Here Are Some Of My Favourite Cartoons From My Childhood

I grew up in an era where screens were just beginning to enter Indian homes and still viewed with a fair bit of suspicion. As a result, I was only allowed to watch TV for a limited amount of time. I cherished the one or two odd hours of TV time I had and made sure to watch my favourite cartoon. 

What was my favourite cartoon and who was my favourite cartoon character, you ask? It would be a sin for me to take a single name as there were a bunch of them I really enjoyed as a young boy. Let me launch into a list right away. So, here goes, in no particular order:

Samurai Jack

The lead is a Japanese, warrior prince (samurai) who sets out to save his kingdom from an evil, shapeshifting demon (Aku). The prince has nothing but a magical sword (katana). He definitely comes pretty close to being my favourite cartoon character. The plot revolves around ‘Jack’ beating Aku, while also trying to break the time travel curse the demon has placed him in.

SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron

T-Bone and Razor are cats who are a part of their city’s law enforcement agency. They have a fallout with their chief and are suspended. This makes them build their own hightech jet with discarded parts they find at a military junkyard. They decided to protect their city secretly, as SWAT cats.

Fun fact: when the show was dubbed in Hindi, they were called Bade Meow and Chhote Meow instead.

The Wild Thornberrys

Not only did I love this show, so did my mom. It was about a family of six travelling around the world in an RV. The family consisted of a set of parents, two daughters, an adopted son and a clever monkey. Sounds cool, right? Wait, there’s more. The parents are wildlife filmmakers and their younger daughter, Eliza, can communicate with animals. Together, they have adventures of all kinds.

Oswald

This was another show which my mom and I equally liked. It was about a blue octopus (Oswald) who lives with his dog, Weenie. He is fun-loving and helpful. Henry the penguin, Madame Butterfly, her daughter Catrina the caterpillar and Daisy the sunflower, were recurring characters.

My favourite part: Oswald loved to play the piano and he had a song for every mood, come rain or shine.

Dexter’s Laboratory

A boy genius named Dexter has a secret laboratory where he cooks up world-saving inventions. His sister, Dee Dee, is not as smart as him and often ends up destroying his inventions, unintentionally. His arch enemy is another nerdy boy named Mandark. Mandark tries to destroy Dexter and his lab time and again, to prove himself superior. Kahaani mein twist yeh hai ki Mandark has the hots for Dee Dee.

The Powerpuff Girls

As a young boy who was raised as a girl, it was incredibly cool to see three, young girls with super powers. The Powerpuff Girls was my favourite cartoon as a wee lad.

Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup are young sheroes who protect their world from aliens, bank robbers, common criminals, mad scientists and more… Speaking of mad scientists, they are what they are because Professor Utonium (their dad) ends up adding ‘chemical X’ by mistake when creating them.

Recess

Six students in the fourth standard make it their mission to protect the other kids on the playground. In spite of king Bob, who enforces his rule through unwritten laws upheld by his minions, TJ, Spinelli, Vince, Gus, Gretchen and Mikey “seek a rational balance between conformity and individuality”.

Not only did their crew remind me of my own gang of friends, it was fun to watch them stand up to bullies, snitches and mean teachers, while having each other’s backs. Spinelli is was a favourite of mine because her tomboy arc hit right home.

Pokémon 

Almost every other kid from my generation grew up watching Pokémon, urf pocket monsters. As its Wikipedia page reads:

“The anime follows the quest of the main character, Ash Ketchum, a Pokémon Master in training, as he and a small group of friends travel around the world of Pokémon along with their Pokémon partners.”

My favourite on the show was Pikachu, a cuddly, yellow character who looked like the cross between a bunny and rat. As cute as it looked, it could generate powerful electric beams through sacs on its cheeks.

Courage the Cowardly Dog

I have always been a scaredy-cat and yet I continued to watch this show even though it gave me the creeps. It was about a dog named Courage, who was a coward, just like me. He lived with an old couple in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. He had to regularly protect them from ghostly creatures that threatened their simple lives. *Phew, enough said!*

Princess Sara

This was my introduction to anime. It is a heart wrenching tale about a young girl whose wealthy father passes away after admitting her into an elite educational institute in London. As fate would have it, she is demoted to the role of a domestic worker from that of a student.

Sara deals with being orphaned and bullied, but she doesn’t lose her spirit. With the help of her friends, she tries to tackle all obstacles that come her way to the best of her ability. Does she get the happy ending she deserves? I guess you will have to watch and find out because you are not getting any major spoilers from me.

Moving on, this is NOT an exhaustive list by any means. I just wrote about the first 11 I could think of, off the top of my head. There were other classics like ‘Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!’, ‘Tom and Jerry’, ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’, ‘Pingu’, ‘Johnny Bravo’, ‘Noddy’, ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’, ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’, and many more… The list goes on and on!

So, now that you know a little bit about my favourite cartoon(s), tell me about some of yours in the comments below. Who is your favourite cartoon character of the lot?

Featured image is a still from the cartoon series ‘Samurai Jack’.