• The show that both of you are thinking about was called <i>Pro Stars</i> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px5njG8ikvo&feature=player_embedded"><i>Pro Stars</i> intro</a>)

• Iwatched all of those except Little Shop of Horrors. Missed that one somehow. But the others are classics. LOL.

• the original Robocop was from the 80's not the 90's

• Um, Robocop was from 1987, not "the 90's".

• I distinctly remember trying to get up before 6am because there was one cartoon at 5:30 that in never got to see because i never got up in time. I also remember plotting what shows to watch with the tvguide. So i would have this list of channels to change to at various times

• loved the toxic crusaders cartoon I had most of the action figures the hummor was goofy enough that troma HAD to have been consulting on it

• 4 seconds of interwebs research would have told you Robocop came out in the 80s. Fail.

• Anybody remember the Swamp Thing cartoon? That was so bad but I just HAD TO watch it every morning. I watched almost all of these to be honest, but I don't remember Police Academy. I also loved Rambo...it was like a poor man's G.I.Joe, much like GoBots to Transformers.

• I agree i loved the 90 cartoons

• Saturday morning was the only time my parents wouldnt play the "Its my tv I watch what i want" clause there were cartoons on but thats the only day I was sure to watch them

• RoboCop was from the 80s. It came out in 1987.

• I was pretty crazy about Guttenberg as a tween back in the 90s due to his resurgence with It Takes Two and Zeus and Roxanne. Yes, you read that right but give me some slack, I was a kid with a crush. When I finally came on the internet and read about the Police Academy franchise through IMDB or some other site (This was pre-Wikipedia), I was rather shocked that there was a cartoon based on it, considering the source material. As for some of the other cartoons based on films (and video games), I was always disappointed by how much they deviated from the source material.

• I was hooked on the Ed Grimley cartoon for its own absurdity value, but also because I was a huge SCTV fan and anything that gave me regular doses of Count Floyd was something I could not miss. And have any of you ever hear the Count Floyd album? If not, seek it out.

• Oh, my. I watched most of these. Not entirely sure what that says about my childhood.

• I only recently discovered the Rambo cartoon, and Goddamn it is ridiculously awesome. Instead of Rambo shooting people, they make up for it by having him pull off the most over the top stunts they can think off. When you see Rambo flying a jet plane into the path of a missile, jumping out at the last moment, and freefalling in the air while blasting things with a rocket launcher, you know you are witnessing greatness.

• As a child I was oddly fascinated with the Misadventures of Ed Grimly cartoon. To this day I never understood why, then when cartoon network was a fledgling network it brought the reruns back into syndication. But, you're right a totally odd choice for a childrens' cartoon

• I remember waking up shortly after sunrise, creeping into my parents' room and picking the parent least likely to smack me in the head for waking them up so early, and asking if my brother and I could go watch cartoons. Ah, the days before cable, when Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry showed ALL the good parts, and cartoons were over in plenty of time to go outside and ride bikes or climb trees or torture ants . . . I agree; I think kids are missing out on something special, yep.

• Toxic Crusaders toys were made by Playmates at the same time as TMNT toys. Since they were more or less the same scale/style they worked well as generic mutants and villains.

• Didn't the Ed Grimley cartoon feature live-action Count Floyd segments? How far was THAT going over the heads of the target audience?

• Realistically, Alien vs Predator. That would have been cool and it would have given kids nightmares of HR Giger's penis headed xenomorphs. The merchandise was already popular to begin with, too. I remember I had around seven or eight xenomorph toys as a kid, but didn't see any of the movies until I was in high school. Unrealistically, The Spirit. It was already cartoony to begin with and there is a lot of room for improvement...

• Yu-Gi-OH 5D's is still better than GX...I still think that 4Kids' should of let go of it. The new anime spin-off called Zexal looks like it may be more for the kids/tweens, compared to the others and probably better than GX. Though the new guy has bad hair.

• When I was a kid I was absolutely OBSESSED with "Little Shop of Horrors", and was ecstatic when i heard they were making a Saturday morning cartoon. I clearly remember my heartbreak when the cartoon finally aired. A rapping Audrey 2? Who eats junk food instead of people? And has snail-like eyes and looks like it was drawn with sharpie markers by barely-trained seals? A part of me died that day. Even 12-year-old Dave knew that my favorite homicidal plant deserved so much better.

