Seven Things: 7 Favorite Cartoons

Welcome to Seven Things, a list that will run weekly and consist of very eclectic topics. These are of my opinions and doesn’t express the views of others on WrestlingOnEarth.

I wrote this a long time ago and never finished it until now. There will be another Seven Things later this week but enjoy my chatter about animated series until then.

Reminder: If you have any suggestions for future lists, feel free to share them in the comments or send them to me on Twitter: @JoeySplashwater.

7. Pokemon

The concept of Pokemon and Pokemon battles were too cool. The first movie I ever went to was Pokemon: The First Movie. We love Pokemon battles.

Favorite characters:

1. Meowth
2. Misty
3. Squirtle

6. Scooby-Doo

I remember the first day our family got cable in the early 90’s. The day was spent watching nonstop Cartoon Network, Hanna-Barbera cartoons to be exact. The main one and early favorite animated series was Scooby-Doo. The idea of a talking dog solving mysteries was the best.

Favorite characters:

1. Shaggy
2. Velma
3. Scooby

5. Recess

A very charming series by Disney about a group of kids as they deal with the hardships of life in school, Recess provided quite the entertainment. The eclectic group of friends all worked and played together to get through middle school in amusing factor. I need to watch this again. (I did end up watching some Recess episodes after I originally wrote this.)

Favorite characters:

1. T.J. Detweiler
2. Spinelli
3. Miss Grotke

4. Rocket Power

Four kids doing extreme sports in Ocean Shores, a really fun series that I wish had more episodes. I somewhat recently watched all the episodes available on Amazon Prime and found a rare one hour special that I was never aware of existing. What a gift from the gods of animated series that turned out to be.

Favorite characters:

1. Twister
2. Sam
3. Reggie

3. The Spectacular Spider-Man

As a huge Spider-Man fan, it’s been rare for me to find a great version of the Spidey cartoon. The 90’s cartoon is cool but I didn’t watch it until a few years ago and it seemed too outdated to invest in. The most recent series Ultimate Spider-Man is cute (especially an episode based on Wolverine being unpleasant and smelling bad) but it just doesn’t have the must see feel with a group of lame wannabe superheroes attending Peter Parker’s school which I just didn’t like.

The Spectacular Spider-Man gave me what I hoped for. It was modern, the characters were all entertaining, the interactions between them was intriguing and the stories were very fun. I highly suggest anyone who never got a chance to see this to check it out. A shame that it only lasted a few seasons as it should still be on television.

Favorite characters:

1. Peter Parker/Spider-Man
2. J. Jonah Jameson
3. Aunt May

2. Hey Arnold!

My Twitter avatar is and probably will be Arnold from Hey Arnold! wearing a ROH shirt forever. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how excellent Hey Arnold was. I always paired it with Rugrats and Doug as all being equally great of the golden era Nickelodeon Nick Toons. The reality was that Doug only had a few seasons and 50 episodes on Nick before it was moved to Disney and the Disney years were so bad that it tarnished the overall legacy of Douglas Yancey Funnie. Rugrats also jumped the shark with Dil and Kimi debuting as new characters and has some horrific content in their later years.

On the flippity flip, Hey Arnold always put out episodes at a high level and went for 100 of them before it ended. I also would say the Hey Arnold movie blew away the terrible Doug film and the decent Rugrats ones introducing the terrible new characters. Arnold basically represented what an adult should be but in a kid’s world. Imagine if we had a president or society with Arnold’s values. The world would be a better place. It’s a shame Arnold is not one of us.

Favorite characters:

1. Arnold
2. Gerald
3. Eugene

1. Arthur

Arthur is so timeless. I’ve watched it just about all my life and can’t remember a time where I didn’t watch the re-runs as there are so many, whenever I notice it’s on one of the random PBS off-shoot cable channels, I can’t help but to stick to it for 30 minutes. 90% of the episodes are great and will keep my attention regardless of how old I get.

It’s such a weird show with all the animal characters and some of the life lessons. There was an episode called “Bleep” dedicated to a 4 year old cursing. You can’t beat that. Arthur is also the most easy watch when you’re bored on a string of YouTube videos or when your NBA teams loses a heartbreaker and you can’t stop replaying it in your mind! Not that it’s a specific example or anything…

Moral of the story is that you need to watch Arthur. Maybe CM Punk will come back to television as the hooligan that stole DW’s snowball.

Favorite characters:

1. Binky Barnes
2. Arthur
3. Sue Ellen