More Cartoons That Actually Existed

The YouTube user known as the New Toon Tracker seems to have collected every intro to every cartoon series ever. He’s given us an opportunity to be reminded of shows that all have one thing in common, whether we watched them, heard of them, or never heard of them at all: they’re cartoons that you can’t quite believe were real and not Robert Smigel SNL parodies.

Thanks to him I found the intro for a cartoon I actually watched as a little kid, called “Pandamonium.” Maybe “thanks” isn’t the right word. It was about a… well, I don’t actually need to summarize it for you because the narration does it all and then some. ’80s cartoons had a lot of expository narration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qw2fbIvASo

The only line I remember from the show was the American Boy telling the evil Mondragor: “I don’t bow down to anybody!” and his sister saying “Especially while I’m around!” Teaching little boys everywhere that they should bow down to their sisters, I guess. I don’t remember if they ever did find all the pieces for the Pyramid of Power, but I’m guessing the series was canceled before that could happen (just as the Fonz and the Happy Days Gang never did get back to 1957 Milwaukee).

And here’s one I never watched or even heard of before, a Ruby-Spears cartoon called “Goldie Gold and Action Jack,” about a wealthy jet-setting heiress traveling the world with a hunky reporter and fighting evil. It sounds kind of interesting when you put it like that, and the late Steve Gerber was one of the writers (he was creating a bunch of shows for R-S around this time), but the intro has way too much narration, again. Did we kids really sit still for this much talking every week? And did Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom lift the mineshaft chase from this intro?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00XvdAfP2jQ