• I agree, I miss the real Kids'WB and 1 Saturday Morning. Theres CW'4Kids now, though its all that is left of the Saturday Morning Animation legacy and one of the only anime blocks left on television....I miss the days when most of the Marvel and DC comics animation was on standard cable.

• That would be ProStars.

• I remember that, though I don't remeber what it was called. At least Jordan, Jackson, and Gretzky were recognizable to kids. What about the Ed Grimley cartoon? Or the Louie Anderson cartoon?

• Showgirls:the animated series....I may have just dreamed his though...

• I don't know if anyone remembers this, but the killer tomatoes cartoon had 3D sequences, you had to put on those red and blue glasses, and shit, that was weird.

• It's absolutely criminal that "The Last Starfighter" never got a cartoon spin-oiff.

• Beetlejuice anyone?

• Street Fighter Mortal Kombat

• The Karate Kid

• What about that show that had Wayne Gretzky, Bo Jackson and Michael Jordon as world-traveling secret agent athletes? That was pretty damn bad, and they made Gretzky into the "Shaggy" of the group because he was always eating. And the "Q" ripoff guy who supplied the group with gizmos would pander to Jackson's schtik by going "oh and Mr. Jackson, this baseball bat shaped rocket launcher fires football projectiles!" Or something like that. Anyone? Anyone?

• No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Come on, a kids show adapted from a comic book about mutant ninja monsters that WILL STRAIGHT UP SHOOT YOU WITH GUNS?

• How about "Betty Toons"? Like Tales From The Crypt, it's not based on a movie but a TV show that isn't exactly kid-oriented..."Betty La Fea" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsEEvfApjJI&feature=related Yeah, "Ugly Betty: The Animated Adventures". The very first episode ends with her bruised and sobbing on a soccer field as all the cool kids walk off laughing. Fun!

• Roughnecks may have been visually based on the movie, but it more in common tonally with the original source material. The cartoon owed a lot more to Heinlein's "Hoo rah! Real citizens fight for their country," outlook than Verhoeven's backhanded bitch slap to military propaganda. Roughnecks was actually a pretty cool show. Aimed more at the 12-14 year old crowd. Definitely one of those shows like BtAS that you can watch a lot of it without the rose colored glasses.

• Depending on your location, there's still plenty of Saturday morning cartoons. If you get whatever the hell WB or UPN mutated into, you're treated to Yu-Gi-Oh repeats and sequel series, the second worst Sonic the Hedgehog series, Dragonball Z and couple other assorted crap. They're so bad that I want to gouge my eyes out when my kids are watching them but that's probably what my dad thought about the Smurfs.

• I remember the Police academy cartoon and a few others, but totally missed the Highlander one. Who thought a cartoon where people get beheaded every episode was a good idea?

• cartoon inception sounds plausible! all they have to do is splatter ink all over the animation sheet and say, "And now, they're stuck in a psychedelic hippie's Limbo." XD

• True story: the original Toxic Avenger movie opened during my third year of college and on that weekend I'd decided to have my first experience with "magic mushrooms" at an old friend's apartment in lower Manhattan. With the mushrooms' effects being bolstered by several beers, a couple of shots of Jose Cuervo and some major bong-pulls of righteous Hawaiian weed, my buddy and I left the apartment and wandered the locals streets, completely out of our minds. We chanced upon a local movie theater that was running The Toxic Avenger, so we bought our tickets and sat through it while tripping balls and thoroughly enjoying the experience. But the icing on the cake was the unexpected appearance in the film of our high school drama coach, one Albert Pia, in a scene where he was chatting with the main bad guy near the end of the film. My friend and I totally lost it at that point because we did not at all expect to have a reminder of our hometown experience crashing headlong into our hallucingenic adventure. Since then I have seen a number of films while looped on Fantastic Fungus (which I gave up around 1990), including Alien (absolutely NOT a good idea), Infra Man (if ever there were a film that should be experienced while on mushrooms, this is the one), and a memorable double feature of both Aliens and Big Trouble in Little China on the same night (Aliens was a case of "you are there" and it was awesome, but by the time I got to Big Trouble in Little China I was peaking so hard that the film made no sense, requiring me to go back the very next night just so I could know what the hell I saw), but none of those matches the fun I had with The Toxic Avenger in that condition. Former stoner out!

• The Big Lebowski

• Until you reminded me of the Laverne & Shirley cartoon with the talking pig drill sergeant, my vote for the worst animated TV spinoff was a tie between Gilligan's Planet and the Happy Days one where the Fonz and friends flew around in a time machine or something, with a talking dog named Mr. Cool who was a the Fonz's canine analog. The runner-up would have been the Dukes of Hazzard cartoon.

