The Ultimate Saturday Morning Cartoon Lineup 1989

Hi, this is Matt Hill, the voice of Captain N,

the Game Master, and you are listening to the

Geekcast Radio Network. Beyond good, beyond evil,

beyond your wildest imagination. Optimus Solo,

what are you doing here? I'm always here. Yes,

yes. In the background. Yes, just when I was

talking. Yes, yes. This is ToonCast, and this

is going to be a clip that plays in front of

ToonCast episode 293 to 299, because apparently

you've created a third personality or a second

personality for yourself. You're just now another

80s geek or something like that. There's this

guy I know. He's called Just Another 80s Geek.

And he's got this video thing that he does on

the YouTubes and things like that. So, yeah,

it's called Geek Showcase. It's a chance to highlight

all things geeky in a video form. So, branching

out from just audio. So, this will be a chance

for you to see all kinds of geeky things, whether

they be toys. whether it be just graphics on

the screen with top ten lists and things of that

nature, opening packs of cards, going through

geeky memorabilia, knickknacks, paddywhacks,

give a dog a bones, anything like that. So, yes,

you should check out the YouTube channel Geek

Showcase. But to give you guys kind of a feel

for what kind of stuff goes there, minus the

visual part, we're also giving it to you in audio

form right here on ToonCast and podcast. That's

right. So if you hear Kevin say something like,

you can see this on the screen, it's because

this was originally a video where he would put

up his diagram of his ultimate Saturday morning

cartoon lineup. And you are starting, this is

why we're starting in episode 293 to 299, because

those are the next episodes I had available.

And you're starting with 1983 all the way up

to 1989 and going through basically. your ultimate

Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Yeah, basically

I've seen a lot of people post stuff on social

media over the years, whether it be Twitter or

Instagram or Facebook. And they always have like,

Ooh, the best cartoon lineup or this lineup versus

this lineup, or they do drafts or they do different

things. So I thought I was going to do my take

on that basically. So I've created a list for

each year from 1983 to 1989. I explain on the.

records here why i don't do 80 81 and 82 but

just real quickly it's just too hard there's

not enough cartoons out yet for them to do those

years so it starts 1983 goes to 1989 there's

a bunch of rules that i outline in record so

you'll have to listen to that mainly in the 1983

record i won't do that as much in the subsequent

episodes if you want the dirt on how these lists

were developed you have to listen to the 1983

episode first all right well that's gonna do

it and Let the show begin! Yay! Smart kids watch

this show. Other kids change the channel. Pause!

Hello, this is Just Another 80s Geek, and you

are watching The Geek Showcase, where we highlight

all things geeky. And today, we're going to finish

up our series on the ultimate Saturday morning

cartoon... lineup so so far you've seen us do

1983 through 1988 and today we will tackle 1989

which will be the seventh and final installment

of this and then we will look back and see if

you guys can pick out the themes for each hour

if you've been listening along we've had a theme

for each half hour time slot as we highlight

eight cartoons in each episode so without further

ado let's get right into 1989 starting with our

eight o 'clock time slot In the past, we have

had Superbook, Flying House, Get Along Gang,

The Raccoons, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Danger

Mouse, and The Adventures of the Little Koala.

But for 1989, we are going with Count Ducula.

Count Ducula aired in 1989, lasted, had episodes

airing all the way up and through the 1993 era.

26 episodes aired in the 80s, 65 total. Again,

in a few of the other episodes, we've mentioned

the IGN Top 100 Animated Series of All Time countdown

list and the Geekcast Radio Network's Top 100

All Time Animated Series. So if they fit on either

of those countdowns, I'll let you know. I bring

that up because the Countdacula series did land

on IGN's list at number 61. Count Ducula was

a Cosgrove Hall Films production, same as Danger

Mouse, which we highlighted in 1987. It was a

spinoff of Danger Mouse because Count Ducula

did appear in that show, and it would air in

the United States on Nickelodeon. We did have

a number of games, comic books, audiobooks, etc.

that dealt with Count Ducula. When the reboot

happened of Danger Mouse in the last few years,

Count Duckula did appear as well in that one.

