Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Toons After Dark: Aqua Teen Hunger Force (2001)

Amazingly, this is the longest running original series in the nearly 12 year existence of [adult swim]. The only way Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which now goes by another title) has managed to hang on this long is largely because their target audience (college students, mostly) are so zonked by the time the show comes on, they don't realize they're watching a real dog of a show.

Like, sentient food as superheroes? The creators of this series had to be on something. How else to explain a pack of French fries, a ball of meat, and a milkshake cup at least attempting to fight crime? And, yet, in spite of all this, the breakout star on this show is their next door neighbor, Carl, a generic human.

The flash animation doesn't make the animated colorforms format of this series any more obvious than it already is. Aqua Teen was popular enough to warrant a feature film, but the promotion of the movie involved some lame stunt in Boston that went awry and cost Cartoon Network executive Jim Samples his job, leading to the current misdirected administration of Stuart Snyder & Rob Sorcher and their bad ideas.

Edit, 1/3/22: Had to change the video. Here's a sample intro:



The movie was a bomb, so there are some sophisticated people among us after all.

Rating: D.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

I never did understand what it is people like about this show - much less warrant a film. Then again, I watch TV while sober.

FWIW, Flash animation has gotten much better over the years. Motorcity (produced by Titmouse, Inc. for Disney XD) is a great example of how far it came.

hobbyfan said...

The forthcoming Sabrina series on Hub is also a mix of CGI & Flash animation, and that looks impressive. Haven't seen Motorcity, never home when it's on, it seems, so I would have to look it up on YouTube.

As for the Aqua Teens, to get back on topic, maybe the day will come when CN comes to its senses and recognizes the target demographic for shows like that don't have their brains in order most of the time, and that goes for the creators.....