• Wow!, I am a cartoon nostalgia nerd and even I had no idea about the Rambo cartoon? Great list though but I would have to give honorable mention to Teen Wolf and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures.

• They do Travis they're called video games

• Again, what's inappropriate about Ghostbusters? It was a HUGE marketing juggernaut that could have easily appealed to the adventure sense of "ghost hunting" for kids. It's like saying that a TMNT cartoon was bizarre because the comics were violent.

• it's probably a safe bet to say each of these series had at least one character voiced by Frank Welker.

• This shouldve been a top 10 list. With the inclusion of Beetlejuice, and number one being the real ghostbusters cartoon.

• What's inexplicable about Back to the Future getting a cartoon? It's a very popular PG movie series with a time traveling car and a cool skateboarding hero. That's tailor-made for a cartoon adaptation.

• what about the Back to the Future Cartoon? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SNhxGQa98E

• This explains a lot about the weird space marine designs in that toyline.

• Man, have you guys already forgotten that great Watchmen cartoon? http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797

• Well, Conan had been around for 50 years before the films in comics and literature, and considering the show made about as many divergences, I don't think it should be counted as a "movie spinoff," per se, any more than <i>Batman: The Animated Series</i> was a "move spinoff" of the Tim Burton films.

• Aw, no "The Mask:The Animated Series"? Ah well, still a nice list over all.

• "I feel a ripple dissolve coming on": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rek4c-pU6ZQ

• Kids knew who Robocop and Rambo were, whether they saw the movies or not. Furthermore, kids were able to see these movies when they were shown in edited form on network TV. The same goes for the original HBO Tales from the Crypt show, which I watched religiously in edited syndicated form every week. Funny article though.

• Quite possibly the only theme tune with a kazoo. :-D

• Apparently there was supposed to be an Aliens: The Animated Series in the 90's but the production got cancelled before anything came out. http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad224/Simbacca47/OP_ALIENS.jpg

• Wish they still did this, actually. 300: the Animated Series! Matrix Adventures! Superbader! I mean, really, why not?

• ARGH...not only was the Free Willy cartoon so AWFUL, ABC (after being bought by Disney) REPLACED REBOOT WITH IT!!! I will never forgive Disney for that.

• Technically based off of the television show, not the movie.

• Cartoons have always been hit or miss. Also nostalgia can really cloud ones judgment. I watched several cartoons a lot in my youth. He-man, Transformers, GI Joe, MASK, Thundercats, Gobots, TMNT, and a few others. I got back into Transformers and GI Joe again back in the late 90s with Beast Wars. I watched the 2k3 version of He-man and loved it. Made me want to see the old original stuff again... That was a mistake. It really shows its age. They constantly reuse old animation, voice acting is wooden and lifeless half the time, animation is minimal, plots are dull, etc. Gobots was similar, but it seemed written for younger crowd than TFs, but was ok. MASK I still found a guilty pleasure. COPS too. Both are somewhat decent. TMNT was ok most of the time. Thundercats' acting is kinda flat. It is still ok. GI Joe and Transformers still hold up very well for me. They were two of my favorites and I bought both complete series sets from Shout. Love both series to death. Nothing but praise from me. Even comedic stuff from my middle school years like Freakazoid and Animaniacs hold up extremely well. Every generation will have cartoons that hold up to the test of time and are fantastic (90s X-men, GI Joe, TFs, etc) and crap that may be semi popular at the time but are crap...

• right. Return had FT (fuzzy tomato) and Tara in it. I love Clooney in Return. He is hilarious. I love the Product Placement bits. That still makes me laugh. Go youtube Killer Tomatoes Product Placement. The need to add the bit from later on with the two guys plugging the motorcycles and the main guys asks if they got enough money yet to finish the picture.

• On the not of the Happy Days' cartoon(with Fonzies Dog, and the time travelling) let us never forget the atrocity that was "Gilligan's Planet."

• I agree. In fact, I recall thinking the X-men Animated series of the '90s was toned down terribly at the time. Now looking back on it, the 90s X-men Cartoon was pretty hardcore in comparison to those that followed, 1999-now.

