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

[Dolphin Lundgren]

i agree. Full House full sucked.

Full House would have been better if Bob Saget played himself.

 

[Hackallier]

For me it's the first season of Digimon, but not for the reasons you might expect. The Finnish dub was absolutely abysmal and as a young kid you just cant see how bad it was. Afterwards I cringe every time I hear it somewhere and it's kinda a meme over here.

How did this legend get produced? I don't remember where and exact details, but years ago I came across an AMA or something from from one of the members of the dubbing team. He claimed that they were basically high school kids doing this as a part time job. He also said that they sometimes got the lines the same day they had to record all of them and most of the time they didn't have access to the actual animation and Japanese voice lines they were dubbing. As a result they just winged it with this cringefest.

Oh, and they also dubbed Silver Fang:

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

I remember watching a show about Xi Jinping's philosophy called The Book Of Pooh, which I'm going to say was bad just because looking back on it now, the puppets they used for the characters looked terrible:
View attachment 1690613
By some stroke of luck I managed to avoid being one of those autists who end up being traumatized by unintentionally creepy looking things in kids' shows. I will say Tigger looks pretty good but the rest are off. The Winnie the Pooh characters don't seem to translate well IRL because I think the costumes at Disney World don't look that great either.

I remember this, It had a VHS compilation "movie" I also remember watching a fair bit back when I was like 6 or 7.

I also remember a lot of the other shows already mentioned on here, like Angela Anaconda and Mega Babies, as well as watching a few episodes of Sonic Underground and Beast Machines back when they were on TV. There was also plenty of shows I used to watch almost religiously growing up, like That's so Raven that I know doesn't hold up. And yet, there were some awful shows I never got more than an episode into, or even made past the intro, like Monster by Mistake.

 

[The Jumping Dwarf]

Anything made by Dan Schneider or similar kidcoms. I used to watch stuff like iCarly a lot as a kid, but I already found it kind of cringy at times and would probably die of embarrassment if I watched it today. I remember there was an episode where they meet FRED from YouTube, which I'm pretty sure has held up wonderfully. The allegations against Schneider don't help either.

Drake and Josh is an exception, though. That show is unironically funny.

I also actively seeked out the Mario cartoons when I was little, because I was a massive Mario fanboy and could never have enough. I cannot really call them good, but they hold too much nostalgic appeal (and YTP memes) for me to dislike them.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

I mean, I'm adult enough to admit that most of the cartoons I grew up with were shit. GI Joe, Thundercats, Dinoriders, Transformers, Lazer Tag, Dungeons and Dragons? All shit, in retrospect. A few episodes hold up in a sort of cheesy way, but they're really not great, most of them. Of them all, probably Thundercats holds up "best", but even then, not great.

I think the only cartoons that really hold up that I watched back then were the Disney and Warner Brothers ones... The Mouse and the Rabbit, basically. They're pretty timeless, a lot of them.

 

[starborn427614]

The Cramp Twins. Anytime someone complains about modern cartoons being bad, I just think back to that and thank my lucky stars it's not been THAT bad in a while.

 

[Aqua Panda]

Captain Planet was a big one. It was wrapped in ye classic political correct shit of the 90's but the concept was decently solid. I actually went back and rewatched a few episodes a few years ago and yeah... the only memorable bit is the higher quality 35mm animated intro. I still laugh hard that Tom Cruise was going to be the voice of Captain Planet until a movie commitment came up.

Daily Show post 2002 changed horribly. It got WAY more political. The early years with the guy pre John Stewart was a lot better and less mean spirited. Once the Iraq War of 2003 came along the entire writing staff went whole hog hard left. It was fucking cringy seeing so many 20 somethings have their entire smug worldview being whatever they saw on the show the previous night. I gave it up in 2006 and haven't looked back.

Outside of the DCAU (which still holds up beautifully) most action adventure cartoons of the 90's are pretty bad. Most are basically ripoffs of other more successful properties with a new or different twist or are attempting to ripoff the toy commercial cartoons of the 80's. Some are better than others, but only the DC ones really had any actual heart and soul put into them. (Note: I include the other Warner cartoons here as well. Tiny Toons, Freakazoid, Animaniacs, etc.)

Several of the sci-fi spinoffs that attempted to ape Star Trek TNG were pretty cringy. SeaQuest DSV especially so.

 

[Trombonista]

Sad attempts to make a Made in USA toku, like Big Bad Beetleborgs.

I remember that one. I remember how weird it was when they had to recast the girl, who was my favorite character.

 

[Deftones]

I can't quite recall the worst show I've ever seen since I was a little kid. I was easy-to-please (well... not quite. but if it's gross and the characters "looked funny" anything was great to me).

But if I have to choose only one, I'd say Hannah Montana. The only redeeming quality it had was the theme song.

 

[Spunt]

Back in the day, the Cartoon Network in the UK used to have some real dross, mostly bargain-bin crap that Hanna Barbera would churn out in the 60's and 70's. I'm not even talking about their more bearable stuff like Scooby Doo or Yogi Bear, I'm talking about stuff like The Herculoids, Plastic Man, Captain Caveman, JabberJaw and Space Ghost (not Coast-to-Coast, the original low-effort Superman rip-off). I'd just got cable, so the idea of a channel that played cartoons 24/7 was so amazing that I watched it all anyway, even though JabberJaw gives Scrappy-Doo a run for his money as the most irritating cartoon character of all time. Even I couldn't stand Johnny Quest, though my little brother loved it so I had to watch it too or risk tantrums. Watching Venture Brothers shit all over it is really cathartic for me now.

