1992's failed Battletoads cartoon pilot

In 1991, Rare and Tradewest developed Battletoads for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was an attempt to cash-in on the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series that debuted four years earlier. 1992 would see Rare and Tradewest partner with DIC Entertainment to produce an animated pilot for Battletoads. The pilot was written by former TMNT head writer David Wise and aired in syndication in the United States during the weekend of Thanksgiving 1992.

 Opening theme is fast-paced Beach Boys style surf rock. The animation reminds me of The Super Mario Show, and I thought they would continue to ape the Ninja Turtles down to every detail.

 Princess Angelica, The last star child of The Blood, whatever that means, is being tailed by The Dark Queen. She is joined by  a talking chicken in a giant chicken spaceship.

 

Exposition chicken continues, mentioning the galatica amulet that the princess has and the queen wants.

Cut to human Alvin and the Chipmunks: Morgan, Dave, and George. They're being yelled at by their principal for being the biggest losers in the history of the school. The boys must stop hanging out with each other or risk suspension. It's never explained why they're losers, so they're just losers, just go with it.

George gets called a toad during the roughest game of street ball I've ever seen. He pulls a Shaq and breaks the damn backboard.

Dave isn't fairing any better with his schoolmates, but he does utter the first 90's line of the show, wimpomatic.

His school poster idea gets rebuked, it's ugly, but not as ugly as you, Dave! 

Morgan gets ridiculed by some guys working on a computer and makes the damn thing explode just by typing on it.

Professor T. Bird(get it?) and the Princess sneak off to a secret temple to get some Battletoad juice. The Dark Queen crashes the party and the prof says they need to head off to Earth, the most insignificant and backwards planet that isn't even worth conquering.

Back to our lovable losers in the town of Oxnard, California, they're hanging out at the Stop N Scarf, playing arcade games and dreaming about what every teenage boys dreams; cruising the galaxy and fighting aliens.

The bird and the professor come through one of the arcade cabinets to lay down some more exposition and offer these dweebs the toad juice, which sounds cosmetically cosmic to George.

The boys get slimmed from a seltzer bottle and transform into the (teenage) Battletoads, just as the villains pour themselves out of a Squishee machine. These ungrateful dorks almost let The Dark Queen get away with The Princess, but save her by throwing an ice cream cooler on top of her.

Testing out their "brain-bashing" powers with a food fight, a cover of Dick Dale's Misirlou plays in the background while the toads make food puns. There's a gag of the store clerk oblivious to what's happening around him.

Princess Angelica dubs the toadboys as Rash, Zits, and Pimple. Names that they think are psychotronic, incredible, and cosmoriffic.

Needing a place to stash the princess and the prof, they turn to their favorite teacher, who doesn't believe their story, even with an anthropomorphic chicken checking out his tv.

The princess and prof start to settle in, with T. Bird working an old car and Angelica getting a job at The Scarf N Donuts in her best sexy maid outfit.

Back at base, the bad guys come out of the washer and dryer with the battlecry: it's time to pop a zit, squeeze a pimple, and scratch a rash. Not the best of battlecrys, but it's on par with lets get warty!

The brain banging, mud stomping, mega toads make little work of The Dark Queen's jobbers, but while this happening, she is able to get the drop on Angelica and kidnaps her to the other dimension or planet or wherever.

The toads and T. Bird give chase in their toadster, the old car that Bird has been working on, and where they're going, they don't need tires, his words,not mine.

They easily scale the phallic tower where the princess is being held and stop the queen from blasting the princess, but can't stop the queen from smacking them around with her tornado attack.

Tired of getting their asses kicked, they turn the blaster intended for Angelica towards the tower's center and escape through the head of the tower's dome.

Crash landing back onto their school campus, they interrupt their principal eating a comically tall sandwich. The Mr. Weatherbee look alike isn't having it and wants to have the boys committed to the loony bin.

The Dark Queen returns in a saw blade saucer, vowing to destroy Earth, one mall at a time. The toads bounce into battle and board the saucer, walking into a trap. Luckily for them, The Dark Queen's henchmen have the aim of a Storm Trooper and bring their own ship down, causing the queen to retreat.

