I have no memory of this Saturday morning cartoon at all (courtesy of the great animation site Cartoon Brew):
The animation house for Rubik, the Amazing Cube-- Ruby-Spears Productions--was also responsible for such early 80's cartoon cabochons as Mister T (Mr. T coaches a U.S. gymnastics team, solving mysteries between pummel horse competitions), Turbo Teen (teen morphs into Camaro when exposed to extreme heat, courtesy of secret lab car accident), Thundaar the Barbarian (Earth is destroyed in the far-off year of 1994 only to be reborn 2000 years later as a wizard-ruled wasteland) and Sass-quatch (cheeky Bigfoot gets in and out of all sorts of jams while solving Northwest crimes with three teens, their easily-frightened dog, the ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier, a talking VW van and a magical sprite only they can see, hear and taste).
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5 comments:
Now I have to claw out my eyes.
Sadly, I remember way, way too much about this cartoon -- and when Wikipedia says the cube tended to get scrambled easily, believe it. You knock that all-powerful magical flying being off the kitchen counter and he hits the ground, bounces a couple of times and the colors get COMPLETELY mixed up and the evil magician will get you if you don't solve the puzzle RIGHT NOW.
I'd forgotten that Menudo did the theme song, though. There was a stretch there when ABC was just bonkers about Menudo, even dropping "Schoolhouse Rock" out of the rotation in favor of short videos with lyrics like, "If there's anything you need, you can always find it in a shopping mall." And yet I still miss the '80s.
"I have no memory of this Saturday morning cartoon at all..."
Consider yourself lucky.
I resented Menudo. Their music stank, I couldn't watch one of their videos for more than a minute before switching the channel. But I always thought "Schoolhouse Rock" went off the air because of Ronald Reagan's deregulation.
I'm sure that is what happened -- all I know is, I was 11 years old, and suddenly I'm watching "Menudo on ABC" between shows where I used to be watching "Schoolhouse Rock." The politics behind it escaped me, and I sort of stuck with that initial "Menudo killed Conjunction Junction" impression.
I do know that a couple of years later, the last gasp of Menudo-mania I ever saw was a Nickelodeon contest to see one of their concerts. It included an announcer's line that was something like, "You crazed fans try to stop screaming long enough to write down this address." Ah, stupid circa-1985 Nickelodeon. Then it got super-cool again a year or so later, and now I guess it's fallen behind the Disney Channel which is just so bizarre to me.
The Rubik's Cube series concept would later be rewritten into the Hellraiser movies.
Thundarr the Barbarian was pretty cool. I liked the post-apocalyptic swords-and-sorcery-and-science-fiction concept. And it was neat to see the Moon broken apart and then re-formed.
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