The Worst Shows You Used to Watch When You Were a Kid - I.E. Childhood shows that make you cringe in retrospect.

[Wraith]

Transformers (rewatched it. Beginning episodes are great toy commercials, then it's insane.)
Diff'rent Strokes - Got a chance to watch the entire thing, every single episode. I get the first couple seasons consider its time period, but hot damn is this hot garbage.
Mr. Belvidere - Shut up.
Sledge Hammer - Second season is utter tripe.
Family Ties

 

[Jerri's Kid]

Hey Dude was pretty corny, but it was usually wedged next to good shows like Salute Your Shorts and Clarissa Explains It All so I'd watch it anyway.

Out of This World was another bad show I watched about a girl with an alien dad who gave her powers such as the ability to stop time.

Small Wonder should get a mention, but it was mostly on in the background so I didn't follow it much.

Woops! was a bad but really weird show about a small group of people surviving a nuclear holocaust. I think it was on for only one season so I barely remember it.

I liked a lot of Fox shows like Married with Children, X-Files and The Simpsons, but they had several stinkers such as Babes, which I'd occasionally view for the trainwreck factor and Top of the Heap, which was an unfunny spinoff from Married with Children featuring Matt LeBlanc before he was on Friends.

 

[Mysterious Girlfriend X]

Adventures of the Little Koala and Noozles.

I hated these shows. Hated hated hated them! But I still watched them because I was a dumb kid.

 

[Chad Holdenford]

Necroing this thread because I remembered some shit jewels from my childhood.

I don't even remember the name of the first one. Star Road? Star Garden? I know it begins with Star.
Basically, it's thirteen kid-like creatures, each representing a sign of the Zodiac, living in what seems to be a star-shaped planetoid. They're all fairly one-dimensional and I only remember some of them: Aries is the chill, laidback guy, Taurus is a prick whose every other phrase is "Caramba la bamba", Gemini are a couple of twins who are always fighting with each other, Leo is the archetypal leader, Virgo is a vapid bitch and Scorpio is a pushy jerk. Some green, blobby and incredibly stupid creatures serve as the villains of the show, and they were by far the most entertaining part. I don't even remember their motivations to go after their protagonists, though.
Oh, and they're fucking obsessed with each other's birthday parties. Every other episode has them having trouble or at least mentioning the birthday party of one of the Zodiac kids, getting ruined or being delayed for one reason or another, usually due to the blobby idiots I mentioned.

There's also one about a bunch of clown kids doing typical goody-two-shoes stuff around their neighbourhood or just getting into hijinx, with tremendously hamfisted lessons in between. What stuck in my craw, even in my very naïve formative years, were the musical numbers. Cringy as fuck.

Yuy guys remember Punky Brewster? Yeah, I watched that one cartoon where some annoying magical creature started living with her, and getting her and her friends into trouble with its powers. Except this one I kinda liked.

There was also the Free Willy cartoon, where the main kid travels around the world with his sweet ol' dad, some other scientist companions, and of course Willy himself, since he's the kid's best friend and confident. I don't remember if in the movie he could talk to animals a la Elisa Thornberry, but in this one he does. And yeah, it has a very strong and very forced pro-environment theme going.

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

Necroing this thread because I remembered some shit jewels from my childhood.

I don't even remember the name of the first one. Star Road? Star Garden? I know it begins with Star.
Basically, it's thirteen kid-like creatures, each representing a sign of the Zodiac, living in what seems to be a star-shaped planetoid. They're all fairly one-dimensional and I only remember some of them: Aries is the chill, laidback guy, Taurus is a prick whose every other phrase is "Caramba la bamba", Gemini are a couple of twins who are always fighting with each other, Leo is the archetypal leader, Virgo is a vapid bitch and Scorpio is a pushy jerk. Some green, blobby and incredibly stupid creatures serve as the villains of the show, and they were by far the most entertaining part. I don't even remember their motivations to go after their protagonists, though.
Oh, and they're fucking obsessed with each other's birthday parties. Every other episode has them having trouble or at least mentioning the birthday party of one of the Zodiac kids, getting ruined or being delayed for one reason or another, usually due to the blobby idiots I mentioned.

There's also one about a bunch of clown kids doing typical goody-two-shoes stuff around their neighbourhood or just getting into hijinx, with tremendously hamfisted lessons in between. What stuck in my craw, even in my very naïve formative years, were the musical numbers. Cringy as fuck.

