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Submitted by J Steer
Maybe it’s just me, I’d rather see a Captain Planet movie than a G.I. Joe movie.
In 1990, Ted Turner introduced Captain Planet to teach kids about the importance of protecting our environment, the dangers of pollution, and convince kids that there are only five elements — the most important of which being “heart.”
The most famous part of the show is actually it’s outro. “You’ll pay for this, Captain Planet!”
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Bleah. No way. The environmental messages had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer upside the head. I remember one against riding dirt bikes in the desert, and they couldn’t just have guys on dirt bikes. They had the villains tearing around the desert (for no discernible reason other than to be Teh Evil) on giant, tanklike vehicles that spewed smoke and fumes like a rendering plant. Yeah, a kid on a small motocross bike riding the trails is EXACTLY the same thing, isn’t it?
I was waiting for a “firecrackers are dangerous, kids!” episode demonstrated with Evil Corporate CEOs[tm] tossing tactical nuclear weapons at orphanages and kitten sanctuaries.
Sometimes Gaia would show up and you’d think “Hey, at least some hot goddess action” but then out of her mouth comes Whoopi Goldberg’s voice.
Thank you. Good god this show was annoying. And WTF is the power of heart anyway?
+1 raised to 1 million.
Craptain Planet is one of the most obnoxious shows ever.
Ridiculous beyond any limit. Cheesy to the point of offense. Lamer than the lamest thing you can think of.
I can’t even say how much I hate it because never could stand more than 5 seconds of it.
How on earth (yea, lame pun intended) did this get so many thumbs up?
Oh yea. This is the internet. Never mind.
I loved this show – and Mati was my favorite character. Heart was the best power ever – he could read minds and send messages telepathically, remember?
Seriously, though – the show helped to bring eco-awareness to a generation, and quite honestly (and I know this will sound lame and I’ll be ridiculed for it) this show put a lot of the environmental issues on my mental map at a very young age. I’m sure I don’t stand alone on this when I say that, yeah, there was a lot of hyperbole and oversimplification, and I can’t stand to watch more than one episode now, but the basic message was there and that has become a big part of who I am.
Go Planet!
yeah well, the show’s not for republicans. Retard.
heart was the best
Everybody overlooks the sixth element that composed captain planet: clothing. Because fire, water, dirt, air, and heart do not a fabric make. I mean, where was the kid with that ring? I’ll tell you where: looking at naked girls.
Lol!
Do you remember the episode with the car that had a built in swimming pool? If I remember correctly, I wanted one of those.
DIC.
Lol, Epic
I always giggled when I heard their name.
LOVED this show as a kid!!!
it made me recycle and tunr out the lights and stuff… hahaha! they should show it again on tv
Agreed!
more of a fail for me
Agreed.
Notice the distribution of elements too:
Earth: to the African, because they’re all in touch with the Earth.
Fire: to the American, because we Americans don’t care if we burn things, we’re so destructive.
Wind: to the Russian, because nothing says “gentle” like Communism.
Water: to the Asian, because Confucius always talked about being like falling water and stuff.
Heart: to the South American, because the most holy element of this religion should go to the most holy place. And they’ve got *rainforests*, man! (and bullet ants and candiru, but ignore those.)
And hey, what about all of Europe? And Australia?
Russia is in Europe.
Actually, Russia is in Eurasia (both Europe and Asia)
In the early episodes, they said “The Soviet Union”. Also, note the equal distribution between capitalist and communist (I’m assuming Gi was from China) countries.
Agreed, at present I’d probably never watch it. As a kid before I really cared about any of this, the show was moderatly cool…
In defense of the hideous green mullet: the era is to blame. It was MacGyver’s haircut, magnified and fighting on the planet’s side.
Eee, despite the fact that I did watch this show, I’m still uncertain on how I feel about it. It could have been a bit more subtle on the messages. They made everything that they deemed bad into a horrible evil and you can’t live like that. You need to have moderation in all things, including moderation!
Not bashing people over the head with hammer-like messages.
It was a CARTOON, after all; you don’t expect subtle in a cartoon.
