Thing ring, do your thing

OK, the video is a bit rough. Just imagine that you're 12 years old again, and you're watching scrambled Cinemax in the middle of the night in the hopes of seeing a boob or something.

Here is the opening for Fred and Barney Meet The Thing, the cartoon show that fails on damn near every level, including the name. Yes, cats and kittens, only in the opening sequence are the titular characters together.

I've mentioned the show here before, but in case you missed it, someone somewhere got the idea to take The Thing, the orange, rocky looking powerhouse from the Fantastic Four, and make him into a wimpy teenager. To change back into the Thing, he pressed the two halves of a ring together and said, "Thing ring, do your thing!"

I would have loved to hear the logic that went into this craptacular concept.

I can only wonder if at some point, they thought they were going to get the license to do a Captain Marvel cartoon, wrote a bunch of stories, only to have the license yanked at the last minute, forcing them to pull a character from a property they'd already done and completely change him.

So, if we work backward from the result, the math looks something like this:

The nth permutation of the Flintstones + The Fantastic Four - 3.75 + Captain Marvel/Shazam + Shazzan! * mistaken notion about the Wonder Twins + ripoff of the theme song to the Super Friends + Scooby-Doo-like group of teens - cognitive thinking process = Fred and Barney Meet the Thing.

It's like the Hanna-Barbera snake eating itself.



I have a few episodes of this on tape somewhere, and let me tell you--don't bother. It's like an inescapable vortex of suck.

Just imagine this in a paler shade of yellow.

Because all the cool kids are doing it...

Sadly, a bit too close to reality.

It could be worse...

You know, I don't like to be overly judgmental or anything, but seriously, what the hell?

Not like I think you have to do an in-depth study of the material to protect the artistic integrity of the concept, but was there anything wrong with the old-school Alvin and the Chipmunks?

Not the one with the Chipettes, mind you. Old school. The Alvin Show. The one that also featured Clyde Crashcup.

This movie could be perfectly delightful, but I'm really not liking the character designs.

So now this has me wondering what other cartoon property will be the next to be brought to the big screen.

If I had to guess, I'd imagine that The Jetsons would be the next Hanna-Barbera cartoon to get the big-screen treatment. And maybe after that, I'm afraid that Magilla Gorilla seems likely, with a CG gorilla and Danny DeVito as Mr. Peebles.

At some point, they're going to have to dig into the 70s Hanna-Barbera stuff. And while I have to admit, I'd be interested in the concept of a Hong-Kong Phooey movie, that also means that there could be a movie with Jabberjaw, The Partridge Family 2200 A.D., or, God help us, The Hair Bear Bunch.

But with '80s nostalgia being so big, I think they might skip the 70s altogether. And since they've already done the Transformers and He-Man (and I could swear I read that they're considering doing a Thundercats movie), that means that you can expect to see a movie based on the following '80s cartoon:



Eschewing the typical "In a world" opening, I can imagine the trailer beginning with something like "Brett Matthews is a high school student with drive."

Cut to some POV footage of a car driving really fast.

"But after he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time--"

Some quick cuts of a car crashing through a wall--

"He finds himself on the road...and on the run."

And since you can't remake an '80s cartoon without throwing in a few "edgy" jokes for the old farts who used to be the target audience for the original show, you can expect at least one "stick shift" joke, a few "You wanna ride?" double entendres, and an offhand reference to the title character having junk in the trunk.

You think I'm kidding. Just wait to see who's laughing when this piece of crap (or something worse--Shirt Tales, anyone?) hits the theaters.

What can we learn from bad ideas like this? Be careful when you Google "Turbo Teen." I'm just sayin'...