• Indeed, there seems to be an unwritten law in Hollywood that if there's a robot in your movie, then SOMEHOW they'll find a way to market it to kids (only exception that comes to mind is AI, but then, they couldn't figure out how to sell that to adults, either). Toxic Crusaders was pretty awesome--it was like Captain Planet, only it didn't make you nauseous and had an actual sense of humor. What I remember best is Lloyd Kaufmann's book where he talks about this shows development: The network made Troma change the name from "Toxic Avengers" to "Toxic Crusaders" because they thought "Avengers" sounded too violent (seemed to work fine for Marvel comics--but whatever). So the people in charge of children's programming will make shows based on cops blasted into human gazpatcho by drug-crazed thugs or borderline sociopathic vietnam vets...But the word "Avengers" in a title is where they draw the line?

• As I recall, The Rambo toon was eventually cancelled due to "high violence" despite the fact no one had ever been shot. Apparently, simply a fist to the face was deemed too much for young viewers in the '80s. Similar complaints were hurled at the original(and very silly, in hindsight) He-Man and the Masters of the Universe show. If you watch the evolution of cartoons from the 70's-80's, you'll notice, rather than physically hitting a villain, or shooting him/her, they'd be incapacitated by dropping some rubble on their heads, or somesuch. Also, words like "kill" and "die" were gradually replaced with words like "destroy" and "perish." The dumbing down, or rather, the watering down of context in childrens material, is not relegated to cartoons alone. As I recall, I had a book of Grim Fairy Tales around the age of 4 and 5, in which those first two pigs had been eaten, and Goldilocks was captured by the three bears, who had burned her, drowned her, and impaled her on a church steeple. Lesson learned, kids: Don't steal soup from a hungry bear. The only correction I'd like to make is regarding the tales from the crypt cartoon. The HBO series was based off of a 1950's EC comic book, which despite congressional attacks, was actually a healthy middle ground between the HBO adaptation and the Saturday morning cartoon version. Congress, under the influence of the good Dr. Wertham, had EC impose great limits on what was to be featured as stories (No zombies, no severed heads, etc). The result of this was the 1980s and 1990's taking the original subject matter to two different extremes.

• I hear NoZone is going to make an appearance in The Toxic Avenger 5.

• Cartoon!Beetlejuice killed toilet humor for me, before even Beavis and Butthead could do that. If I ever have to hear the word "Neeetherworld!" again, it'll be too soon.

• Kurtwood Smith's like bacon: There's nothing that can't be improved by adding more of him!XD

• Oops! I just posted basically the same thing above!XD Serves me right for posting before reading through the comments! :(

• I liked it, too! My only problem was the title was somewhat misleading: The entire show was based on characters and events from RETURN of the Killer Tomatoes. (a film worth watching just to see George Clooney make an ass of himself--this shit's light years away from "Syriana"!)

• Rave on, Domo! RAVE ON! Can any of this generation's kids know what it is to wake up at 10am on a Saturday and feel as though you've wasted half the day?XD For those of you too young to follow this, look up some old Calvin and Hobbes strips--they'll explain far better than I ever could!

• I loved the Toxic Crusaders cartoon. If only for the toys. They fit perfectly with my TMNT figures, both in form and theme so it was like adding a whole new expansion set to my playtime.

• I bought this as I wanted the movies but more importantly, I wanted all episodes of the Toxic Crusaders. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Toxic-Avenger-David-Mattey/dp/B000GDIBXY/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1298317448&sr=8-8

• All Made by the same Dutch director, YAY for Verhoven!

• The thing about TV cartoons is that they have MUCH higher standards of what's appropriate and what isn't. Like, nobody thinks it's weird that they made a kids show about Ghostbusters, and probably most people would be perfectly willing to let their kids watch the movie. But I'd be very surprised if Venkman made any callbacks to "Yes, it's true, this man has no dick." in the course of the cartoon. Any movie that wasn't already rated G is going to get toned down for TV, even if it was already basically a kids film to begin with. The great thing about the 80s and early 90s was that there were all these movies that had great kid appeal and really marketable, toyetic characters, with the only problem being that they were also super violent and rated R. Which problem was solved by that other 80s and early 90s trend, a complete lack of artistic integrity! You ask how you can market Robocop to kids, but how can you not? Look at the guy!

• Hunh. I expected the Bill and Ted cartoon.

• Hey hey! Say what you want but I have to give Tales from the Cryptkeeper credit for having Old Witch and Vaultkeeper from EC Comics showing up regularly. Also, Return of the Killer Tomatoes was pretty hilarious. Does anyone remember the song, "Touch Me There?" Also one of John Astin's best non-Gomez characters (coming in right after Professor Albert Wickwire.) ...and I must've had every Toxic Crusader toy you could buy... riiight up until my cousin stole them all and moved to a different neighborhood.

