dark humor and adult themes that were unusual for children’s programming.
- Cultural Impact: These shows have left a lasting impression on those who grew up watching them.
- Creative Freedom: The era allowed for creative storytelling that often defied logic and traditional norms.
10
Cow and Chicken
Starting out gently, at least on the surface level, Cow and Chicken is a series that follows a cynical and highly critical chicken and a dim-witted cow, both of whom are introduced as siblings, and the children of an adult human couple who never have their faces appear on-screen.
There wasn’t really a point to the show, but it served as an exploration of the surreal and bizarre lives of the titular cow and chicken, as they often faced off against the nameless antagonist, The Red Guy. This character was obsessed with not wearing pants, and they were established to be some sort of devilish demon who antagonized the main characters.
How this gets past the pitching stage is a complete mystery, but somehow, in the 1990s, it was produced and released as kids content. Baffling.
9
Street Sharks
Next up is the rather more tame (by comparison) Street Sharks. Street Sharks essentially feels like a rip-off of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and not a subtle one either. Four brothers wind up with hybrid human-aquatic life DNA, and they find that they possess abilities that surpass ordinary humans.
They have a rival, Dr. Paradigm, who seeks to exterminate them, and in response, they, along with their mutant father who was transformed before them, fight back while also protecting the city and saving people. However, this is arguably a weaker concept, with the characters becoming sharks who survive out of water and become crime fighters.
Sure, neither concept is rational, but it feels like a cheap attempt to recreate something else that gained popularity, and the execution only served to highlight how outrageous the whole story really is. Especially considering their rival, Dr. Paradigm, turns themselves into a Piranha hybrid, despite transforming these brothers to get rid of them, thus becoming an inhuman mutant himself.
8
Mighty Ducks
Continuing on with the trend of superheroic crime-fighting anthropomorphic animals, Mighty Ducks took a grounded live-action movie trilogy and turned it into a wild sci-fi adventure series that barely resembled the material that gave it its name. The duck-like humanoids who star in this series actually hail from another planet, Puckworld, where hockey is an essential part of life.
Traveling to Earth, the ducks put these incredible sports skills to use in efforts to defeat and overthrow an evil reptilian warlord, and they call themselves “The Mighty Ducks.”
For anyone who watched the movies, this show is sure to be an absolutely insane reimagining of the source material, but even without the context of the original films, the show remains a wild ride that just seems to smash together different elements to create something that possesses no real logic or reasoning.
