Little Remembered 90's Shows

Putting together my three picks for the Non English TV Show edition of Thursday Movie Picks got me all nostalgic. Now I'm remembering all these shows/movies I used to watch and I felt like making a list out of them.

I'm not going to include the big ones like Doug, Rugrats, Rocko's Modern Life, Hey Arnold, All That, Clarissa Explains it All, Alex Mack etc. Those are very popular with my fellow 90's kids and are easily memorable. These are the ones I had to dig a bit for in my brain. I'm going to start with the shows that I remember the earliest, and go from there. Most of these are TV shows, with a few movies thrown in.

1) Eureeka's Castle

This can best be described as a derpy puppet show. They had a bat that constantly flew into things, but you bet your ass my 2 to 3 year old self was watching this every morning. 

2) David The Gnome

Like I said during TMP, this was a show I never realized was a dub until I found IMDb. It was originally a Spanish show and it's one of the first cartoons I ever remember watching. I still remember seeing an advertisement for an episode that never aired (or at least I never saw it) It bothered me. 

3) The Litt'l Bits

My other TMP pick that was a dub. This one was originally from Japan, and like I said there I was beginning to think I imagined this cartoon. When my friends and I got on the topic of old shows, no one every remembered this. I was starting to think I imagined the whole thing. Luckily, IMDb was right there a decade later to reassure me I didn't go full Tommy Westphall with a Saturday morning cartoon. 

3) Scamper the Penguin

We learned a lot about penguins in my first grade class and my teacher had happened to tape this movie when she caught it on TV and showed it to us. I loved it. It had a cringey theme song but it was so cute, I didn't care. I wanted nothing more than to own this film and my parents couldn't find it anywhere. It's not like we could hope on Amazon in 1994. I thought I was going to be stuck with The Pebble and the Penquin as my go to Penguin movie, then we happened to find a VHS combo pack with this movie and my next pick. Turns out, Scamper wasn't originally Scamper, but "The Adventures of Lolo The Penguin" and it was a Russian mini series that was dubbed into English.

4) Samson and Sally

The VHS buddy to Scamper was this cartoon about two Sperm Whales that I really dug because none of my other friends had it. Turns out, this was another dub, only from Denmark. 

5) Gullah Gullah Island

Now, this wasn't a show I really watched regularly. I was a little old for it, and it was one of those things I remember only watching when I was home sick or bored during the summer. The thing I remember best is the theme song, but the reason I'm including it is because this is the first time I ever noticed re-casting. One of the kids was played by one actress in the early episodes, then replaced with a new girl in the later ones, and damn it I NOTICED! 

6) Welcome Freshman

Everyone I knew loved Saved by the Bell, but I always preferred this little seen show. The one episode I remember is when the kids eat yogurt at school and it turns the skin around their mouths blue and they end up quarantined at the school. That sounds kind of messed up typing it up. Oh well. 

7) Scruffy

This is hands down the most depressing dog cartoon in existence, and I can't believe my parents taped this for me. Basically this dog mother's dies, then she gets taken in by a homeless man who had a heart attack in front of her and dies. Then she goes to live with some other dogs in a junk yard, one of whom had a puppy that died so she carries around a sock and pretends that's her baby. Then people from the pound are trying to catch them and put them to sleep. What the actual fuck? 

8) The Adventures of Pete and Pete

I feel like this show doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to 90's nostalgia. It made Danny Tamberelli and Michelle Trachtenberg into big Nick stars. One of the kids' fake tattoos had it's own name in the opening credits. That's classic. 

9) Thumbelina 

To be fair, I bet this movie is massively stupid and I'd probably cringe if my kid watched it now, but I loved Don Bluth's movies. The Secret of NIMH was my favorite, and another I will talk about in an upcoming post. This one though, I have a memory of going running through the sprinklers with my neighbor, then watching this movie for the first time in the living room while our parents probably got drunk out on the patio. 

10) The Black Cauldron 

Disney's bastard child of a movie they like to pretend never happened. For what it's worth, I thought this was really cool. I remember watching it with my sister after I stepped on a nail and had to get a tetanus shot. I'd like to see it again. 




Horable Mention: Salute Your Shorts

Slightly breaking my popularity but for some reason people always talk about Hey Dude and not this. Salute Your Shorts was SO MUCH BETTER than Hey Dude. I just needed to say it.
Do you remember any of these? What did you think?