2. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1987-1996)

I feel pretty comfortable listing this as one of the worst cartoons ever because both TMNT creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman can’t stand it either. This is a prime example of what happens when a corporate structure takes a great property and dumbs it down to the point that it is unwatchable. The worst part is this is what people think of when they hear the name Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

When the Turtles comic book originally hit stores in the mid-eighties it was incredible. The Turtles were violent, gruff and always brutal. They all looked the same save for their weapons and when they had to stop crime they would bash bad guys into bloody pulps. Seeing the potential for a series Murakami-Wolf-Swenson Film Productions snatched it up and then promptly ruined it.

Instead of four brooding, dark characters the TMNT were turned into kooky wisecracking teens that love pizza and burgers. They rode skateboards and screamed things like “Kawabunga Dude” when they attacked their endless stream of insipid enemies. The worst was the twisting of Shredder from truly evil into this slapstick idiot who presided over a robot army because violence against human bad guys was a no-no.

I hated the voices the Turtles were given which had them sounding like those teenage mall kids that can’t land any skateboard tricks and talk in some kind of wanna be southern California drawl. Every time one of the Turtles speaks you start partying for Shredder’s men to stab them through the throat. See, it does promote violence to children!

Everything about this show failed but nothing as spectacularly as the scripts. Literally it was the same adventure, the same bad guys, the same one-liners week in and week out. Nothing changed, at all, ever. It felt like the writers banged out one script a year and then animated the season around it. Sure cartoon scripts don’t have to be Shakespeare but these were a whole new dawn of stupid.

Badly animated, badly written and hugely popular this series single handedly led to the Turtles being seen in pop culture as the three stooges with weapons. People don’t even know there was a comic book or how good it was. Nope, instead people are screaming KOAWBUNGA DUDE and eating Turtles Frozen Pizzas

I hate the world.