However, even given that it was over the top. For example, the polluting/environment destroying business executives were always evil; never clueless. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think there was EVER one who simply didn’t realize how much harm he was doing, and who when it was pointed out to him moved to mitigate.
I also didn’t like how the American kid was almost always depicted as a dimwit.
Right on BAW…
The American Kid was ALWAYS the idiot – Never the black kid, never the annoying asian girl, ALWAYS the “gawd damn A-mer-kin moron”
What was the message there? Americans are stupid. Their ‘representative’ among the Captain Planet Brats was a moron, ergo ALL Americans must be!
“Hey, I read a book sometimes!” = Wheeler. I don’t think he was an idiot, just very self-involved for a long time. (But I do think the majority of Americans -and humans in general- are idiots.)
I actually learned a lot about energy conservation and recycling from this show as a kid. Who cares if it wasn’t subtle, or if it had stereotypes, or if it was lame? I was a KID; I didn’t notice that stuff.
Sure, the drama might make me cringe a little now, but I still remember what I learned. (I think I’m one of the only ones in the family who still cuts the rings of plastic six-pack “harnesses”.)
Lol, oh geez. I still cut those soda rings too. To this day when people ask me what I’m doing, I tell them I’m saving a baby duck, and because Captain Planet told me to.
Haha, same here. Just recently I was at my parents and I cut the rings before discarding. My dad was like, WTF?
Cartoons can do subtle perfectly well (especially in the hands of someone like Satoshi Kon or Miyazaki) but Cap’n Planet was the complete antithesis.
Except that they don’t make cartoons, they make Anime.
….anime is a type of cartoon.
…with sexuality/nudity/gore/violence/swearing. Definitely what I want my 6 year-old to watch.
(And yes, I’m aware 1% of anime do not feature this kind of stuff. No need to point it out).
Definitely more than 1%. Have you seen 4Kids? They even take anime that are for teens and water them down to children’s shows.
Which means ruining them. Watch everything uncut, it’s better.
I take it that you have only been watching that kind of Anime. Anime is not a Genre, it is a Medium. There are many Animes for kids, and many that are not for kids. If you only watch Adult Swim, you will only see one kind of Anime, and it will probably also be horribly edited. Just look for kids’ Anime or Shojo Anime and you will find plenty that do not feature the kinds of scenes popular in Shonen Anime. It is not hard to find. Just look at all of the different varieties listed in the Encyclopedia on animenewsnetwork.com if you are confused.
No, Anime and cartoons are completely different. Please don’t make me point out all of the differences here. Plenty of people have done so plenty of times. Just take my word for it, or go look it up somewhere else. It is not a discussion for this thread.
I am truly sorry that you refuse to see the differences between Anime and cartoons, and that you have never seen and refuse to watch good Anime that is not Hentai, or whatever it is that you are talking about. What you just said is the equivalent of saying that all Live Action shows and movies are pornographic soap operas, and it is equally incorrect. I will not try to convince you otherwise, however, because it is clear that you are unwilling to have an open mind and learn something new. Good day.
Lol! Still think it’s a psycho job of a show. Bet the green heads think it’s nice though
PROTECT THE EVIROMENT OR I’LL F’N KILL YOU
CAPTAIN PLANET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry just seeing that reminded me of that robot chicken episode with Ted Turner dressed up as Captain Planet
WORST SHOW EVER
this blatant propaganda from crazy ass Ted Turner (see Robot Chicken episode 26 “1987″, season 2) is the most disgusting form of child indoctrination that I ever saw (and I realized this as a kid). it pushed an agenda that promotes the downfall of capitalism because all corporations are evil polluters, of course the green socialists loved it.
are you saying this show sucks? SCREW YOU!!
Propaganda.
I thought this show was fun. They rerun it a lot. I didn’t know they weren’t still making them.
(Trolls… must not have anything better to do…)
This show was more of a Epic Fail. But its sort of ironic now.
(rolling eyes) Captain Planet.. meh. :p I always was annoyed with it’s heavy handed eco-message. Apparently you had to waste all FIVE powers to summon him… that is a LOT of wasted power (and earth and water and fire and air and heart) just to call him- not to mention it tore up the ground every time he was called… get a cell phone dude. Give me the Power of GRAYSKULL anyday!
