Laugh with me! Laugh with me! 3/24

Here’s an episode of Freakazoid! for you. While maybe not a traditional Saturday morning cartoon, it was certainly one of my favorites. The show was somehow smart and stupid all at once in a way that made you laugh. It also featured many fine guest stars like Ed Asner, Leonard Maltin, Tim Curry, Norm Abram, and even Ricardo Montalban.

Ricardo. Fucking. Montalban.

I may not know what makes up the cool element (CO2L), but I do know that Ricardo Montalban is an essential molecule in it. Thankfully his Fantasy Island references were kept to a minimum, but the Khan jokes were plentiful. If you don’t like him, well, the door is over there. Please show yourself out.

For the REAL geeks out there (of which I am a proud member) Freakazoid! also included the voice talents of Maurice LaMarche, Tress MacNiel, Frank Welker (aka Megatron – the original), and legend Don Messick (Scooby-Do among zillions of others).

The show also featured many short skits, including my personal favorite, Hunt the Huntsman. Imagine Robin Hood or the Green Arrow but played by Charlton Heston. If there was an emergency you could sound the Horn of Urgency to summon him. It was a shame that rookies liked to blow the horn to make Hunt travel from the forest to the city center only to be told that nothing was happening and he should just go home. Thanks to heroes like him, there wasn’t much evil left to fight.

Hunt usually would respond with a “Darn, darn darn!” in a very Heston way.

I know what you’re thinking; I was in my 20s when this thing aired. So what, it was still funny and came near the end of the Saturday morning era.

The episode is in two parts, YouTube makes you pay to upload clips longer than ten minutes. Craig Ferguson is also in this episode as Freakazoid's mentor stuck with a woeful amount of exposition.



And Part II



Finally today I want to take you back again to the 80’s for M.A.S.K. The toys that the show promoted were pretty neat. Vehicles each had two modes that they could alternate between giving them a “surprise” function. A motorcycle could suddenly become a mini-helicopter or a sleeper cab truck could become a freaking tank with tailpipes for guns. Essentially they were lazy Transformers now that I think about them. Their motto "Illusion is the ultimate weapon" is even a sort of like "More than meets the eye" isn't it?



Oh yeah, they wore masks, too.

I do remember I was always a bit jealous of the kid who had the robot that could turn into a scooter. Lucky bastard. All I had back then was a BMX and it didn’t clean my room for me.

That should do it for this week. Happy weekend!