Photo: CBS
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is far from adolescent; they’re damn near into a mid-life crisis. Turning 30- years-old this year, the green machine is still looking mean but probably with a few crow’s feet and smile lines. We’ve done ranked our favorite ’90s cartoons, but now we’re getting wacky and going all out with a ranking of our favorite childhood cartoons, including the ancient mysteries of Scooby-Doo up to the tales of Uncle Scrooge.
If you’re easily nostalgic or heavily opinionated when it comes to cartoons and your childhood, you’ll either love our ranking of the 10 best cartoons, or you’ll spit fire at us through your computer when you realize we left out Doug, Rugrats, Bobby’s World, X-Men, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Dexter’s Laboratory and plenty of other shows you gorged on in your youth. But that doesn’t make us any less right. We’re just drunk with (turtle) power, posting our favorite childhood TV cartoons with absolutely no regard for anyone’s feelings. Yeah, drunk with turtle power!
We’re Drunk With (Turtle) Power Ranking Our Favorite Childhood Cartoons As ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Turns 30
As far as legends go, check this out: We’re Celebrating the Upcoming ‘I Am Heath Ledger’ Documentary With Our Favorite Ledger Roles
TMNT Turns 30
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"10. The Ren & Stimpy Show"
Never has a dog and cat gotten together to more aptly illustrate our dysfunctional brains.
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"9. The Smurfs"
It was like watching The World of David the Gnome but without the racist tension of having different colored hats. Papa Smurf dishing out wisdom was accompanied by Smurfette delivering us our prepubescent blonde quota of the morning.
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"8. Darkwing Duck"
This purple-masked quack typically followed DuckTales, like a darker, edgier duck. Sort of like how Cinemax would show a police-themed episode after your parents' favorite detective shows were over.
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"7. Inspector Gadget"
This show, quirky enough to make a great cartoon but not a good movie, reminds us that dogs really are the brains of our operations.
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"6. Animaniacs"
What did we do Saturday mornings? The same thing we do every Saturday morning, try to try take over the world (but when that failed, Animaniacs). There were so many great subparts to this show (Pink and the Brain, Slappy Squirrel, The Goodfeathers). Seriously, who didn't love those fucking pigeons!?
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"5. DuckTales"
Most of us just wanted to jump in the coin pit, but there's a good reasons this show is getting rebooted. Can't wait for more tales of duck.
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"4. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?"
Scooby and the gang got a lot of reincarnations, mostly progressively worse with some poor live-action attempts. Has this show really been in existence for almost 50 years? Christ, Scooby!
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"3. The Real Ghostbusters"
Ironically, they weren't the real original Ghostbusters, but they were still great. Starting in 1986 right after the hype of the first film and disappearing right after the sequel in 1991, we thought things were going downhill, then we got Extreme Ghostbusters. Yikes. Doesn't stop us from binging hard on the five seasons of this show that just went up on Netflix as we await the announcement of the new animated series and movie. It can't get much worse than the YouTube comment section on Paul Feig's reboot.
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"2. Batman: The Animated Series"
The Dark Knight has gotten a thousand different suits and cars, as well as butlers and villains, but none can compete with this cartoon series. This animated series showed up around the time of Burton's Batman Returns and ended right before Schumacher's Batman and Robin, the worst blockbuster of the last 20 years.
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"1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
And who could top this foursome? Now 30 years since its conception, we celebrate all the brutal continuity errors and things that never made sense. Sadly, it's still better than whatever Michael Bay's company barfed up. Might be smart to revisit since it could be a long while until we get new turtle time outside of their Nickelodeon show.
