Like many of you, I had some fond memories of the X-Men animated series which aired on Fox during the mid-’90s. It wasn’t nearly as good as Batman: the Animated Series, but at the time there really wasn’t much on the air in the way of comic-based cartoons. With the announcement of the upcoming X-Men anime which will be airing in Japan, I made the mistake of watching a few of these “classic” episodes.

The nostalgia I felt was great at first but after an episode or two, it became painful to watch. The scripts were terrible, and the art lacking. The actors fit the roles just fine but you can only take so much of it. So, if you want a good laugh, check out the clip above. I warn you, though – if you still habor any nostalgia for the series, this video might just ruin it for you.

Tim is a pro-blogger and freelance writer out of San Diego, California. In addition to Fanboy.com, he contributes to the ModernMethod Network of sites as the Features and Reviews Editor for the Japanese culture and entertainment blog, Japanator. He’s also an Assocaite Editor for their popular gaming blog, Destructoid, and the collectible toy culture blog, Tomopop. For more information, follow him on twitter, or check out TimSheehy.com.

Once upon a time there were the Flintstones followed by the Jetsons, animated family sitcoms that adults could watch as well as the kids. Then a great dark age followed for many years until the Simpsons brought the genre back in 1989. Since then we’ve seen it all from South Park to Family Guy and frankly the concept is a bit tired at this point. But when you take that and add second rate jokes you get Sit Down, Shut Up. And just in case you think the first video clip that I found was lame, here’s additional proof that this is the must miss show of the season:

Ummm yes the catch phrase! How about “Next time hire a real writer!”

Yes more characters we just don’t want to get to know. One thing that people forget about comedy (animated or otherwise) is that a comical actor has to have some dimensions — part of the reason is that we’re laughing at ourselves to some degree.

Another gym teacher character — how original! What’s sad is that watching this I’m reminded how much better the gym teacher character is in Home Movies on Cartoon Network.

Sometimes when something is so bad it becomes funny — but in this case the comedy here is so tame that it’s just dull and painful to watch. Any way there are several more clips on YouTube but life is to short to waste on that sort of thing. Frankly the real mystery that deserves some thought is how a show like this manages to even get on the air? 

There’s something very haunting about some of the Russian animation that I’ve seen over the years, there’s a sense of surrealism but there’s something very unnerving underneath the surface. This animated film is from 1991 and is titled Frother (Потец) — it’s based upon a poem Alexander Vvedensky from 1937. The film’s director was Alexander Fedulov (1947 – 1996) and the other worldly art direction is by Vladimir Burkin. Here’s the second part of the film:

As with most things in TV land our story begins in another medium — film! Back in the 50s THE designer who revolutionized opening credits was Saul Bass who favored a very graphic and illustrational approach to making opening titles an art form onto themselves. To me his masterpiece was Anatomy of a Murder in 1958 which matched a striking musical score by Duke Ellington to a simple yet powerful animation:

This revolution in cinema from the late 50s had a huge impact on the golden age of television during the 60s. Although TV was not a high brow medium ready to borrow modern art references and embrace primitivism — but what was interesting is that this freed up many shows from that era to have animated opening titles even though the television show itself was live action. The first example I came across of this trend was the titles from the series My Three Sons from 1960. The color version shown here is a later version of the black and white opening titles:

A bit later in 1962 The Lucy Show came out which was a follow up to he popular series I Love Lucy. What’s interesting with these title is that they feature caricatures of Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance which are quite mod looking:

By 1964 the trend had taken off — these opening titles from Bewitched could easily stand up on their own as an animated TV show:

And of course I Dream of Jeannie from 1965 is even more exotic picking up on an Arabian Nights meets NASA visual theme:

What’s interesting to me is that animated opening titles weren’t just limited to sitcoms, but could also be used for action and adventure television series. Here’s a good example from the opening titles of The Wild Wild West from 1965:

In 1966 things came full circle when you had the Batman TV series which was based on a comic book turned into a live action drama — but what makes these titles so amazing is that they’re picking up on the fine art notion of Pop Art. These titles owe a great deal to Roy Lichtenstein who started to create paintings that were based on panels from comic books, but what makes these titles so cutting edge is that Lichtenstein was only doing those paintings just a few years before in the early 60s:

In 1967 the torch is carried by The Carol Burnett Show which kept the flame going until the mid-70s:

And of course no article on animated opening titles would be complete without a mention of 1969’s Monty Python which featured the brilliant animation of Terry Gilliam:

And on the hipster side The Partridge Family starts to bring in a hippy touch to the genre in 1970:

Sadly with the 70s realism came back to television and even comedy shows started switching back to live action or straight graphic approaches to opening titles. Although one last gem that I did find was the opening titles from Rhoda from 1974 which feature a photo collage technique which still stands up very well today:

As an animation fanboy I always love it when a cartoon makes a reference (visual or otherwise) to the medium itself. This clever animated spot from the English animation studio small time inc. shows a series of flipbooks that tell the sad tale of a little black dog. To me flipbooks are sort of the “gateway drug” to learning the basics of animation, so they have a special place in my heart!

Shown above is the latest sneak peak of Bolt which is due out in theaters on November 21st and I have to say that I’m not getting excited by this clip. Now my understanding is that the film will be released in Disney Digital 3D and while that sounds cool it doesn’t mean that there can’t be a story up there on the screen. And from this small sample the whole flick looks like a bad action film which is already based on existing cartoons like Road Runner.

The other thing that’s missing here is that none of the characters seem lovable — the dog character Bolt seems to lack any charm, and even the bad guys in the scene above seem so generic. For crying out loud this is suppose to be a Disney film, having interesting evil characters is half the point! To me it looks like Disney was so obsessed with making a Pixar film that they forgot what makes Disney so special (hint: it’s charm, storytelling and imagination!).

This Jetsons Little Golden Book is from 1962 — and what’s refreshing to me about this cover is the bold sense of optimism which you don’t see much these days. Authors like Isaac Asimov always felt that dividing line of modern science fiction was that it viewed technology as a positive force in the universe. However I think science fiction (and other imaginative literature) is a reflection of how society views the world at that point in time. So while attempting to predict the future these cultural documents tell us more about the present — or in this case the past.

Found via stuffbywackystuff.