The show closes with the above graphic, unfortunately for Rare, Tradewest, DIC, and everyone who worked on this pilot, it was not the beginning, but more the end of the beginning. The pilot wasn't picked up, despite ads in Gamepro Magazine stating otherwise.

DIC Entertainment didn't give up though, they just waited till 1994 to try to capitalize on the turtles popularity with a new series called Street Sharks. This time around was a success and lead to a spin-off series in 1997, Extreme Dinosaurs. 

CBS's Justice League of America(1997)

In 1997 CBS acquired the tv rights to The Justice League, except for Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Despite not being able to use the big three of DC Comics, CBS pushed ahead and produced a Justice League pilot, which failed to even show in the US.

Taking place in New Metro, USA, the show opens with two meteorologists tracking a tornado coming towards the city, one of the meteorologists is played by Miguel Ferrer, best known for his role on Crossing Jordan, the other is played by a lady who would go on to "star" in Son of the Beach, a Baywatch parody.

Justice Leaguers get a distress call and begins to assemble, having to put their regular lives on hold: The Flash getting kicked out of his apartment, Fire dressed as a giant banana, and The Atom teaching high school science.

In place of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Women, we get Fire, The Atom, and later on, Ice; second and third string characters that only the nerdiest of nerds would recognize.

The only antagonist that they're going up against is The Weatherman, who is very very very loosely barely based on Flash villain, The Weather Wizard.

The Weatherman, sporting an East L.A. gang member look, demands 20 million dollars or he'll destroy the city. Golf balls begins to rain down on the city and hit a damsel that is clearly in distress. 

Green Lantern shows up and shields her with an umbrella he created with his power ring. They share a moment as she's oblivious to the fact that she is standing right in front of her boyfriend with a small mask on his face.

 Meanwhile, in another part of town, granny is having bushes thrown at her while she tries to get Mr. Whiskers to come out from under the house. Fear not, The Atom and 90's special effects come to the rescue.

Green Lantern and Fire rescue some construction workers, with Fire making sure to get in the quip, "break time is over,boys."

The Flash gets rid of the tornado and the episode shifts to a sitcom formula. 

The homeless Flash gets taken in by Green Lantern and The Atom and the three have a ham-fisted conversation about The Flash's life that goes on far too long. 

Blonde meteorologist is in the weather center's basement and science happens,giving her freezing powers. She boots it out of there freezes a body of water while trying to rescue a drowning man.

The League infiltrates some gala event to get files on The Weatherman. The Atom has a Superfriends moment and limbos with a security laser, complete with Limbo Rock playing in the background.

Blonde lady discovers Miguel Ferrer meteorologist is The Weatherman and smash cut to The League bringing blonde lady under a bridge and in a secret door.

I was hoping that they'd maybe bump into The Power Corps from the Double Dragon movie, but dream never come true in made for tv movies.

Instead of a young Alyssa Milano, we get a fat Martian Manhunter wanting Blondie McMeteorologist to join the Justice League.

I have to point out that the Martian Manhunter is one of the strongest characters in DC, on par with Superman. So why is he playing Zordon to The League? 

David Ogden Stiers was the man behind the manhunter, he was 55 at the time and had granddad bod. 

The Weatherman's demands weren't met and now he plans on destroying 60% of New Metro's population with a tidal wave. Green Lantern flys off like Mary Poppins to confront him and everyone else springs into low budget action.

Green Lantern reaches The Weatherman, who unleashes deadly stock footage waves onto the city. Fire and The Atom are green screening their way through the city's sky.

Pandemonium hits when Green Lantern fails to stop the tidal wave, but blonde lady gets her Queen Elsa on and freezes it.

The Weatherman is caught and becomes an afterthought to middle aged white in costumes talking to each other. Blondie short-hair gets sworn in and the credits start to roll, highlighting the actors.
Fire was played by Law and Order: SVU's Michelle Hurd, Matthew Settle, our low rent Green Lantern, would go on to be featured in Band of Brothers. John Kassir, who played The Atom, is best known for voicing The Crypt Keeper, and Kenny Johnston, hobo Flash, would go on to do stuff. oh, and ice ice blondie was played by Kim Oja.

