Saturday Morning Cartoons

The Godzilla Power Hour

First off, it's Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult

Godzilla was a 30-minute animated series co-produced between Hanna-Barbera Productions and Toho in 1978 and aired on NBC in the US and TV Tokyo in Japan.

In Japan the series was called "Godzilla: Voyage Chronicles" (ゴジラ：航海クロニクル). The series is an animated adaptation of the Japanese Godzilla films produced by Toho. The series continued to air until 1981. In this episode, Godzilla takes out a ruthless terrorist organization called Cobra on Cobra Island. It's the best of the entire 26 episode series. Godzilla is allowed to act like Godzilla.

You may have noticed Godzooky, by now. He's the the nephew of Godzilla and Pete's best friend who has a light-hearted/useless role in the show. Godzooky can fly using the small wings under his arms, though his uncle Godzilla is unable to fly. Whenever he tries to breath fire, he just coughs up smoke and he never seems to have the ability to shoot laser beams from his eyes. Or change size, or be awesome. He's a proto-Scrappy Doo.

GI Toe is [probably] Going to Stink

Folks, the GI Joe movie has been showing signs of total and complete suck for months now. Pretty much ever since they decided that it's going to be an international task force....

A video from the Toy Fair shows a robotic GI Joe suit that does 'awesome' stuff. It's got cords and running, it talks, and looks more like RoboCop and Buzz Lightyear's illegitimate son. That outfit reveals "the Accelerator sequence" in the movie. It's an Iron Man-ish power suit. It is not the simple GI Joe with a Kung Fu grip. Oh, and suggested retail is $70.

Meanwhile, all research on the subject - because for some reason Blasphemes readers really enjoy GI Joe movie updates - everyone involved, from the Director, to the writer, to the art director have zero knowledge of the property before they were hired. Look, that's probably okay. Most Star Wars kids grew out of their toys before GI Joe really got big. But no one involved seems to know what this is about. GI Joe has been around since the 60's. There was a comic, a fairly rich toy history, and a half hour ad/cartoon that ran most of the 80's. Zero knowledge?

Plus - they're under an extreme time crunch to get the principle photography (read green screen) finished so that they can cram in the 1,400 FX in before August. All this because some people went to see the transforming trucks... So don't expect Oscar caliber dialogue on this steamer.

Second, they're screwing around with Cobra Commander. Here's the first look. Granted, it's for the kiddies - but it's a fairly good guess what the final will end up looking like.

Guys, this isn't hard - he's supposed to look like this or this:


I'm not even suggesting that you make him a used car salesman (Marvel Comics) or a complete idiot that spent no time in training his people. Cobra troops couldn't shoot straight. Hell, even his pilots in mini-helicopters had to have standard issue parachutes because they got shot down so often.

At least NO ONE ever got hurt.

Let's face it - Cobra Commander was a meglo-maniac with an inexhaustible trust fund for MASS Devices, a weather dominators, and flying aircraft carrier bases (even at 1985's prices, I can't imagine what it would have cost just to fuel that thing) and a retirement pension fund for henchmen that must rival the UAW especially since no one ever died - but say what you will about the guy - his style was pretty awesome. So why mess with that?

I should also mention that Snake Eyes has a mouth in his face mask - and it kind of moves when he's not speaking.

On the bright side, there's no mention of Sgt. Slaughter being on the cast.