The evil guy at the end, saying “You’ll pay for this Capt Planet” is giving him the finger- go back and look again!
I was JUST at the age where I took it as more preaching than entertainment. I guess fighting unrealistic outrageous super-eco-villians was more captivating than just showing kids cleaning up the park, recycling, or planting trees. You don’t need to preach to me to get me to take care of my environment.
In 1990, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Earth Day and were still reeling from the Exxon Valdez spill the Spring before. All these topics and more were covered by my 6th grade Science teacher, may she rest in peace. So you can keep your cheesy cartoon crap and we’ll continue to cover pertinent real-world topics and you can continue to battle cartoon evil while we collect newspapers to recycle and take trash bags out to go clean up or school yard and neighboring city park. Buzz off Captain Planet.
Sorry, this is a FAIL.
What kind of a lame power is HEART anyway?
I was still pretty young and I remember thinking “Gia? what the F#@%?” Only, you know, not acualy f^@$, since I was to little to know that wonderful word… but the sentament was definatly there.
.
Also, notice how they said Young People instead of kids? Young People is SUCH a politicaly corret term.
.
The russian girl was a total b!tch… oh and russia is part of asia, basicaly two females from the same continent. Why did Austraila get left out?!
Technically, Russia is part of both Asia and Eruope (Eurasia), so they did include Europe ever so slightly ^.^
As for Australia, perhaps they didn’t care about it because it tries to kill people?
The power is YOURS!
Thanks! I’m gonna use my power to turn this off.
Ted Turner should have stuck to colorizing the Moon.
Skimming over the comments made here, I’m reminded of a line from the theme song to MST3K: “Just repeat to yourself, ‘It’s just a show. I should really just relax.’”
In short, it is a TV show, with the ideal of trying to convince kids to think twice about how their actions or inactions effect the earth. They didn’t say that we should all forgo technology and go live in a cave. They told us to do things like take an extra 10 seconds to rinse out that Pepsi can and put it in recycling instead of throwing it away. O noez!!! Run from the socialist propaganda spewed by trash-hating TV exceutives! What, don’t they appreciate how many garbage men might lose their jobs or how many landfills might have to be shut down, costing us even more valuable American jobs? Heartless fiends.
~Quaggy
Obviously the socialists made it to destroy capitalism and America.
-_-
It’s a discussion board. We’re discussing it. We can diss things and be perfectly relaxed at the same time. If we were not relaxed, there’d be more CAPITAL LETTERS and EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!1!!
Ninjas with bladed shoulder pads named ‘The Foot’. WIN BADGUYS.
Guys with bulging muscles but skeleton heads and sorceress evil chicks as sidekicks. WIN BADGUYS.
Heck, even the wickedness that was Tex Hexx from Bravestarr! Undead badguys on different planets that want to kill people!
People who pollute as badguys?
Please… give me Cobra Commander ANY DAY. Besides, he goes a step beyond and creates a chemical agent that’ll not only make you crazy But Also pollute the planet and make it unlivable.
Not only was it a dumb indoctrination premise of a big infomercial for the modern ‘Green’ movement, it SUCKED.
And then there was Tom Cruise voicing Captain Planet. That says it ALL about that show.
Maybe it’s me, but wasn’t this already on OUAW sometime before? I remember the discussion was then mostly centered around the useless power of Heart and how it sucked for the kid stuck with that
And jeez, lighten up people, it’s a cartoon! Yes, it’s stereotyping, but then again so are many cartoons. Oh and while you’re at it, why not go bash Tom & Jerry instead, for glorifying violence. It’s a much more dangerous kind of “propaganda” than respecting the environment.
Gia… an earth godess… come one now!
It’s less about recycling and more about new age weird ass BS.
Actually, it’s Gaia, and she stems from (among others, Greek) mythology and is not just a “new age weird ass BS” invention.
“Gaia (pronounced /ˈɡeɪ.ə/ or /ˈɡaɪ.ə/; “land” or “earth”, from the Ancient Greek Γαῖα; also Gæa or Gea (Koine and Modern Greek Γῆ)[1] is the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth.”
