Like most little kids, I loved getting up early on weekends to watch cartoons. Some of the most prominent memories I have from my younger years involve binge-watching my favourite animated characters in the wee A.M. hours.
Unlike all of my friends, I was lucky when it came to program selection. At my house, we had a big C-band satellite dish and access to all American programming. I love Canada, but all-Canadian content television is absolutely horrendous. The two basic Canadian stations we got DID have some good stuff, like “The Mighty Hercules” and one of my favourite shows of all time (though not animated), the Canadian classic “The Littlest Hobo“. But as far as quality and quantity? Yeah, the American stations were head and shoulders above the rest.
So my childhood happily consisted of the classics like Scooby Doo (of course!), The Flintstones, and other Hanna-Barbera gems. But there were plenty of fantastic “more current” cartoons at the time too: Jem, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Beetlejuice, The Real Ghostbusters, Super Mario Bros., and Inspector Gadget, just to name a few.
In 1993, I was 7 years old, and the best place to catch my favourite cartoons was the USA Network. They had a morning block that ran under the name “The USA Cartoon Express” — the namesake of my cartoons Pinterest board.
The best thing about the Cartoon Express wasn’t actually the shows themselves, though. It was the very cool animated commercial break bumpers. Most prominent was the polar bear conductor, his nephew, and a talking pocket watch that introduced the cartoons in the lineup. They were cute, funny and the jingle was catchy, and it got the kids excited even before the opening credits could roll. But there was something even better than that. Something that was right up Little Vincent Price, Dracula and horror-loving Wendy’s alley.
Monster Bash.
Monster Bash’s 30-60 second segments featured a family of ghosts and ghouls who ran a hotel. Each bumper featured Dracula, the Wolf Man, an overweight Mummy, a skeleton doorman and a gaggle of galloping ghoul children doing normal, every day things in a silly, bumbling way. As a little girl, I LOVED it. As a 30-year-old woman… well, I STILL love it.
Someone was kind enough to assemble a good number of the spooky shorts into a single video, so here you go. For your viewing pleasure, a little taste of what my childhood looked like. Enjoy! “Let’s get back to Cartoon Express, but first… Monster Bash!”
Until next time, unpleasant dreams . . .
^..^
At least we had something worthy of export :)
I don’t remember too many scary cartoons when I was 7. Yeah, don’t ask when that was. But I have to tell you something that I just learned. My 91 year old mother is a Scooby Doo fan!
I told her that you would be happy to know that. Then, my niece started asking about you. I showed her several of your posts, hitting the various corners of your interest-box. I’m going to remind her by sending a link, but she liked what she saw.
Ha! Don’t worry, there have been a few other good exports over the years!
And that’s so cool about your mom! Tell her I said she has good taste. And I’m glad to hear that other family members might be enjoying the blog too. Thanks for saying good things about me and for sharing some posts, Dan! :)
My niece is also an artist, and a fan of older tv shoes. Also a horror fan.
Nice! Sounds like we’d get along … fang-tastically then. xD
I think you would.
Wendy, I have never heard of this cartoon, but what an awesome and fun concept! I would have loved this as a kid. My grandmother loved all the fun, not-really-scary aspects of Halloween, and passed on that same way of enjoying the holiday to me. Thanks for this post – I love it! (Especially the idea of the vampire going to far away Texas – a native Texan myself, I just find that hysterical.)
This is exactly why I wanted to highlight this little gruesome gem, Mike — I figured it was something that wasn’t super well-known. People like to talk about how the big things make an impact on our lives, but I think that in many cases it’s the little things we experience when we’re young that leave the biggest impression. This is certainly the case for me! The more I write about all these horror-related cartoons/shows/movies/etc. that I loved as a child, the more I realize that’s true. Because so many times, I don’t even remember these things until someone says something to me directly about them, or I happen to come across them and it sparks my memory. Those are the things that help shape us into the people we become as adults. I’m so glad to hear that your grandma was also a fan of the fun-scary stuff. So many people miss out on really great material by thinking that all monsters HAVE to be treated in a scary way, and we both know that’s just not the case. Glad you liked the post, Mike!