Another successful Saturday Morning Cartoon Party

Another successful Saturday Morning Cartoon Party

Wouldn’ t you agree?

This year was the 7th. I think there were less attendees than usual this year, but that’s fine because it meant everyone had a place to sit. Every year I buy too much cereal, so every year I convince myself to get less cereal. But when I go to the store, I’m always second-guessing that the worst possible scenario will happen – we’ll run out of cereal and people will go hungry.

That has never happened.

People brought cereal too (thanks!) and I’m left with boxes of Count Chocula, Cookie Crisp, Froot Loops, Scooby Doo Cereal, Cap’n Crunch, Honeycomb, Reese Puffs, Alpha Bits, Golden Grahams, Oreo O’s, Trix, Lucky Charms and Nesquik. I guess I know what’s going to be for snacks on D&D night this week.

Here was the lineup. Running times were typically about 20 minutes late. Not sure why that was. The theme this year was “Double Trouble” Doppelgangers, Clones & Impostors (last year it was the supernatural, in 2002 it was “secret origins” and in 2001 it was robots. I’m not sure if there were themes before that.

9:00 Star Trek The Animated Series – In “The Survivor”, the Enterprise discovers a ship manned by Carter Winston (voiced by Ted Knight) who has been missing for five years. Winston turns out to be a Vendorian shape-shifter who takes Kirk’s place and orders the Enterprise to violate Romulan space. 1973 Best moment: Kathryn asking what was going on.

9:25 Dungeons and Dragons – Doppelgangers hinder the heroes’ quest to find the foot of the yellow dragon in “The Garden of Zinn.” Happy Days’ Donny Most (Ralph Malph) voices Eric the cavalier 1983. Best moment: all of the Dungeon Master jokes directed at me.

9:25 Jonny Quest – Dr Zin trains an impostor of Race Bannon to steal plans from Dr Quest in “Double Danger” 1964 Best moment: Jonny and Hadji lying in bed together shirtless saying “I’ve got a strange feeling.”

9:50 Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot In “1000 Fingers of Rusty” Quark Industries releases a home version of Rusty. M. Emmett Walsh as Mack, R. Lee Ermey as General Thornton, Clancy Brown as Legion Ex Machina 1999. Best moment: Not sure…all of the wanton destruction, maybe?

10:15: Superfriends Humankind is transformed into copies of Cheetah and Bizarro in “Wanted: The Superfriends” 1978. Best moment: The whole freaking episode was wiggidy whack – realizing that the Legion of Doom had turned everyone in the world into their slaves, and still they had them commit robberies – against eachother.

10:40 Bugs Bunny “Tortoise Beats Hare” 1941. Best moment: Goddamn Bugs Bunny is amazing. It still holds up after all these years and makes all the knock-offs look like total crap.

10:50 Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law “Bannon Custody Case” 2002. Best moment: This whole episode was basically a sendup of the Dr. Zin creating a duplicate or Race Bannon, so there were lots of yuks all around.

11:00 A Superman impostor robs Metropolis in “Showdown” 1941. Best moment: I just like the fact that in the 40’s Superman couldn’t fly, he could only jump really high. And his strength was only moderate, comparatively, and he didn’t have heat vision or freeze breath or all that other jazz.

11:10 Superman: The Animated Series. Lex Luthor creates a clone of Superman in “Identity Crisis” Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor 1997. Best moment: Marlo empathizing with Bizarro.

11:35 The Ripping Friends pose as Manman and Boyboy in order to catch Manman and Boyboy in “Manman and Boyboy” 2001. Best moment: Kathryn actually being unable to watch the last 10 minutes of the show because it was just too icky.

12:00 At a superhero nightclub, The Tick must fight to keep his name in “The Tick vs The Tick” 1994. Best moment: “I’m the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at…HEY! PAY ATTENTION!”

12:25 Futurama Professor Farnsworth creates a box to a parallel universe in “Farnsworth’s Parabox” 2003. Best moment: Everything Zoidberg says.

12:50 Sealab 2021 “Lost in Time” Patching illegally into cable creates a subspace fracture that sends Quinn and Stormy back in time to repeat the same mistake over and over again and also creating infinite duplicates. 2003. Best moment: “I said it’s dodgeball time, bitch!”

1:00 Criminals impersonate The Powerpuff Girls in “Powerpuff Bluff” 1998. Best moment: I was getting the tires in my bike inflated during this one, so I missed it.

1:10 A Spider-Man impersonator commits crimes in “Double Identity.” 1968. Best moment: everyone being burned out from sugary cereals.

1:25 Clone High “Litter Kills – Litterally.” One of the clones you’ve come to know and love is horribly killed. Luke Perry as Ponce de Leon 2003. Best moment: everyone getting their second wind.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force “The Mooninites” for good measure 2003. Best moment: the quad-laser. The bullet is enormous. There is no escape.

Samurai Jack must battle an evil doppelganger of himself in “Jack vs Mad Jack” 2001. Best moment: Slater & Kathryn being just so damn excited to see Samurai Jack. This was not nearly my favourite episode. Next year I’d like to show Jack vs the Ultra Robots (which is my favourite).

I ended up not showing the Justice League and Freakazoid episodes I planned on. Everyone seemed cartooned out by 2pm. Mental note for next year. No wait, not mental – physical.

Thanks to everyone who came – I hope you had fun fun fun. Following the party there was a semi-impromptu bike ride consisting of myself and Marlo. We biked downtown and around the seawall and it was very nice. Too many people though, getting in our way. I was worried my bike was going to disintegrate, having not ridden it in probably 5 years. Worked out fine though and I think I may have almost worked off all of the calories from the compounded bowls of cereal!