They also did a spin -off of Count Duckula, which

we won't get into, but it was kind of a pattern

that they just kept taking a couple characters

from these series and then spinning off a new

series. Count Duckula was obviously a vegetarian

duck who had no fangs, but he is... A vampire.

So that's kind of where we go with that. It's

a silly concept. It's meant to be that, of course.

And Count Ducula had a few other characters that

we saw on there. His friend Igor. And then he

had a nanny. Those were kind of the main good

characters. Lived in Castle Ducula. And then

his main antagonist was Dr. Von Goosewing. So

it was just a silly comedy series. A little like

Danger Mouse. And it obviously fared fairly well.

Had spinoffs and reappeared in the reboot, etc.

So Count Ducula appears as our 8 o 'clock time

slot for 1989. And hopefully you guys can pick

out the theme. If not, we're going to do a special

quick video after this that reveals the themes

for each half hour. So let's move on to 1989's

cartoon filling the 8 .30 time slot. This one

should be pretty well known for a lot of the

U .S. audiences. Classic comic book character.

This one is Garfield and Friends. So Garfield

and Friends is at our 8 .30 time slot. Garfield

would refer to the main segment of the show,

and the and friends would refer to the U .S.

Acres portion of the show. So if you don't remember

that, U .S. Acres would have been the portion

that had... Orson Pegg as the main character

had Roy Rooster, Booker, Sheldon, Wade, the duck,

and it had a bunch of different sheep. It had

Mort Gorton. Mort, I mean, it was a bunch of

farm characters on that segment, and you would

have alternating segments between Garfield and

the U .S. Acres. This series went from 1988 to

1989, as far as the 80s go, and then it kept

going on until 1994. So although only 39 episodes

aired in the 80s, 121 episodes aired in the show.

In total. This one did appear and land on the

Geekcast Radio Network's top 100 animated list

countdown. It ranked number 22 on that one. And

for those of you who were born in a cave, you

might not know that this one was obviously based

on the comic strip by Jim Davis, which is probably

one of the all -time most popular, most successful

comic strips of all time. It aired on Saturday

morning on CBS. And usually in the show, like

I said, there was Garfield and U .S. Acres segment,

usually two Garfield. And one U .S. Acres making

a Garfield U .S. Acres sandwich there. Mark Evanier

was the head writer. And this would be one of

the shows that you would point to that was a

victim of the death of Saturday morning cartoons

in the early to mid -90s as we switched off to

things like Saved by the Bell. And we've talked

about this before. A lot of the cartoons on Saturday

morning kind of went to the wayside. This would

be kind of one of those victims if you were writing

a research paper on the death of the Saturday

morning cartoons. Garfield and Friends should

be in it somewhere. This show got rebooted in

2009, kept Jim Davis, Mark Evanier, Greg Berger,

who was one of the voice characters, all returned.

But then we had the switch of Frank Welker coming

in to voice Garfield. And before, we had Lorenzo

Music who did it, and we had Frank Welker kind

of take over that role. He's been doing it ever

since, and it's just an iconic character. Garfield

is probably one of the all -time cartoon characters

if you were making that list. So Garfield and

Friends takes the 8 .30 time slot. Joining the

likes, and remember there's a theme here, of

Smurfs, Heathcliff and the Cadillac Cats, the

Littles, Snorks, the Berenstain Bears, and Dennis

the Menace. Might be a trickier one there, so

we'll see who can get the 8 .30 theme. In the

meantime, let's move on to our 9 o 'clock theme.

9 o 'clock, we have had... Remember, these first

two didn't count in the theme. They just had

to be in here somewhere, and I couldn't find

where else to fit them. So we had Inspector Gadget

and Elvin and the Chipmunks. And then the theme

began. This one's the most... Probably the second

most obvious one here. We had Wuzzles, The Adventures

of the Gummy Bears, DuckTales, and The New Adventures

of Winnie the Pooh. That leaves us with our 9

o 'clock time slot for 1989 going to Chippendales

Rescue. Rangers, aired from 1989 to 1990, 65

episodes in total, 47 of them aired in 1989.