GI Joe, Transformers, Inspector Gadget, and pretty much any other cartoon that wasn't Robotech. I used to like Mysterious Cities of Gold, although I'm worried chekcing that out again would ruin it for me.

I made the mistake of re-watching The Mysterious Cities of Gold a few years ago. It doesn't stand up, sadly. The voice acting is appalling, something I didn't notice as a kid. The art style is nice, but the actual animation is really ropey. Keep your memories. Don't meet your heroes.

G1 Transformers stands up for me, pretty much. You can see how cheap and error-strewn the drawing and animation was (particularly after the first season, apparently it got subcontracted to a different animation studio that didn't give a shit), but the writing and voice acting is still as good as it seemed back then.

Edit: Apparently Plastic Man wasn't HB, it was Ruby-Spears. Amazingly it came out in 1979 - I always assumed it was from the 50's or 60's because the animation was so crude and the writing was so corny.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Some more that I remember.

• The Mortal Kombat cartoon whose premise was basically "random MK characters forming a do-goody task force"

Tbf that's basically the plot of MK9 onwards.

SMB:SS was shit but at least had that version of the overworld that was somehow even more catchy than the original:

This show probably caused a few "awakenings":
youtube.com/watch?v=3UHens9vDRw

 

[Overcast]

Speaking of Johnny Quest, anyone remember that 90’s sequel show where he’s a teenager? All I remember about it was that the Indian kid’s dad was revealed to be fucking assassinated by his advisor or something.

The fact I’ve seen no one talk about it probably tells me all I need to know.

 

[Fromtheblackdepths]

Back in the day, the Cartoon Network in the UK used to have some real dross, mostly bargain-bin crap that Hanna Barbera would churn out in the 60's and 70's. I'm not even talking about their more bearable stuff like Scooby Doo or Yogi Bear, I'm talking about stuff like The Herculoids, Plastic Man, Captain Caveman, JabberJaw and Space Ghost (not Coast-to-Coast, the original low-effort Superman rip-off).

Have to disagree on The Herculoids. That stuff is perfect camp space-fantasy and Seanbaby has good tastes.

 

[Castrated Bull]

Oh my gosh, FINALLY a topic I can comment on.

So basically, I was in this phase of "I HATE EVERYTHING MODERN" when I was what? 14-15? and I'd just constantly consume old dubbed shit from the 60s-70s on shitty old streaming websites. There were a few that actually held up really well when I revisited them recently, but most of them are God awful looking back on it.

The worst of it was absolutely what I affectionately refer to as the "Walmart Bargain Bin" anime, most of their dubs being directed by Joseph Lai. If you don't know who Joseph Lai is, he's the dub director responsible for the infamous dubs of Korean Anime bootlegs. Everything he made was TERRIBLE. and I MEAN INCREDIBLY TERRIBLE. I can't even pick one, but if I had to I'd absolutely go with Defenders of Space. With stolen designs of Star Blazers and one of the most incomprehensible plots I've ever seen, I have no idea why I liked this unironically when I was younger

 

[Uranus Pink]

Speaking of Johnny Quest, anyone remember that 90’s sequel show where he’s a teenager? All I remember about it was that the Indian kid’s dad was revealed to be fucking assassinated by his advisor or something.

The fact I’ve seen no one talk about it probably tells me all I need to know.

Animation wise it was pretty good from what I could remember. Story wise I honestly don't know as only time I seen it was at CiCi Pizza who had their TVs on Cartoon Network.

 

[MysticMisty]

Speaking of Johnny Quest, anyone remember that 90’s sequel show where he’s a teenager? All I remember about it was that the Indian kid’s dad was revealed to be fucking assassinated by his advisor or something.

The fact I’ve seen no one talk about it probably tells me all I need to know.

I completely forgot all about that show. The one time I heard anybody talk about it was two guys at school, before it even aired. He was going on about how cool it was that the characters had hard black shading. That's it. I never heard him talk about it again so I guess hard black shading wasn't enough to keep him watching.

 

[Thomas Talus]

I mean, I'm adult enough to admit that most of the cartoons I grew up with were shit. GI Joe, Thundercats, Dinoriders, Transformers, Lazer Tag, Dungeons and Dragons? All shit, in retrospect. A few episodes hold up in a sort of cheesy way, but they're really not great, most of them. Of them all, probably Thundercats holds up "best", but even then, not great.

I think the only cartoons that really hold up that I watched back then were the Disney and Warner Brothers ones... The Mouse and the Rabbit, basically. They're pretty timeless, a lot of them.

Even the genuinely good shows like DuckTales, Tiny Toons, or B:tAS aren't as grand and impressive as you remember them.

Although if anyone calls Salute Your Shorts bad I will punch them via forums code.

The Captain Planet episode that stuck in my memory was the overpopulation one.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

Even the genuinely good shows like DuckTales, Tiny Toons, or B:tAS aren't as grand and impressive as you remember them.

I more meant the truely timeless stuff. Looney Tunes, not Tiny Tunes.

 

[Trombonista]

Speaking of Johnny Quest, anyone remember that 90’s sequel show where he’s a teenager? All I remember about it was that the Indian kid’s dad was revealed to be fucking assassinated by his advisor or something.

The fact I’ve seen no one talk about it probably tells me all I need to know.

I remember watching it. It was okay.

 

[starborn427614]

I remember watching it. It was okay.

The CGI was impressive for the time.