Yes, most know that. Regardless of her mythical origins, Gaia *has* been co-opted by the extreme environmentalists.
They did demonize Tom and Jerry for violence, and remove it from the airwaves for a long period of time, during the time this show was playing. And a bunch of other innocent violence wielding CARTOON animals.
It’s really no wonder we have Green Peace after this. What’s the more dangerous propaganda, I say? PETA. Hands down.
I loved this show. It was just a new twist on the superhero and villain themes. It didn’t make me hate polluters anymore than Bugs Bunny made me hate men who stutter. Anyone who is annoyed by the message completely misses the point. It was just a fun cartoon where the good guys beat the bad guys, just like very other cartoon ever made.
Despite its cheesyness and suckage, this show was awesome. It was one of those shows that was so bad it was GOOD! I remember fan-girling every time I saw a Captain Planet cosplayer at conventions.
I totally agree. You. Are Awesome.
Sorry, folks! i’m canceling this Flame War due to lack of availability of weenies and marshmallows. GO HOME!
There’s a flame war??? Where? O_O
Godwin’s law say that an internet argument ends when someone calls someone else a nazi.
I guess it doesn’t apply here. Because, you know, nazis were not evil enough.
No, I’d probably have to call you a “polluter”.
I loved it, but my Australian-American friend hated the fact that there was no Australia, I mean, seriously, what ever happened to thunder or electricity?
Yeah, definitely taught me to be green. Because of this show, my mother always throws a fit whenever we don’t turn off the lights she shouts “global warming!!”
It always bugged me that Captian planet went weak when his chest got dirty..really.. it was in every episode. You might think he would bring some soap and water fighting evil like he did but somehow the power of brain was with the power of clothing watching the naked girls (or boy’s)
It was by far the gayest tv show I ever seen.
Captain planet was the first show to teach kids about recycling.. so what if it was done in a cheesy lame way.. so wernt all of the cartoons from the 80’s. but i bet each and every gen Xer can sing the theme song.. guess it did make an impact. G I Joe had safety warnings at the end of each show.. were those lame too? We were allowed to ride our bike to the park alone(half a mile away) and stay out till dark. would ANYONE even think of doin that now? i have 2 kids and they dont leave my sight.
When did the Soviet Union become a continent? I mean, you noticed it too, right? Africa, North America, South America, Asia, and…the Soviet Union? The makers of the show needed to keep everything at four…Then there wouldn’t have been heart power either XD
Hahaha, Captain Planet as a brainwashing cartoon created by dirty hippie socialists. Never heard that one before.
I do remember it as a crappy cartoon. Go watch the episode where they tackle AIDS (“You’re HIV positive.” “This blows!”) or even better, the one where they went back in time and met Hitler. Hitler’s glare was so full of hate it hurt Captain Planet.
Some of the loopiest of lefties worked on this one as the badguys too:
Meg Ryan, Sting, Martin Sheen…
my dad always made me change the channel when this show was on. i think it’s pretty funny now. btw, the most famous part of this show (for me anyway) was the theme song which was inexplicably left out of this post. “captain planet, he’s our hero. gonna take pollution down to zero!” me and my sis in law still sing that whenever we do something “green.”
I still have mixed feelins about this sho…captain planet had a badass hair cut and that kid with the power of “heart” got shafted when they were handin super powers…no matter how bad this sho sucked id prolly still watch it if it came on 2day…
And look how far we have come.
Then: Captian Planet with lame elemental powers.
Now: Avatar, The Last Airbender, with total elemental bending awesomeness. Aang would make Captain Planet Appa’s bitch, and Kitara would behead Gaia with a water blade.
Dude, no. You’re not thinking about it the right way. You know what the power of Heart was? MIND CONTROL!
Sure, those other losers could start fires or make the wind blow. But with the power of Heart, you can control an army of monkeys and make them do your bidding. That little kid just never got creative enough with it.
I bow down to your genius sir ^.^ an army of monkeys is definitely a ftw deal ^.^
I just took a Facebook quiz and found out I was most like the South American kid whose ring power was HEART! Sa-weet. He was my hero.
