from Jonathan Klotz
| Published
The 1980s were a strange time in American culture thanks to the booming economy, Miami Weiss, Dallasand metal hair. In all this weirdness, nothing is stranger in retrospect than Hollywood’s period-specific tendency to take R-rated movies and sanitize them for kids in the form of a Saturday morning cartoons.
Robocop and Rambo III aren’t family films that earn their R-ratings, but they’ve also been found in toy aisles across the country. The Toxic Avengercrazy hard-R sci-fi movie Troma, had toys and a cartoon right next to Freddy Kreuger. I’m sure at some studio an executive was trying to do Nightmare on Elm Street a cartoon that would fit right in with this incredibly awesome but really weird time.
Kids love robots, Even the violent R-rated ones
The success of Robocop paved the way for this trend with its kid-friendly part machine, part man, all cop. Look how cool its design is. Like dinosaurs, kids will always love robots. i didn’t see Robocop to the 90’s and even I remember how great the character was in the 80’s.
Hollywood executives took notice, and after the success of Kenner’s 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 kids back then was through Saturday morning cartoons.
We didn’t have any 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 cartoon from the 80s with no blood, no profanity, and no Kurtwood Smith. It also ended up with an NES video game and comic book series.
John Rambo: An 80s Role Model
As a kid growing up during that time period, we all knew who John Rambo was, even if we never saw him. Sylvester Stallone classic, First blood. When a character in any other cartoon or ’80s movie didn’t say a word and put a red bandana on his head, we knew things were getting real and which movie was being referenced. Watching Stallone take on a Vietnam veteran dealing with PTSD, you didn’t need to know who Rambo was to think he was the coolest, toughest guy on the planet.
Rambo: The Power of Freedom precedes Robocop by two years, coming out in 1986. It had more in common with one of the most popular cartoons of the 80s, GI Joethan with Stallone’s R-rated movies. If you go back and watch the 65-episode series today, you’ll not only be able to see how clearly it was designed to sell cool new toys to kids, but you’ll understand why Stallone was embarrassed by it .
Even the kids weren’t safe from the police academy
It’s not just 1980s action movies with larger-than-life characters that have been turned into cartoons. Thanks to Stonemasons of Springfield, who made Steve Gutenberg a star, Police Academy began a 65-episode run in 1988. In what sounds absolutely crazy today, the franchise released one film a year. It was heated to such an extent that even the children on the playground knew about it. However, again, the first movie was rated R and most kids never saw it.
The characters in the cartoon are exaggerated versions of their counterparts on the big screen, which carry over into the action figure line. So if you’ve ever wanted a Bobcat Goldthwait figure, and what kid hasn’t, now’s your chance to get his Zed action figure.
Kids could also use their parents’ money for a police outfit that came with a plastic baton that they would then promise never, ever to hit their sibling with. When it comes to R-rated movies to 1980s cartoons for kids, Police Academy makes the most sense. The films have a cartoonish 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 common sense realized that the cult classic Troma was a grotesque collection of body horror, blood and guts. After all, reason lost and by changing the title to Toxic Crusaders and by emphasizing the environmental message that lay beneath all the usual Troma decorations, they forced it to fit together Captain Planet.
Toxie and his friends went out every episode to defend Tromaville from the Smogulans, proving that the Saturday morning cartoon formula is so simple that it works with almost any property. It doesn’t matter if you replace the robots and “non-animals” with characters from R-rated movies.
How Spongebob Squarepants saved your kids
This trend from the 1980s continued into the 1990s, with Conan and Highlander receiving animated adaptations after school, but died down by the end of the decade for good. This was compounded by the rise of Cartoon Network’s avant-garde style, including shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravoon Powerpuff Girlsand the debut of a small animated film you may have heard of, Spongebob Squarepants.
The success of these shows meant that cartoons were no longer just advertisements for selling toys; they were quality programs designed to keep kids glued to the screen to watch commercials that would then try to sell them toys.
Imagine if Bad Guys: Ride or Die or Gladiator II were adapted into cartoons today, with toy lines aimed at children. Now imagine the absolute firestorm of criticism that will be unleashed on social media regarding the marketing of R-rated movies to children. To be fair, it’s not what people in the 80s thought was cool. It was still controversial in the 1980s when these cartoons debuted, but times were different and their cry had fewer places to find a voice.
Today, however, most of these odd movie adaptations of R-rated cartoons are not available for streaming Toxic Crusaders is on Tubi and Police Academy is on Plex.
