I'm pretty sure they did. The opening is amazing and the discrepancy was a shock when I revisited the series on DVD, years after watching it as a kid.
Cartoon Network bringing back ThunderCats for new animated series
- Thread starter Shard Shinjuku
- Start date
Money well spent. Why? Because that's the thing you remember, and it somehow tricks you into thinking the whole thing was animated that way. Also I always loved cartoon/anime openings, and I'm sad that they've somewhat gone away (though I like how the SU team was able to update theirs)
Funnily enough, I went on YouTube to look up some clips before posting that and all the results of my initial search were the intro. It was surprisingly hard to find clips of actual episodes.
Most of them got pulled.
You used to get tons of full tcat eps on youtube.
There's been plenty of Scooby-Doo remakes, and DC is reaching deep into the Hannah-Barbera catalog for some pretty bafflingly great comic crossovers lately. Plus they've been putting out short series of things like The Herculoids and Birdman that have been really fun.
I wonder if any previous association with Bill Cosby would kill a Fat Albert reboot before the talks even begin.
I think it's a matter of the people that grew up on that era now make the decisions on what gets made. And maybe starting in the 80s there was a lot of TV stuff made expressely for selling merchandise. Before He-Man, toy makers were not allowed to produce TV, then when it was a success, now everyone wanted their own He-man, hence all the 80s action cartoons of the era.
At this point 90s revivals have already started. So in a few years if your favorite 80s thing did not return, it never will.
It is interesting how the cartoon-as-toy-commercial became so blatant that the government felt the need to intercede. But it also shows how effective it was, that decades later they would be able to sell even more stuff because they trained all of us as kids.
It's everyone's favorite, the FCC.
The reason He-man was able to be made was actually deregulation of advertisements that were allowed during children's shows in the Reagan administration:
https://www.awn.com/animationworld/dr-toon-when-reagan-met-optimus-prime
That's what opened the floodgates. Then Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990 to try to mitigate the commercialism, which eventually included a mandate that stations air 3 hours of "educational" core programming and limit commercials (which is why you can't advertise Transformers toys during a Transformers cartoon). This also contributed to the networks aiming at a target audience of 13 - 16 so they could show more commercials. I'm not sure if that's what killed the weekday and Saturday morning cartoons we loved as kids, but certainly there was a rise of live action shows around that era.
What about the concept of the original is great? Aliens flee the destruction of their planet and land on a new one and fight bad guys. That premise has been thoroughly explored by the likes of Superman and Dragon Ball Z.
To be honest, the premise of Thundercats can work for comedy. Leon-O is a literal man child who suddenly has a ton of responsability and lives in a strange world with ewoks, amazon girls and pirates.
I mean, if you want to you can boil a lot of things down to their basic components and complain about the lack of originality. But space cat people fleeing the destruction of their homeworld, being chased by their mutant enemies, to land on a fantasy world where an ancient evil lurks. Add in super powers, specialized weapons, a cat-tank, robot bears, a magical sword, and a leader who looks like an adult but is really a kid guided by his force-ghost dead mentor, the premise actually had a lot packed in there.
I'll be honest, most 80s cartoons I remember more for their toys. Thundercats toys were mainly crap (which is a shame because the designs for the Castle, the thundertank, etc. are all pretty awesome), and I still remember a lot about them, which says something.
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The premise that thundercats was crap isn't really true. It became crap after Leonard Starr was fired after season 2, sure, but early tcats could be pretty fun. Starr's last major act was introducing the Lunataks, who were a great foil to the thundercats, but after he was fired they were quickly made into a joke.
Also thundercats gave us The Mask of Gorgon, which creeped me out as a child something fierce
Also thundercats gave us The Mask of Gorgon, which creeped me out as a child something fierce
Not sure if posted, but I just read this article and loved it and agree with it.
http://observer.com/2018/05/cartoon...-wrong-about-kids-vs-adult-entertainment/amp/
So much more at the link, even getting into Star Wars as a kid and The Last Jedi.
http://observer.com/2018/05/cartoon...-wrong-about-kids-vs-adult-entertainment/amp/
So much more at the link, even getting into Star Wars as a kid and The Last Jedi.
Exactly. I loved it, and still do. But I'd be lying if I said my rewatch of the dvd collections a few years back wasn't cringe-inducing lol. This coming from a big fan who's been championing for an open world TC game.The best part of the article is how ... well ... the original thundercats is not all that =P
Wait, what? What Japanese anime-style boom is he talking about in the 80s? Robotech? Transformers (which is not anime, but like Thundercats was animated in Japan)?
All the internet has done is let people have another outlet for their outrage. But fans have always gotten upset with change. I mean, look at comic fandom, for instance (and I readily admit I also want Superman, the Legion of Superheroes, etc., the way that I grew up reading them). Look at Return of the Jedi and the Ewoks.