This landed on both lists of the top 100 animated

series. We had it at number 60 on the IGN list

and number 30 on the Geekcast Radio Network list.

Obviously, this is a Disney series. It follows

the classic characters of Chip and Dale, but

we kind of put a spin on it, and they're joined

by Gadget and Monterey Jack, Zipper, and they

face off against different foes like Norton,

Nimnol, and Fat Cat. Fantastic voice cast for

this show featuring the likes of Tress McNeil,

Peter Cullen, Jim Cummings, Corey Burton, etc.

The original idea for this series was to have

a TV series based on the movie in the film The

Rescuers or The Rescuers Down Under. They wanted

to do a spinoff of that and make a series out

of it, but they ended up going with Chippendale

instead as the rescue rangers. This actually

was a very successful cartoon. It had a Daytime

Emmy nomination. And then we got, obviously,

the live action slash CGI blended film released

in 2022. So this one has just made a reappearance

in pop culture recently. Classic show, part of

that Disney afternoon that everybody loved back

in the 80s, 90s. So Chippendales Rescue Rangers

takes our 9 o 'clock time slot. Let's move on

to our 9 .30 time slot. This is a cartoon that

aired in 1989, went on until 91, had 94 episodes

total. Only 13 of them in the 80s, but I felt

like it needed to be in here because it is based

off of a film from 1988. This is Beetlejuice,

the animated series. Tim Burton developed, and

he was the executive producer. This cartoon was

centered along the story of Lydia Dietz and the

character there and everything she kind of went

through. It was done by Nelvana. Had a lot of

the same cast as the animated series Cops, because

it was a Canadian cast, so a lot of the same

voice actors that you would have heard in Cops.

The animated series you would hear in Beetlejuice.

This was a huge hit for ABC. It was also, it's

a weird one because it's on different channels

here, one of Fox's first weekday afternoon cartoons.

So, won a Daytime Emmy in 1990 for Outstanding

Animated Program. And I think because of Beetlejuice

being a film that was very popular in 1988, this

fits well here in our 1989 time slot. It follows

the other shows that aired in the previous years

that we had, which would have been Saturday Supercade,

Muppet Babies, Hulk Hogan's Rockin' Wrestling,

The Real Ghostbusters, Fraggle Rock, Police Academy,

and Beetlejuice. So those are the shows that

take up our 9 .30 time slot. Hopefully you can

figure out the theme there. All right, let's

keep this show rolling. Let's go on to the 10

o 'clock time slot. Previously, we've seen Dungeons

& Dragons, Kid Video, Gem, Galaxy High, Beverly

Hills Teens, and Denver, The Last Dinosaur. This

one's a little trickier for the theme, but for

our 10 o 'clock time slot for 1989, we're going

to go with Captain N. The Game Master. Again,

how could you not feature a few cartoons along

our Saturday morning lineups that don't have

something to do with video games, as that was

a craze in the 80s? Captain N premiered in 1989,

ran to 91, 34 episodes total, 13 of them in the

80s. This featured at number 78 on the Geekcast

Radio Network's Top 100 All -Time Animated Series.

