Fellow Yesterdaylanders will remember this one (I hope; I'll be sad if you don't). I figured it needed to be preserved on the web. Boys and girls, moms and dads, dogs and cats, welcome to...

Really Deep, Unanswered Questions about
Eighties Cartoons

In the "He-Man" and "She-Ra" series, what did Orko look like under that cloak? And was Skowl's flying appendages his wings or were they his actual ears? (OK, you almost caught me. No, those are NOT my character's ears :)

What ARE the Wuzzles? No, I know what they are but I mean where did they come from? Some kind of bizarre Island of Dr. Moreu type top secret genetic engineering experiments or something?

Speaking of "the Wuzzles", why the hell did every one of them, regardless of whether they were part insect or not, have those fly wings on their backs? Were they ever functional? Is there origin then more akin to the David Cronenburg version of "the Fly" (spew!)?

Let's get another big one out of the way. Why were there only three female Smurfs? Bear in mind that none of these female Smurfs were born in a normal way (both Smurfette and Sassette were created artificially, and I'm not sure of where Granny Smurf came from but I'm sure it was weird). Furthermore, if a Smurf village isn't normally supposed to have females in it, then do Smurfs reproduce asexually? And if so, why is Papa Smurf older than the others?

Why do the other Smurfs keep taking surprise boxes from Jokey? Don't they know they'll blow up?

On "Thundercats", each member of the team was an anthropomorphic (from here on in, I'll use the term "Furry") version of a different species of wildcat. Okay, fine. But on Thundera, their home planet, were there many members of each different species? Did they tend to stick to their own kind romantically or could they interbreed? And would resulting children be sterile hybrids (as in the real-life Liger)?

Speaking of logistical problems in a world of Furries, take the case of "the Get-Along Gang". Montgomery is an anthropomorphic moose. As if that isn't disconcerting enough, he has antlers. Are they considered weapons in his world? Are they even functional? And considering that male moose in real life don't grow their antlers until they're adults, then how old is Montgomery (considering the age-range of rest of the Gang is about ten-ish)?

Doesn't it strike anyone else as a tad racist that the official Gang members were all mammals, while their bullies were reptiles? Yes, I know the Gang hung out with that turtle kid, but he was never really treated as an official member, more like an OTHER. Sort of the Furry take on the Token Kid That Is Not White. And how come we never saw any anthropomorphic birds or fish?

Finally (and in my opinion, the biggest damn Furry Logistics Problem of all) there was one very memorable episode of "the Get-Along Gang" where the Gang ends up in a snowy town whose residents are on the look out for a missing baby elephant.
A non-Furry elephant.
FROM THE ZOO!
Now don't you think that if you're going to populate your world with humanoid animals, maybe you should bite the bullet and populate the zoos and pet stores with humans? It's only fair, isn't it? >:)

How old is Rainbow Brite? She looks to be ten, but consider that she's been in charge of providing color and light to the entire Universe forever. Doesn't that make her (and the Sprites, and Starlight, and the Color "Kids") as old as the Universe or older? If so, then what is she, a goddess?

On the other hand, maybe time is different on the planet that Rainbowland is on. Maybe while ten years have gone by on Rainbowland, thousands of years have passed on Earth. But if time goes slower on Rainbowland then on Earth, how come Rainbow Brite's Earthling friend, Brian, is still about ten years old every time they run into each other? Why isn't he suddenly eighty-four or something? Does this mean that Rainbow Brite can time-travel (it's already well established that she can travel through space)?

How come, on "Inspector Gadget", Chief Quimby knew exactly what Dr. Claw was up to? Ever get the sense that Chief Quimby and Dr. Claw were the same entity?

How come Penny and Brain never b***hed about getting no credit for saving the day? Did they ever snap and go on an insane cross-country killing spree? Is that why the spin-off series didn't go into the character's futures but chronicled their past instead?

And, finally, what IS Inspector Gadget anyway? A robot? A cyborg? I tend to think he's a robot but if that's the case, why does he have a niece? Or is Penny just posing as his niece so he can feel more human? Doesn't that make him kind of a pitiable character? Does anyone else suddenly hear the score from "A.I."?

Any time the adventuring team on "Dungeons and Dragons" found some way or other to get home, the porthole was only open for a very short time and a LOT of the time they lost was spent debating whether to take Uni with them. Ever get the sense that Uni was trying to keep the kids from getting home? Was this her own plan or was she Venger's pawn? Or was the whole thing Dungeon Master's idea?

Speaking of Venger and Dungeon Master, there's a famous episode where D. M. calls Venger his son. Now, I know he might have meant it figuratively but what if he didn't? And if Venger is D. M.'s kid, then can you imagine what his mom must have looked like?

Would anyone else feed Uni to Tiamat during that very first encounter in the opening sequence or is it just me?

Is "Muppet Babies" about the Muppets as kids, or is it about the second generation of Muppets? If it's about the Muppets as kids, how come both Robin and Bean Bunny show up if they're supposed to be the youngest Muppets?

Okay, on "Muppet Babies", we NEVER saw Nannie's face. We never even saw her above the shoulders. What the heck did she look like? Consider that it's left unclear as to whether she's just the babies' caretaker or if she's their mother. And if she isn't their mother than where and who are their parents?

The cast of the "My Little Pony" cartoon changed several times as old ponies in the collectable toy line were retired and new ones introduced. Okay, but Megan and Spike remained in the cast each season. Didn't they notice that some of their friends had vanished?