Yuy guys remember Punky Brewster? Yeah, I watched that one cartoon where some annoying magical creature started living with her, and getting her and her friends into trouble with its powers. Except this one I kinda liked.

There was also the Free Willy cartoon, where the main kid travels around the world with his sweet ol' dad, some other scientist companions, and of course Willy himself, since he's the kid's best friend and confident. I don't remember if in the movie he could talk to animals a la Elisa Thornberry, but in this one he does. And yeah, it has a very strong and very forced pro-environment theme going.

Most of them are from before my time but all those 70s and 80s cartoons made just to sell toys are both awesome and horrible at the same time

I always dig into those ones that got a 13 episode order and never even finished the run.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I don't even remember the name of the first one. Star Road? Star Garden? I know it begins with Star.

"Star Street", one of the many unique titles from Euroland that Just For Kids put out back in the day.

 

[MysticMisty]

There was also the Free Willy cartoon, where the main kid travels around the world with his sweet ol' dad, some other scientist companions, and of course Willy himself, since he's the kid's best friend and confident. I don't remember if in the movie he could talk to animals a la Elisa Thornberry, but in this one he does. And yeah, it has a very strong and very forced pro-environment theme going.

I forgot this existed. No, the whale in the movie doesn't talk at all. I'm guessing a decision was made that what they wanted to do would be much easier if the animals could talk to the main character. It was not on the air for long so it must've been a massive flop (lol).

The environmental angle was not a surprise giving the plot of the movie, though.

 

[TheRetardKing]

Toodlers & Tiaras.

You know, that reality show on TLC about crappy parents dressing their kids up like whores in beauty pageants?

Spoiler: HOW NOT TO RAISE YOUR KIDS

Caillou has better education values than this. And I hate Caillou.

I used to like this crap when a kid. Thinking about it makes me depressed.

 

[Anachronistic]

Kid Vs Kat. Picture Invader Zim but with all the creepy-awesome elements ripped out of it and replaced with Spongebob humor.

Essentially, an alien cat is adopted by a family and every member of the family is an annoying fool. Especially the daughter who adopted the alien cat. She's your typical "spoiled and bratty, gets away with everything" type of character. They live next to an old lady who is a bitch to literally everyone except said daughter, she was definitely a Karen when she was younger. The dad is a complete doormat who refuses to believe his son that the family pet does evil shit even while said family pet is doing evil shit in the same room as him.

The main character is the son who is essentially Dib but way, way more bland. He tries to stop the cat at every opportunity but regularly screws himself over in the process. They tried to make him the "straight man in a wacky world" type but the problem is that the world is portrayed to be intelligent like us yet still be as stupid as Springfield. It's not like Invader Zim where everyone is stupid and show embraces that stupidity. It makes it look like the whole world of KvK is filled with completely retarded morons rather than braindead morons like Zim.

The cat himself is probably the most interesting thing out of this show. I remember a shit ton of "OC's" of the kat design on Deviantart way back when.

I think what annoys me the most is how the second season seemed like it was building up to a big cat invasion arc where the other alien cats would invade Earth at some point. They tease you with it by having a few episodes being about the cat army trying and failing to get to Earth over and over again. The final episode just has the main characters escape but not fully defeat the army and things literally go back to normal afterwards. They even wipe the memories of some of the characters who learned Kat's identity for good measure.

It pisses me off because I specifically remember the creator stating he didn't want to make a "cat invasion arc" because it would make the old episodes of the boy and Kat fighting feel stale. Yet as Gravity Falls proved, you can have a climactic final arc with the old episodes still as entertaining as ever.

 

[Trashfire Garbagefuck]

Malcolm in the Middle. It started out really good but some point it really dropped off in quality and was exhausting to watch for even five minutes, but I still watched it. It was always kinda pessimistic but it got to a point where it was just constant misery humiliation and unfairness. That's not comedy, that's drudgery. I think at some point there was some teenage girl they added to the cast that drained the energy and humor from every episode she was in. That didn't help things.

Catdog. They advertised this shit for a straight year before premiering it and then showed it constantly. You could tell they spent a long time developing this yet it was just sort of boring. The main characters are like Ren and Stimpy or Squidward and Spongebob except really fucking dull. It felt like it belonged in the era but it was overshadowed by everything else in it. The backgrounds are neat, the mouse and the rabbit are actually funny, and that's about all I can say about it.