Let's be honest, though, the IP holders want this publicity. They want fandom to be so invested that they either love or hate this, because the alternative is that people are just indifferent.
Probably talking about the huge amount of animation outsourcing to Japan that took place in that era. Thundercats, Silverhawks and Tiger Sharks were animated in Japan for the most part. Even Filmation ended outsourcing one series to a Japanese studio. Some were better animated than others, but they had some similar feel because of this.
The best part of the article is how ... well ... the original thundercats is not all that =P
Yeah exactly. And it was not as popular as people think these days. It did well, but not that much, which is probably why in 30 years there has been only want attempt to bring it back.
if this was a cartoon network studios production proper I would actually be looking forward to it. Since It's WB animation i'm kind of iffy, but really the art style is so unappealing
why reboot thundercats anyways
I mean street sharks seems to be freely avaiable
or
Extreme! Extreme! Extreme Dinosaurs!
why reboot thundercats anyways
I mean street sharks seems to be freely avaiable
or
Extreme! Extreme! Extreme Dinosaurs!
Must American animation restrict itself to one of two styles?
It's either that ugly and stiff Adult Swim style or this very cartoony, characters made of circles and looking fat style from Steven Universe
Seriously guys, Thundercats was an action series, can we NOT make it look like a care bears reboot?
It's either that ugly and stiff Adult Swim style or this very cartoony, characters made of circles and looking fat style from Steven Universe
Seriously guys, Thundercats was an action series, can we NOT make it look like a care bears reboot?
Let's not forget:
To
That is nowhere near as big a leap in artstyle as TC to TCR. The leap in tone is just as drastic though (moreso with the turtles).
This seems like a productive mindset. I haven't watched the show since I was a kid, and maybe it really was commercialistic shit and I was too young to know better, but how exactly does that justify resurrecting it into what we're looking at now? If the argument is that the franchise already had a chance to be an idealized version of the original but it blew it with the reboot from years back, then I think most who even know about Thundercats would rather see it stay dormant.
Watched the intro(?) to the new Thundercats; it looks soooo cool and im not suprised the Sonic Mania people are putting out more good stuff. Cant believe im excited for a Thundercats series lmao
If anything, I can't wait to see the non-super deformed fan art or 3D models in a game even. It's a new official direction that peoples' imaginations can run wild with. Love it.
That also happened a lot sooner, and the Mirage comics were not on hiatus or anything at the time - people who wanted their violent TMNT could still go and check the latest comic.
It also helped that TMNT started as a parody of Frank Miller work, so adapting it from a dark action-comedy to a more lighthearted (But still kinda edgy for the time if you paid attention) action-comedy wasn't as drastic as changing 80s'-action-show Thundercats into what looks like a Teen Titans Go clone.
I don't really understand that logic in the case of Thundercats Roar, though. It's not like Teen Titans Go where DC Comics characters have nationwide inherent appeal - if the fanbase of Thundercats isn't gonna watch it, who will? As someone who doesn't have a big stake in the Thundercats as an IP, my mind is on "What do they hope to do with this that Teen Titans Go can't do better?" and so far I don't really think I got a good answer.
It's also ridiculous to use "Thundercats is crap anyway" as a defense for this new cartoon, because then the logic of "polishing a turd" applies. If you never liked Thundercats to begin with, this show would need to do something revolutionary - okay, maybe exaggerating, but at least MLP:FiM levels of "different" - to bring in some massively wider audience.
Anyway, the personal biggest red flag for me is the fact that they didn't title the show "Thundercats Ho". :P
Was announced for 2019, and there hasn't been a peep about it in over a year since it was announced to extreme backlash.
Well, it has been nearly a year and a half since it was announced. Don't think we have even seen any trailer or proportional material of it beyond the initial trailer.
Perhaps they're rebranding it and marketing it as part of neonatal care package.
Forgot this existed. Was hoping to see a new trailer or something.
EDIT: Wikipedia and a couple other places are now saying the premier date would be TBA 2020. Don't see any sources though so maybe people are just guessing.
EDIT2: There is a press release from Corus that says they'll be airing it 2020 on Canadian TV. This is from May of this year.
EDIT: Wikipedia and a couple other places are now saying the premier date would be TBA 2020. Don't see any sources though so maybe people are just guessing.
EDIT2: There is a press release from Corus that says they'll be airing it 2020 on Canadian TV. This is from May of this year.
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God I hope not. The last thing Cartoon Network needs to be doing is catering to a small group of internet stupids.
Was it really that small though?
The youtube video where they premiere the new look has 8.2K likes and 115K dislikes. Internet outrage machine is one thing but that's some ratio.