Furthermore, all the ponies in Ponyland were female (the males were conveniently "on a race around the world" and only appeared in one episode). Where the heck did the baby ponies come from?

Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that they called it the "Care Bear Stare" when what they were doing was zapping people with pictures on their tummies? What did getting "Stared" feel like? Being bombarded with giant Lucky Charms?

Were the Care Bear Cousins the Bear's actual blood relatives? Then how can a bear possibly be related to a penguin?

Why did the opening of the second "Care Bears Movie" completely contradicted the origin story from the first one? Did they think the kids wouldn't notice?

The second "Care Bears Movie" was subtitled "A New Generation", so maybe it's about the second group of Care Bears. But if that's true, what happened to their parents from the first movie? Why do the "new generation" Bears act and look EXACTLY like the first batch? Were they cloned from the first Bears after they died in a horrible accident (maybe the giant heart from the first movie's end title sequence fell and flattened them during the final group portrait)?

This is not an eighties cartoon, but does anyone else feel really bad for Kenny on "South Park"? No matter what, he always ends up dead before the end of the episode. Is he supposed to represent the concept of Predestination? That our destiny is decided for us from day one and we can't do anything about it? Or does it just suck to be him?

The "Silverhawks" were a team of cyborgs who ran around exploring space. So why the heck did they have a country singer up there with them? Yeah, I know he was a cyborg too, but still, what kind of help is he going to provide? Scaring space monsters away with a rousing rendition of "Achy-Breaky Heart"?

Or, was Project: Silverhawk (or whatever) supposed to be some kind of cybernetic "Real World"? Like a bunch of totally random people (and a bird, and whatever the hell Copper Kid was) get turned into cyborgs and sent into space and we get to watch what happens?

How big were "the Snorks"? Some episodes show them as being about two or three feet tall but others place them at only inches high, or even about the size of a cocktail shrimp (mmm... shrimp...)! And, once and for all, if they were tiny, then were they related to the Smurfs or not?

What's the deal with the Snork's "snork" anyway? I guess it's a breathing organ, but how does it work? Does it work like a gill or like a snorkel? If it works like a snorkel, then how come you never see the Snorks surface for air?
There was also that one Snork who had two snorks. Is he some kind of advanced "Super Snork" or is this a primitive feature (akin to a horse being born with dewclaws)?

Why does Shaggy eat dog food? Scooby Snacks are treats given to Scooby, yet he eats them too. (That must be some damn good weed he's on!)

How does the Scooby Gang keep functioning? They have no jobs; they tool around in a van all day and solve mysteries just for fun. What do they do for money? How do they have to money to (for example) go to the fancy ski resort in the mystery of the Abominable Snowman?

Were the guest voices in "Scooby Movies" picked completely at random or what? Really, now. They had the cast of "Batman" in one episode, the Mamas and the Papas in the next one, and the Harlem Globetrotters in the next. Tell me they didn't pick those out of a hat or something.

This one's a little obscure if you aren't really obsessed with cartoon trivia, and I'm not even sure if it was from the 80s, but do you REALLY think "Porky and Daffy Meet the Groovy Ghoulies" is as bad as a lot of cartoon encyclopedias say?

Speaking of the Looney Tunes, and I know this isn't an 80s cartoon, but did any of my fellow classic cartoon fans feel as badly sh*t on as I did during "Space Jam"? (And brace yourselves because Disney's currently hard at work making a manure sack full of unnecessary sequels to their older movies. Shoot me now!)

You might recall that there was going to be a "Garbage Pail Kids" cartoon announced in early summer that never even got a chance to air it's first episode that next fall. The station decided it was "inappropriate". My question is this: how the hell did it take them THAT LONG to figure out that a cartoon about the "Garbage Pail Kids" might be inappropriate?

With regards to "The Chipmunk Reunion", which, as you'll see, ended up raising a LOT more questions than it purported to answer. Why did some of the forest animals wear clothes while others didn't? If Dave lived in a really nice little cabin out in the woods, why did he move out of it and into the suburbs? Wouldn't it have been less traumatic for Ma Chipmunk to ask Dave if she could move in with him for the winter along with her children? What did the Boar have against the Chipmunks? And finally, ARE the Chipmunks actual chipmunks? I ask this because in the finale, they're dancing around with some other rodents who look a LOT more like real life Sciurids than the Chipmunks do.

While I'm cheating and putting a few 90's cartoons in this list, here comes an old standard. What does the bathroom in CatDog's house look like and how do they/it/he use it?

No, forget CatDog. On "DragonTales" (which is an 80's cartoon stuck in a time warp if there ever was one), what the heck does the bathroom in Zack and Weezy's little underground cave thing look like and how the heck do *they* use it? More to the point, what happens when one or both of them wants to start dating?

Wouldn't it be a little awkward to live in Pee-Wee's Playhouse, seeing as everything (including the food) is alive in there? Think about it.

What was the deal with the Dinosaur Family in "Pee-Wee's Playhouse"? They were dinosaurs and they lived in a MOUSE HOLE. The father was a Triceratops, the mother was a Styracosaur. The twins were... I don't know what the hell they were (my first inclination is to call them Parasauralophi, but... no), and they didn't look anything like their parents. Is this supposed to make sense? Actually, now that I think of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse", nothing made sense. How come us 80s kids don't have a laundry list of mental disorders because of this insane show?

Oh wait, never mind. ^_^

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