It was a Saturday morning cartoon, aired on NBC,

and was produced by Deke. Obviously this is Captain

Nintendo, or shortened Captain N, the Game Master,

which was teenager Kevin Keen and his dog Duke

who got transported to Videoland. And there they

would come up with a lot of classic video game

type characters. So we would see them interact

with, first of all, the good characters that

they kind of interacted with, which would be

Princess Lana. and Simon Belmont, who was from

Castlevania, Kid Icarus, obviously Kid Icarus,

Mega Man from Mega Man, and Game Boy. And then

they would face off against people like Mother

Brain, King Hippo, Dr. Wily. You would see things

like Donkey Kong show up, Ganon, all kinds of

fun characters. Princess Zelda, I believe, showed

up at one point. So it was just a cool Nintendo

video game -based cartoon. And they had a lot

of cool voice actors, including Gary Chalky and

James Corlett, Venus Terzo. Think of maybe like

the cast of Beast Wars. That's basically a very

similar cast here for Captain N. So you'll have

to think of that theme a little bit. It's a little

bit trickier, but Captain N, the Game Master,

comes in here at 10 o 'clock. Let's move on to

our 10 .30 time slot, which should be the easiest

theme, but was the hardest pick for 1989. I'll

explain that in a second. follows the likes of

Strawberry Shortcake back in 1983, Rainbow Bright,

She -Ra, Princess of Power, The Pound Puppies,

My Little Pony, and Care Bears. And with $10

.30 for 1989, we kind of had to mess around a

little bit to make this work, but we are going

with Maple Town. Maple Town was an anime series

from Japan, and the reason we're putting it here

is because 1989 was literally devoid of series.

that were more girl -centric or based aiming

at a girl demographic, female demographic. All

these other shows were over by then. You know,

Princess of Power ended in 87. Pound Puppies,

87. My Little Pony ended in 87. Care Bears ended

in 88. There was literally nothing airing in

1989 for girls, it seemed like. So, Mapletown,

even though it had aired previously... In Japan

was not dubbed in English and aired in English

until 1989. So we were able to pull a fast one

here and include it because otherwise I was going

to have to include a show that didn't have anything

to do with females just to get one in the time

slot. So Mapletown, 87 in Japan, aired in 89,

90 in the U .S., 39 episodes aired in the U .S.

out of the 52 that were made. It's from Toy Animation.

The toys came to the U .S. from Tonka. and Barbara

Goodson was involved in the voice. Saban Entertainment

produced the English version, and it aired on

Nickelodeon, and then later aired on the Family

Channel. A lot of you probably have no idea what

Mapletown is, so let me kind of try to give you

the quick and dirty of it. It's just a, if you

ever heard of Sylvania families, or like current

days, like with the toys, like the Woodsy's,

or things like that, it's similar to that. There's

like the rabbit family, the bear family, the

fox family, the dog family, the squirrel family,

So it's all these families that are based on

a certain animal, and then they live in this

Maple Town where they interact together, etc.

So main adventures that we focused on were involving

Patty Rabbit, Bobby Bear, and their families.

But obviously they interacted with a lot of other

folks. So I always thought Maple Town was cool.

It was a very cool toy concept because you'd

want to collect the different families and things

like that. Like I said, it's very similar to

the Woodsy's, which is out. You can buy those

at Target and Walmart these days. So that theme

has kind of carried forward. in different iterations

and different kind of names. Again, another one

that was back in the day was Sylvanian Families.

It's very similar to that. So we're going to

go with Mapletown in a very obvious theme for

our 10 .30 time slot if I haven't given that

away yet. That means we only have time for two

more shows. So let's get to our 11 o 'clock time

slot. This should also be obvious. The 11 and

11 .30 are very similar. So in the past, we've

had shows like G .I. Joe, He -Man. Challenge

of the Gobots, Transformers, Voltron, Mass, Centurion,

Silverhawks, Visionaries, Thundercats, Bravestar,

and Cops. So what was left for 1989? Not a lot,

folks. Not a lot. We had to do some finagling

here, too. So I'm kind of, again, pulling another

fast one as we had to. This is a hard project,

guys. When you're trying to come up with these

eight cartoons that each fit a certain year,

and we could only include them if they had episodes

that aired in that year. And then we were also

trying to fit the theme and trying to make it

all work, trying to give you guys the best representation

of cartoons of the 80s. It became tricky once

we got down here to 1989. So for our 11 o 'clock

time slot, we've already had the original G .I.

Joe. But I'm going to go with the G .I. Joe,

the Deke series, which started in 89, aired until

92. 44 episodes total. There's only five episodes

that aired in the 80s, guys, but I just think

of G .I. Joe as an 80s property, and we needed

something that fit the theme for this. So Deke

took over for Sunbow, kind of rebooted this series,

so we have a little bit of a difference here.