Ronin Warriors. It's just a ripoff of Saint Seiya with samurai armor but I loved that shit when it was on Toonami. I barely remember it now.

Nearly every sitcom I ever sat through.

 

[Spunt]

I seem to be the only person alive who remembers The Bots Master. It was totally kickin' rad dude, in a bodacious and tubular 90's sort of way.

 

[round robin]

Code Lyoko.

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

They redubbed a card anime to be a piss take on Yugioh called "Duel Masters". It got old quick but on Saturday night I'd be recovering from a 80 hour factory work week and would zone out on the barcalounger and do the whole Cartoon network night if I was heading out for the sports bar later

 

[JonIrenicus]

The Moomins cartoon from the 80s/90s. Loved it for its surrealness but coming back to it as an adult it's far too weird, scary and depressing for a kids show. A lot of the episodes involved the characters getting lost or going off to sea and meeting some lovecraftian nightmare. Some people love the moomins so I'm likely a minority

On the inverse, the 60s Gerry Anderson puppet show CAPTAIN SCARLET freaked me the fuck out as a kid but i love it now. There's a constant feeling of dread that the Mysterons are always on the verge of winning, and this is despite Scarlet being indestructible. The opening titles has Scarlet gunning down a man in a dark alleyway.

I can agree with everyone else that the Cramp Twins was awful. Two unlikeable 'protagonists', one a whiny tattletale crybaby and the other who needed a fucking smack. The theme song is still burned into my memory.

Yes angela anaconda is terrible on the art style alone. Reminds me of when manny visits the living world in Grim Fandango, but revisiting it some of the plots were fairly entertaining.

 

[DiceindaMirror]

I'd watch the U.S. Xuxa series before school. It's like Stanley Spadowski's Funhouse from UHF if Stanley was a hot Brazilian MILF.

 

[neverendingmidi]

I remember being very hostile to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers when it came out because my area cancelled Reboot when it came out. I liked that show, terrible early 90's 3D and all.

I bet The Pirates of Blackwater is absolutely terrible if watched now, but I loved when it came out as it did have a running plotline.

 

[Chad Holdenford]

I'd watch the U.S. Xuxa series before school. It's like Stanley Spadowski's Funhouse from UHF if Stanley was a hot Brazilian MILF.

Fun fact: This bitch did a softcore porn flick before becoming a kids entertainer. No biggie, perhaps, except she did a very infamous scene with a pre-teen boy. You won't find this movie anywhere, because she did her darndest to bury the film from existence.

Rumour had it she sold her soul to the devil to get fame and fortune, but in reality she simply climbed on famous dicks for clout (At some points she dated Pelé and Ayrton Senna) until she became a household name by the early 90's, enough to become famous all over the Americas.

I'd sperg more about Xuxa, but really, the juiciest bits of her career were already either debunked or well-known and no longer considered big deal.

 

[Quantum Diabetes]

One of my local stations had a live kids show with a fed up, clearly alcoholic ex policeman who saying phoning it in would mean he made some kind of effort.
They'd show 2 1/2 minute clips of Hanna Barbera cartoons from mid episode so you had no idea what was going on until they were nearly over. I did like the segments where they had animals from the local zoo.

Still, the kids were happy to be on live tv and the show endured until I guess his liver gave out

 

[Dom Cruise]

Catdog. They advertised this shit for a straight year before premiering it and then showed it constantly. You could tell they spent a long time developing this yet it was just sort of boring. The main characters are like Ren and Stimpy or Squidward and Spongebob except really fucking dull. It felt like it belonged in the era but it was overshadowed by everything else in it. The backgrounds are neat, the mouse and the rabbit are actually funny, and that's about all I can say about it.

I remember there being a few standout episodes of Catdog, but most of it was just kind of boring as you say.

That's the way it was for a lot of cartoons, you'd have the one really good episode, then a few other memorable ones, but most of it would be mediocre chaff.

 

[Mobility Mazdamundi]

Surprised no one has mentioned this so far, but the show was Wayside. I'm pretty sure it was based off some books, but damn, if you put a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you anything about it but one joke that I remember telling my mom because kid me thought it was hilarious. The weird kid had an orange in a birdcage as his pet, and he said it's name was "Red". Kid me might not have been the brightest. I don't know why I remember that shitty joke, but I do I guess.