10 items
The moody, art-deco afternoon cartoon that gave a generation its definitive Batman — and its definitive Joker. Painted skies on black paper, a full orchestra, and stories that never talked down to the kids racing home to catch it.
Three kids on a dare in a haunted mansion free a wish-granting phasm named Flabber, wish themselves into their favorite comic-book heroes, and get the comic's villains thrown in for free. Saban's bug-armored cousin of Power Rangers, with a house full of monsters as the sitcom half.
Howie Mandel's Saturday-morning cartoon about Bobby Generic, a four-year-old who took every grown-up figure of speech literally. A "traffic jam" became a sandwich spread of tiny cars, and a comedian's choking-on-cake voice became a Fox Kids fixture for nearly eight years.
![Video thumbnail — Eek! the Cat Intro with Terrible Thunderlizards [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tebiMBJAI0A/maxresdefault.jpg)
The purple Fox Kids cat whose motto was "it never hurts to help," and whose every good deed ended with him screaming "Oh gosh, it hurts!" Halfway through the run it picked up a second act about dinosaur mercenaries, and the whole thing became Eek! Stravaganza.
Louie Anderson turned his own Minnesota childhood into a Saturday-morning cartoon, moved it to Cedar Knoll, Wisconsin, and gave his war-story-telling dad the best lines. Fox Kids ran it for three seasons and Anderson won two Daytime Emmys for voicing both himself and his father.
The Saturday-morning web-slinger a whole generation still hears when they read a Spider-Man comic. Fox Kids' 1994 series gave Peter Parker an inner monologue, a rogues' gallery two decades of cartoons had skipped, and cliffhangers that made Monday recess a spoiler zone.
Five episodes on Fox, a Kenner toy line with glow-in-the-dark eyes and rubbery slip-on "BioMasks," and a theme song that rewrote "Wild Thing" as "Swamp Thing! You are amazing!" The cartoon barely existed. The song never left.
The Tasmanian Devil moved into a suburban house with a dad who did Bing Crosby, a job as a hotel bellhop, and a sky that was always yellow, rain or shine. Warner's Saturday-morning sitcom turned a whirlwind into a big brother.
Fox Kids' superhero parody: a huge, blue, nigh-invulnerable hero who isn't very bright, his sidekick Arthur, a former accountant in a moth suit, and a battle cry of "Spoon!" It was made for kids, and adults turned it into a cult hit.
To a generation of Saturday-morning kids, this was the real X-Men: five seasons on Fox Kids, one impossibly urgent guitar theme, and stories lifted straight from the comics. Wolverine, Rogue, and Gambit were household names years before Hollywood caught up.