Of Jonathan Klotz
| Published
The 80s were a strange time in American culture thanks to a booming economy, Miami Vice, Dallasand hair metal. In all the weirdness, nothing is weirder in hindsight than the period-specific trend of Hollywood taking R-rated movies and sanitizing them for kids in the form of Saturday morning ccartoons.
RoboCop and Rambo III aren’t family-friendly movies that earn their R ratings, but they were also found in toy aisles across the country. The Toxic Avengera bonkers hard-R sci-fi Troma movie, had toys and a cartoon right next to Freddy Kreuger. I’m sure at some studio some executive tried to make one Nightmare on Elm Street cartoon, which would have fit in during this incredibly cool but truly bizarre time.
Kids love robots, Even violent R-rated
The success of RoboCop pioneered this trend, thanks to its part-machine, part-human, all-cop appeal to kids. Look at how cool his design is. Just like dinosaurs, kids will always love robots. I didn’t see RoboCop until well into the 90s, and even I remember thinking how great the character was in the 80s.
Hollywood executives noticed, and after the success of the Kenner Star Wars figures, they wanted a piece of the very lucrative “kids who keep begging their parents that this is the last thing they’re going to ask for” market. The best way to reach children in those days was through Saturday morning cartoons.
We didn’t have that YouTube and opening videos, but we had a four-hour block every Saturday with almost every network airing 30-minute toy commercials. RoboCop became a 12-episode 80s cartoon with no blood, no profanity, and no Kurtwood Smith. It also ended up with an NES video game and a comic book series.
John Rambo: 80s role model
As kids growing up during this time period, we all knew who John Rambo was, even if we never saw it Sylvester Stallone classic, First blood. When a character in some other ’80s cartoon or movie didn’t say a word and put red snuff on their head, we knew things were getting real and what movie it was referring to. Seeing Stallone’s take on a Vietnam vet dealing with PTSD wasn’t required to know who Rambo was and to think he was the coolest, toughest guy on the planet.
Rambo: The Force of Freedom precedes RoboCop by two years and was released in 1986. It had more in common with one of the most popular cartoons of the 80s, GI Joethan did the R-rated Stallone movies. If you go back and watch the 65-episode series today, not only will you be able to see how clearly this was designed to sell cool new toys to kids, but you’ll understand why Stallone was embarrassed by it.
Even the children were not safe from the police academy
It wasn’t just action films from the 80s with bigger heroes that got cartoons. Thanks to the Stonemasons of Springfield who made Steve Guttenberg a star, The police academy launched a 65-episode series in 1988. In what sounds completely crazy today, the franchise released one movie a year. It was red-hot, to the point that even the children on the playground knew about it. But again, the first movie was rated R and most kids never saw it.
The characters in the cartoon are exaggerated versions of their big screen counterparts, which were carried over to the action figure line. So if you ever wanted a figure of Bobcat Goldthwait, and what kid didn’t, you had the chance to pick up his Zed action figure.
The children could also use their parents’ money for a police uniform that came with a plastic baton, which they would then promise never to hit their siblings with. As for the R-rated movie to the 80s cartoon pipeline for kids, The police academy makes the most sense. The films have a cartoon sensibility.
Welcome to Tromaville Little Kids!
The Toxic Avenger, however, is the most inexplicable of all 80s cartoons. It didn’t air until 1990, probably because someone with good sense realized that the Troma cult classic is a grotesque collection of body horror, blood and guts. Eventually, common sense lost out, and by changing the title to Poisonous Crusaders and with an emphasis on the environmental message behind all standard Troma stuff, they forced it to fit in alongside Captain Planet.
Toxie and his buddies went out every episode to defend Tromaville from the Smogulans, proving that the Saturday morning cartoon formula is so simple it works with almost any property. It doesn’t matter if you replace the robots and “abnimals” with characters from R-rated movies.
How SpongeBob SquarePants Saved Your Kids
This 80s trend continued well into the 90s, with Conan and Highlanders got cartoon adaptations after school, but it died by the end of the decade, for good. It ended with the rise of Cartoon Network’s avant-garde style, including shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravothe The Powerpuff Girlsand the debut of a little cartoon you may have heard of, Spongebob Squarepants.
The success of these shows meant that cartoons were no longer just advertisements to sell toys; they were quality shows designed to keep kids glued to the screen to watch commercials that would then try to sell them toys.
Think again Bad Boys: Ride or Die or Gladiator II was adapted into cartoons today, with toy lines aimed at children. Now imagine the absolute firestorm of criticism that would be launched on social media over the marketing of R-rated films to children. To be fair, it’s not like people in the 80s thought it was great. It was still controversial in the 80s when these cartoons debuted, but times were different and their outcry had fewer places to find a voice.
Today, however, most of these bizarre R-rated movie-to-cartoon adaptations are not available on streaming Poisonous Crusaders is on Tubi, and The police academy available on Plex.