Captain Planet was sad. It had all the subtlety of a lead pipe with it’s environmentalist propaganda. Wheeler, the only American on the show is a constant screw-up whose shirt is always half tucked in and whose sneakers were always untied. The villains were always corporate bigwigs or “eco-terrorists”. Aside from all the heavy handed preachyness, the show wasn’t very well written or animated. The final credits music was lifted from a NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK SONG! That’s a fail on a level not lightly given to any show.
I thought i recognized the voice of Wheeler…i was wrong
But Whoopi is the voice of Gaya….no joke…go look at the outro
My youngest was just at the right age to be hypnotized when this show came out. That was a stage I was glad ended quickly. The first 2-3 times I saw this, I thought, “this is kind of cute.” But that was about all it took to get over it.
I hated that show as a kid. I’d change the channel if it was on. There’s one 80’s cartoon I hope never gets remade into a movie. It more than likely will though what with all the enviro-hype going on these days. Captain Planet will probably save us from ‘Global Climate Change’ then spend the last five minutes of the show lecturing the audience on how they must totally change their life to ’save the planet’ if they do a new movie of him these days.
This is the single most politically correct cartoon ever.
I would so want to see a movie remake of this show.
Ye Gods, I hope not.
It was okay as a kids’ TV series in the early ’90s, but as a movie it would turn out to be a mouthpiece for Greenpeace. No, no, no, and HELL no.
The GAYNESS is yours!
I hated that show. The part that bugged me worst was that it always came down to eco-villains, rather than people just trying to make a buck or get through their day. Most people who are trashing their environment actually care about it quite a bit but need/want the resources more.
But I can sympathize – it would be really hard to come up with a superhero power that enables you to resolve complex prioritization and resource allocation issues. And then the happy ending is 20 years later things don’t suck as bad as they would have otherwise.
Bleh! My kids even thought the show was lame.
I don’t see why there is so much hate on this show. Sure looking back on it know it seems pretty silly,but this was a show I grew up on.I’m very much a sucker for nostalgia,and this definately gets me. And for god sakes it was 90’s show,of course it pales to the new century. It was going to be rather blunt because kids like me,the ones they were marketing to, didn’t have the brain power at the time to sit back and look at the in depth aspects at it all. It all comes down to the classic and cliche’ “good versus evil and some kids with powers” appeal. Old,but it works.
Fwoosh! Green mullet!
My sister LOVED this show. I hated it.
no, THIS is what we call an epic FAIL
THE MOST ANNOYING AND GAY CARTOON EVER
GO PLANETQUEERS
LAME LAME LAME
OMG! I used to love this! I still do. It was taken off TV or something because i haven’t seen it in AGGGEEEESSSSS. =(
My dad wrote the end song in this show… lol
I REALLY hated this show, mostly because my local TV station would advertise some really awesome show, like DOUG, and then switch from network to local and NO DOUG. Captain Planet instead. And I would wait and wait for Doug and it would eventually go to Saved by the Bell and that stuff.
RAGE! Rage at the unfairness and broken promises!!!
Screw you! this show rocks!
It’s sad that (even though I watched the show… hated it, but watched it) that environmentalism and protecting our recources went from “The Power is YOURS” to “This power can be yours, if the price is right.” Captain planet showed us that we don’t need to be green, hell, we don’t even have to buy green products all the time, but instead we change ourselves to protect the environment, and take responsibility. Not step up onto the bandwagon and just buy our way to self gratification. Thank you captain planet! (even though I positively HATED your songs)
God, you guys are so lame! i thought this show was pretty decent. any 1 who thinks this show sucks sucks themselves.
I always thought that too! He never had anything useful to do! It was clearly “Oh crap, we ran out of powers for all the different ethnicities… what can we give this kid?”
I loved Captain Planet. I miss it every day, and twice on Sundays (Yes, I did just make a “Taken” miniseries joke, shut up.
). In my Spanish class the teacher (who was from Spain) kept talking about how she was brought up with recycling. One kid says “Yeah, so were we!” She asks us how and most people said “parents”. I waited until it got silent to yell “Captain Planet!”