There was a Canadian voice acting crew that took

over, so the only really... The holdovers are

Chris Lotta, who didn't stay the whole time,

I don't believe. And Morgan Lofting did a little

bit. But otherwise, we have Sgt. Slaughter, Ed

Gilbert, Jerry Hauser. Those are like the holdovers

that kind of survived to Season 1 of the Deke

Show. And then I think Chris Lotta was the only

one that actually survived to Season 2. So Destro,

if you remember this one, this is the one that

has Destro in gold. And the Joes are led by Hawk

and Sergeant Slaughter. And then we have Cobra

returning. Obviously, the G .I. Joe movie dealt

with Cobra a little bit. So he returns as human.

So those are kind of some weird changes or adjustments

for this G .I. Joe Deke series. It doesn't look

quite as good as the Sunbow series in my opinion,

but it was. In keeping the G .I. Joe in the cultural

zeitgeist, I guess you could say, for the turn

from the 1980s to the 1990s. So we fit G .I.

Joe Deke series in here because we needed another

action cartoon, which leads us to a more obvious

one in our 1130 time slot. There's only one left

to talk about, guys. So 1130 time slot for 1989

is going to the classic, the iconic. We're talking

about Teenage Mutant Ninja. So Teenage Mutant

Ninja Turtles started in 1987, aired until 96,

so it had 193 total episodes. 65 of them aired

in the 80s. This landed on both lists. It was

number 55 on IGN's all -time cartoon list, and

it was number 6 on the geek cast. radios list

so very highly thought of by both of those groups

obviously this follows the adventures of leonardo

donatello rafael and michelangelo and splinter

against the likes of shredder and krang and stuff

like that based on the comics from mirage obviously

the mirage comics were much darker so this is

a lot more comedic a lot more funny humor uh

juvenile maybe you would even say And it did

lead to some live action films that we got in

the late 80s, early 90s with the Teenage Mutant

Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2, Secret of the Ooze and Teenage Mutant Ninja

Turtles 3. And Turtles has just forever been

on TV or making films or video games or comics

or whatever. It just has lasted decades and decades.

So it definitely deserves a place here. By 1990,

the series was being shown daily on more than

125 television stations. We did get a toy line

from Playmate Toys. David Wise wrote over 70

episodes. He was the executive story editor for

many of the seasons. Most of the animation was

done by Toy Animation. Started a Saturday morning

cartoon, quickly expanded to a weekday cartoon

because they needed it every day. So we were

pumping out a lot more episodes. And like I said,

there's been a ton of movies. There's been two

different line or groupings of live action movies.

There's been a number of animated films, whether

it was theatrical releases or direct to videos.

And there's obviously been a few of the rebooted

cartoon series. I think we're on like four or

five versions now of the animated series in different

reboots as it has happened, especially since

the turn of the century with the, you know, from

the year 2000 on, we've got a number of them.

So Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles definitely deserves

a spot. It's taking our 1130 time slot here.

So that wraps up 1989. So let's go back from

top to bottom. First, we start with Count Duckula.

Then we go to Garfield and Friends. followed

by Chippendale's Rescue Rangers, then Beetlejuice,

followed by Captain N, the Game Master, then

we had Mapletown, G .I. Joe, the Deke series,

and Teenage Mutant Ninja... turtles so i'm going

to give you guys a little bit of time to try

to figure out the themes for each of them some

of them are obvious some of them are a little

bit more tricky i'm going to put a really small

video up here shortly um and that's going to

reveal all the themes and kind of give you guys

the rundown of all of our ultimate saturday morning

cartoon lineups hopefully you guys have had fun

with this we're going to do some more cartoon

content content here on the Geek Showcase that'll

be coming up soon, I promise. And we're also

going to branch off into some other geeky topics

like Star Trek and Star Wars maybe and other

types of video games, comic books, cartoons,

movies, toys. We're going to get into all of

that stuff so there's a lot more content headed.

I appreciate everybody that's been subscribing

and viewing the videos. We've been hitting all

-time highs with this series and it's just motivated

me to give you guys more geek content. So I cannot

wait to do that and see your guys' reactions.

So tune in next time. Next time for more from

the geek showcase. And again, I am just another

80s geek. Tonight I dine on turtle soup.