I didn't find this to be particular bad, the effects and costumes are a level above Power Rangers quality, but I can look past that, considering that it's a tv production from the 90s.
The characters were nothing like their comic counterparts and the show pushed more of out of costume small talk, more sitcom than superhero.

John Cena and Randy Orton Vs. The Raw Roster

The more things change, the more things stay the same. This was ever apparent at Wrestlemania 32, The Showcase of the Immortals became the showcase of the 90's, as 17 wrestlers that were active during The Attitude Era appeared on the show.

The WWE wasn't completely to blame for having to rely on retired and part-time talent, there was a wave of injuries that plagued their roster heading into the Granddaddy of them all.

The biggest names on the dl were John Cena, Randy Orton, and Seth Rollins, who was WWE World Champion when he got put on the shelf. This put WWE into panic mode and the fans weren't,and still aren't sold on Roman Reigns. In his place as champion, the WWE went with the obvious choice for World Champion, Triple H.

This kid is going places

Today, I'll be jumping in the WABAC Machine, going back eight years to 2008, the WWE World Champion at the time was Randy Orton, with John Cena nipping at his heels and Triple H muscling his way into the title feud.

RAW-March 17th, 2008

Coming from my hometown of Lafayette, LA. The main event of the night was John Cena and Randy Orton tagging together against the rest of the Raw roster. This match was devised by Triple H, with the added stipulation of if either man walkout on the other, then that man will be booted from the main of Wrestlemania 24.

An IWC nightmare

Send out the jobbers

Being pitted against more than ten men is quite a handicap, oh what am I saying, this is Orton and Cena, their rockets were strapped snugly on their asses.

This is the most personality he's ever shown

That yellow-toothed, foot fetishist, baby killing Snitsky starts things off and gets the heat on Cena, but it's all for not, as Santino tags himself in. 

 







The Canadian-Italian misses a salute drop and gets rolled up for the 1-2-3, but Trevor Murdoch gets the heat back for the midcarders with clubbering an a clobbering on Cena.

Cena figures he's sold enough and gets Murdoch in the STF(U), his tag partner, Lance Cade, tries to make the save, but gets stopped by Orton.

Cade eats an RKO and follows his partner by being eliminated. Umaga takes out CENTON with a double clothesline right before the commercial break. The Samoan Bulldog still had some monster left in his booking, but it was more monster of the week.

We're to assume that Umaga tagged in Super Crazy, who was eliminated by Orton during the commercial break. JBL Pearl Harbors Orton and works him over till he tags in Jim Duggan, who gets a bigger crowd reaction that Orton's entrance.

Duggan gets in a few punches and tags in Cody Rhodes, who tags in Snitsky? Sorry, that's actual Val Venis.

Venis tags in Carlito, who tags Hardcore Holly, who tags in one of The Highlanders, who gets eliminated by a flying fameasser.

David Hart Smith, who now wrestles as "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith Jr., gets five-knuckle shuffled and an AA. I'd like to point out that Smith's real name is Harry Smith and that he was born in Canada, but I guess "The Canadian Bulldog" Harry Smith doesn't have the same ring to it.

 Paul Burchill's main event time gets cut short as Orton RKOs him from outta his corner. The fat, bald, and pale Val Venis is the next to go, but he'll be back on tv in less than two years time, getting a clean victory over Christopher Daniels in TNA and then leaving two months later to go smoke pot in CMLL.

Cody Rhodes gets back in the match to take a RKAA, leading to a schmoz breaking out. JBL and Umaga stay on the apron while everyone left in the match beat down on Cena and Orton.

Everyone lines up to take a chairshot from Cena, except for Brian Kendrick, he just sneaks out of the ring and heads to the back.

Orton ducks a chairshot from JBL, hitting Umaga instead, but he's a Samoan, so it has no effect on, if only they'd give this gimmick trait to Roman Reigns and The Usos.

Umaga spikes Orton and then turns his attention to JBL, who boots it to the back with Umaga trailing him. With Orton and Cena both down, it's time to play the game, and that game is steal all the heat.

This feud would continue past Wrestlemania 24, adding JBL to the mix at Backlash, but we know what JBL is.