Random Most Painfully '80s Cartoon Shows (15 items)

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  (#5) Jem

  • Samantha Newark, Patricia Alice Albrecht, Cathianne Blore

  Years before Hannah Montana, Jerrica Benton struggled to keep her true identity separate from her rockstar alter ego in the animated series Jem. A collaboration between Hasbro and Marvel, Jem revolves around pop-rock group Jem and the Holograms. With their giant '80s hairdos, Jem and the Holograms would regularly butt heads with their evil tour manager Eric and their rival band The Misfits, all while trying to manage and protect a foster home for girls, Starlight House. Every episode featured three truly outrageous Jem music videos.
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  (#15) Beverly Hills Teens

  • Terri Hawkes, Tracey Moore, Hadley Kay, Jonathan Potts, Linda Sorenson, Karen Bernstein, Sean Roberge, Mary Long, Corrine Koslo, Mark Saunders

  Aiming to be "wholesome role models for kids," Beverly Hills Teens was a more character-driven cartoon show, chock full of '80s hairdos, bright colors, early computer technology, and "high fashion" outfits. Needless to say, the rich kids of Beverly Hills Teens would never survive outside 1980s Rodeo Drive.
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  (#14) Rude dog and the Dweebs

  • Frank Welker, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen, David Alan Coulier, Peter Cullen, Ellen Gerstell

  If you were alive in the mid-'80s (or the early '90s), you almost definitely had a t-shirt with the colorful Rude Dog plastered on it. Nobody can truly explain the mania surrounding short-sleeve tees featuring the stylized, skateboarding bull terrier, but somehow the fashion trend spun off into its own Saturday morning cartoon show, Rude Dog and the Dweebs. For 13 episodes in 1989, the punkish pooch and his crew of misfits (the eponymous Dweebs) rode around in a pink Cadillac, avoiding the dog catcher and getting into mischief.
  
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  (#9) Saturday Supercade

  • Frank Welker, Tress MacNeille, Nancy Cartwright, Soupy Sales, Kenneth Mars, Peter Cullen, Robert Ridgely, B. J. Ward, Pat Fraley, David Mendenhall, Dick Beals, Peter Renaday, Arthur Burghardt, Marvin Kaplan, Sparky Marcus, Bart Braverman, Judy Strangis, Nichelle North

  A veritable bukkake of '80s arcade characters (including Donkey Kong, Mario, Frogger, Pitfall Harry, and Q*Bert), Saturday Supercade had no qualms about brainwashing kids into unloading their piggy banks into any arcade machine they could. And on top of it all, Donkey Kong Jr. is simply a ripoff of Scrappy Doo. Can it get any lower?
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  (#11) The Gary Coleman Show

  • Gary Coleman, Jennifer Darling, Julie McWhirter

  As Arnold Jackson on DIff'rent Strokes, the diminutive Gary Coleman was one of television's most promising young child stars, so it came as no surprise when he received his very own cartoon show. What was surprising, however, was the show's absurd, high-concept premise: Coleman voices an apprentice angel who can only earn his angel wings by helping others.
  
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  (#13) Galaxy High School

  • Susan Blu, Pat Carroll, Nancy Cartwright

  Is there a more archaic stereotype than the smartest kid in school being totally uncool? If the robotic voice in the opening theme didn't tip you off, Galaxy High School and its absurd premise are pure, undiluted '80s schlock.

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