Kids' shows nowadays

[Xerus]

I thought the Mr. Men Show was great. The stories and the character's personalities were very likable.

WordGirl is a cartoon today that actually has sophisticated humor. The creator of the show felt that they lost some ground in making educational shows smart and funny, which is why she created that show. And it has a Y7 rating too.

I also liked HBO Crashbox, where regular cartoon characters of different animations play puzzle games that can really make big kids think. And the characters have great senses of humor too.

 

[Drtooth]

The Mr. Men Show was one of the few times I think changing the source material ever so slightly actually worked and gave us a unique product. The 90's series seemed to follow the book format more closely, and the cartoons were very good... the UK version has better voice acting and not a bunch of forced celebrity impersonations (though the UK's version of Mr. Greedy sounded a little like Sidney Greenstreet)... as well as no embarrassing to watch live action segments.

But the new series was just wonderfully done. Seemed like a series of animated SNL segments with the same characters. Some of the character changes I actually quite liked. Mr. Grumpy was more of a grouchy, Walter Matheau type instead of the very angry character he was in the book. And the way they constantly paired either extremely contrasting characters (Mr. Fussy and Mr. Messy) or ones that are so similar that they clash (Misters Rude, Grumpy and Stubborn) gave us some great comedic tension. And really... it took until 2009 for me to actually get Mr. Men merchandise,. I've been reading the books since I was a kid, and all the merchandise was UK exclusive.

I wish the show stuck around longer.... there was a rumor that a third season was going to be a LOT more preschoolified, so maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

 

[Misskermie]

I want to say I'm twelve and I agree these shows are messed up. And yes I loved the mr. men show it was one of my faves! Um... Have you talked about regular show yet? because it is on cartoon network at about eight, and it is meant for kids 10 and up I do believe. It's highly inopropriate.

 

[charlietheowl]

Um... Have you talked about regular show yet? because it is on cartoon network at about eight, and it is meant for kids 10 and up I do believe. It's highly inopropriate.

I'm going to preface my comments here by first saying that I am a giant fan of Regular Show, even to the point where I bought a t-shirt of Mordecai and Rigby from Hot Topic. But I do not think it is a "children's show". There's a lot of stuff in there that push the boundaries a little bit. I don't have a problem with it airing at eight, because it is shown as TV-PG with the rating system, but I would say that it should be marketed more towards teenagers/young adults.

 

[Misskermie]

Yes it is good in a teen/adult area, but kids shouldn't be exposed to certain things like references to sexual elements

 

[D'Snowth]

WHOA! That never EVER happened.

There are 3 families in the show...

One's a traditional family with a husband and wife that love each other very much, and their 3 kids.

The second is a homosexual couple and their adopted Asian child

The third is actually the father of the mother of the first family and one of the members of the second. His wife was a sleazeball that dumped him, and he remarried to a younger woman and got a step son out of it.

There is NO polygamy in the series at ALL. Trust me. I've watched every single episode there is.

I do know of a case of reverse polygamy in Raising Hope, where a relative of the main characters (who was only in the pilot and disappeared with no explanation until that episode) fell into a cult that allowed that sort of thing. of course, it was dealt with sarcasm and it came off as a joke there.

Okay, then I truly misjudged this series based on was really was cases of false advertising. I apologize.

 

[D'Snowth]

I really disliked Big Comfy Couch (various reasons, don't want to list them all), and when I found out the main character clown was the voice of both Jubilee from the 90's X-men and Lydia Deetz from the animated Beetlejuice, something in me died a little... didn't help at all that I had embarrassing to mention 10 year old crushes on them.

Awww... I liked Big Comfy Couch... and that girl was ALSO Ruthie (the farm girl) from FTB.

 

[Drtooth]

I'm going to preface my comments here by first saying that I am a giant fan of Regular Show, even to the point where I bought a t-shirt of Mordecai and Rigby from Hot Topic. But I do not think it is a "children's show". There's a lot of stuff in there that push the boundaries a little bit. I don't have a problem with it airing at eight, because it is shown as TV-PG with the rating system, but I would say that it should be marketed more towards teenagers/young adults.

Indeed. The Cartoon Network Monday Night line up is intended for older kids (hense the PG rating... though I honestly feel Adventure Time and Mad can get away with a G rating), and most of the fans ARE indeed older teenagers and adults well into their 20's. I don't see why any kid under the age of 9 would even watch Regular Show (Adventure Time, maybe... Mad references a LOT of stuff only that age group understands), unless they were watching The Simpsons or Family Guy anyway (which are far more adult... but then again, they ALWAYS marketed The Simpsons to kids as well as adults). It just doesn't seem to be the show that would appeal to them. That's their Friday Night line up.

The show feels like something that could be on adult swim... but it doesn't need explicit sex, drugs and violence forced into a lot of the adult swim programming (I find Mad superior in every way to Robot Chicken for that very reason). But it DOES speak for a lot of people in their 20's. I shouldn't even tell you about the student film it was based off of, but thankfully none of that's in there. Actually, with the characters involved not being explained, it works better.

Regular Show (and the rest of the Monday Night line up) actually proved that there IS a market for cartoons for teens and 20 year olds, and they helped turn around Cartoon Network from a dangerous, dark corner of bad reality shows and crummy live action shows that couldn't scare Power Rangers if they even tried. And I'm very very glad for it.

 

[charlietheowl]

The show feels like something that could be on adult swim... but it doesn't need explicit sex, drugs and violence forced into a lot of the adult swim programming (I find Mad superior in every way to Robot Chicken for that very reason).

That's a lot of the show's appeal to me, the fact that the show is aimed at older people but not really explicit in its humor. I've seen/heard enough of the Adult Swim lineup to know that a lot of the shows cross over into tasteless territory with their jokes, and that's not something I'm really looking for in my cartoons. It's funny, the older I get, the less explicit my tastes seem to get. I don't know whether that's maturity or that I'm getting soft in my old age.

 

[Ozymandias]

^ I do believe that's something called maturity.