• Don't forget the 'Laverne & Shirley' cartoon where they're in the army. And they have a talking pig as their drill sergeant whose voice is supplied by Ron 'Horshack' Palillo. Who gave that the green light and what were they smoking?

• How is it not obvious why they made a Problem Child cartoon show? Juvenile delinquency sells big time to kids. They probably had dollar signs in their eyes coming up with the concept. Any show where kids outsmart adults is almost a sure-sell. I mean, nevermind quality, of course...

• I know what you mean. Saturday morning used to be the high, holy day of my misguided youth. Now that you can watch cartoons 24/7, it feels like the magic is gone.

• Troma have released a complete Toxic Crusaders boxset, it may be tricky to get hold of now though.

• That Problem Child cartoon is on Hulu, and it is honestly one of the worst cartoons I have ever seen.

• When they place the box of cereal in front of him, the way he looked at the camera, just cracked me up. I love that movie.

• What, no love for the Bill and Ted cartoon? That show was great!

• There were 2 "Tales From The Crypt" movies made during the 70's which inspired the HBO series, so technically, the cartoon is a spin-off from a movie. But then in the end, the "Tales From The Crypt" movies were comic book spin-offs.

• I know right? I'm in the UK and there are cartoons on a Saturday morning, but they don't seem to be buying many new shows. They are repeating the old X-men show on ITV though, which is awesome.

• Hur, I watched both the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Little Shop of Horrors. And Toxie. Had Attack of the Killer Tomatoes toys, actually, and I loved the old movie when I was a kid. Never saw Toxie though - I remember my friends had a Toxie board game, that was shaped in a circle, and we played it constantly. When I found out it was based on a Troma movie my mind blew to pieces...

• ...and then Toxic Crusaders lead to a scene that I'm sure I share with many folks my age... Mom: Oh look, they made a movie out of that Toxic Crusaders show you like so much. I'm just gonna put this in the VCR and let you watch it while I go do stuff in the other room. Innocence=shattered.

• You know, I could understand both Killer Tomatoes and Tales From the Crypt being made into cartoons. The one I still don't get to this day was why they made a cartoon out of those godawful 'Problem Child' movies from the early 90s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMWuyuv3gzU

• got to admit seeing this list always had me wonder how the execs both who made the film.s and and also at the networks manage to okay the things being shown like rambo and robocop. tales of the crypt even though it was even watered down by hbo would never get the okay now a days. given its content. and attack of the killer tomatoe's what where the ones who made that thing smoking?

• that scene rocked. first thing I thought about when I saw the cartoon on this list.

• The Mask had gangster violence, Ace Ventura had a ton of sex jokes and a central plot twist revolving around a sex change, and Dumb and Dumber was pretty damn raunchy. So yeah, I think you could count those as "inappropriate for youngsters."

• Aw, man, Toxic Crusaders was a great show. Mops were a weapon of choice back in the day as a result. And Police Academy was quite good too, simply because the characters themselves were overthetop cartoony, it just lends itself to a smooth transition. And to this day, if someone says "they didn't dot the I," I'll say I'LL FIX THAT! and pretend to pull out a bazooka.

• Except none of the movies you've listed were inappropriate for youngsters.

• There's no Saturday morning cartoons anymore. Yeah, there are networks with nothing but cartoons, but it still feels like kids today are missing out on something.

• Oh my god, I loved the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes cartoon!!! I would run around with a fuzzy red pillow and pretend I was the girl tomato and make my older brothers be angry tomatoes. And now I will have that song stuck in my head all day...

• I love the first season of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes...its sense of humor actually reminds me a lot of The Tick when it popped up on Fox shortly afterwards. The second season of Attack -- the one with all the low-rent computer animation -- was pretty excruciatingly awful, though. At least it was ambitious, I guess.

• Toxic Crusaders is the best thing Troma has been associated with.One of the great cartoons of the early 90s.Killers Tomatoes was also a great funny cartoon.Little Shop not so much.Rambo i watched cause hey it had ninjas.

• no The Mask? Ace Ventura? Dumb and Dumber (what the hell is it with Jim Carey?)? Bill and Ted? I forgot Free Willy was a cartoon, to, until this XD

• Seems "Conan the Adventurer" should be on here...

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