We interrupt this DeLorean blog for a special article. It has come to my attention that another 1980s "icon" is trying to make a comeback - The Thundercats. This is a horrible idea. I hated them then and I hate them now. Let me tell you why...
- THUNDERCATS -
A BLIGHT ON THE 80s CARTOON LEGACY
“Thunder? Thunder? Thunder?! Thundercats?! NOOOOOO!!!!!”
This is the creepiest cartoon of the 1980s and no one seems to notice. Everyone knows the story of the mutant cat humanoids who escape their own doomed world of “Thundera” with the young prince, named “Lion-O” and find their way to a deceptive paradise where an evil mummy named “Mum-Ra” actually tries to make life miserable for the cat people without any real motivation for doing so.
The series is ridiculously stereotypical, with “Panthro,” the panther-man, resident inventor and mechanic being the only one with the obviously African-American voice. I’m not even going to touch the fact that a slang term for a mechanic is “grease monkey.” Saving grace? Panthro is the only cool character in the whole show – bar none. That doesn’t forgive the show of its racial stereotyping.
Also, everyone on the show pontificates – they project their voices in these weird, overblown operatic howls. The “acting” in Thundercats is like a silent movie…but everyone’s speaking in the same style. Weird.
The real problem with the series though is the aforementioned Lion-O. The intent behind him is to be a bastion of manliness, but that is inherently flawed from frame one. First off, no self-respecting guy likes cats so the fact that this guy IS a cat is the antithesis of masculinity. Lion-O is often compared to He-Man and this is erroneous because He-Man was not a cat. He-Man had a cat he rode on like a horse and incidentally he showed his contempt for said cat by flash-frying it in every episode with his magic sword. Awesome.
On the other hand, the very-not-awesome Lion-O looked like a gay rodeo clown. Worse than that actually – he’s an insult to gay rodeo clowns. He had this coiffure of teased orange hair, perfect eyelashes and this weird inverse triangle face paint-looking thing around his eyes. Dude-man’s costume also had an AB-WINDOW. That’s right – Lion-O’s abs are prominently and deliberately on display all the time. Let’s not forget to mention the fact that the guy wore no pants and had on this gimp suit finished off with knee-high blue, white-striped boots. I shudder at the image.
As an aside, Mum-Ra wasn’t much better – an old man in a robe who could have simply been an evil wizard but always ripped his bathrobe off like a crusty flasher to reveal his own gimp suit underneath before he went into combat with Lion-O. In Thundercats, the best gimp suit wins.
So we have Lion-O and he has this magic sword named “The Eye of Thundera.” Please note – it’s not called “The Eyes of Thundera.” There’s only one eye. It’s Lion-O’s “one-eyed sword.” Hmmm….
He always carries it around and sheathes it in this creepy furry glove he’s got on him and it’s always really short – nothing much more than a little knife. When he gets into trouble, he always whips out his one-eyed sword and starts slinging it around with gusto. When he does, note that his one-eyed sword gets longer and bigger, in stages. Then, “the eye” releases a mesmerizing wave of energy that hypnotizes the other Thundercats as Lion-O yells “HO!”
Yeah – it’s that overt and that creepy.
Another brief aside – This is another reason Thundercats is fundamentally lame. When He-Man draws on the power of his magic sword, it’s to turn into a superhero and save the universe like the confident strongman he is and ever shall be. Lion-O’s magic one-eyed sword is simply an overblown MediAlert bracelet – a personal alarm that calls all of his friends to his side to bail Lame-O out of trouble because the nancy boy can’t take care of himself!
To add insult to injury, Lion-O’s action figure was equally off-putting. Not only did it look identical to the cartoon character, which was bad enough, but it also had an “action feature” no other Thundercats figure possessed. The Lion-O figure has a metal hole in his backside just over his derriere and he comes with a red plastic cylinder that you jam a battery into and then you ram the thing up Lion-O’s backside and yes – both of his eyes light up.
