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Nitro, Zap, Laser, Turbo, Ice — spandex-clad giants with names like energy drinks, and the ordinary people who tried to beat them at Joust, Powerball and the Eliminator. American Gladiators ran in syndication from 1989 to 1996, a popular success the critics panned, and every kid who watched knew exactly which gladiator they would be.
Three motorcycle-riding mice from Mars, Throttle, Modo and Vinnie, crash-land in Chicago and fight the Plutarkians, fish-like aliens out to strip Earth of its resources. It was Marvel's 1993 attempt at the next Ninja Turtles, and its voice cast reads like a Beverly Hills, 90210 cast list.
![Video thumbnail — Goof Troop Intro [HQ]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t5wNX_mIraA/maxresdefault.jpg)
Goofy as a single dad in the suburbs, his son Max trying to survive him, and Pete next door as the used-car salesman whose life Goofy keeps ruining. The Disney Afternoon sitcom ran just one season from 1992, but it rewrote Goofy for a generation and set up A Goofy Movie.
The oversized red glasses, the studio audience on its feet, and topics like "My Husband Wears Dresses": Sally was the daytime confessional you watched home sick from school, years before Springer turned the genre into a brawl. Nineteen seasons, 3,820 episodes, and one very famous pair of frames.
The franchise that started in 1966 hit its cultural zenith in the 1990s, when two series aired simultaneously, a film franchise thrived alongside them, and Trek's technobabble and ethics debates penetrated the mainstream. From TNG's syndication dominance to Voyager's network-launching premiere, Star Trek was inescapable.
Four brothers gene-slammed into half-shark street fighters by a mad scientist, battling Dr. Piranoid in Fission City. It was a syndicated cartoon built to sell Mattel's chomping action figures, which a young Vin Diesel pitched to toy buyers.
Two disgraced fighter pilots, a jet built from scrapyard parts and a city of cats under attack from an undead sorcerer and a pair of robot gangsters. Hanna-Barbera's SWAT Kats was the top-rated syndicated cartoon of 1994 and then simply stopped, three episodes unfinished, which is why its fans have been trying to bring it back ever since.
The makeover reveals, the secret crushes, the boot-camp teens and the audience groaning on cue. Jenny Jones ran in syndication from 1991 to 2003, and for a stretch in the mid-90s it was the second-highest-rated talk show in daytime, behind only Oprah.
Troma took the Toxic Avenger, the mop-swinging mutant from its gory 1984 cult film, and turned him into a kids' cartoon hero leading a squad of fellow mutants against alien polluters. Thirteen syndicated episodes aired in 1991, and Playmates, fresh off the Ninja Turtles, sold neon action figures with glow-in-the-dark accessories under the tagline "They're gross, but they still get girls!"