nostalgia backfire

[Screamarie]

Xena Warrior Princess. I watched that like it was a drug and I wanted SO much to be Xena. I still love the show, I still think it's a good concept and some really good stories and great humor, but I go to watch it today and it's like..."Wooowww...I was so stupid not to notice the overacting."

I remember it fondly though for feeding my tomboyish ways because there was very little on TV that showed a girl in a lead role and not wearing a dress or wanting a tiara or covering something in glitter. I mean I grew up in a time when "The Babysitters" was still on TV...fuck that I want a sword!

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Beverly Hills Ninja. Maybe every Chris Farley movie for that matter. When I was a kid I thought he was the funniest and goofiest master of hilarity ever. Upon adulthood, oh man. The gags fall so flat, the lines are cringe-inducing, and with the power of hindsight it's clear that the films were definitely to fund a coke and hooker habit. A shame, I wanted to love them, and tried, but I can't convince my mind that I'm seeing something better than what's there.

 

[WindKnight]

transformers G1.

Ok, the characters were the great giant heroes I remembered... but by god, the scripts were awful. it was a slog to get through just one season.

The animated movie still has some cheesy charm, even with the mass slaughter of my favorite characters to try and make me buy the new toys.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Ninja turtles. The bad puns and indirectly violent fight sequences mixed with dated 80s lingo makes it kind of hilarious but how I found the ninja turtles cool as a kid is beyond me.

 

[thesilentman]

I tried watching the original 'Pokemon' a while back.

It was okay until I got into the Mewtwo Returns/whatever season followed place.

The characters have, for some strange reason, become blander and blander each season. I was watching one of the newer ones to see how far the show has come and it's boring as fuck. They somehow managed to make the friggin' protagonist the most uninteresting character now. I'm pained. At least I could find some humor in the original...

OT- I haven't had a true backfire yet, but the closest it's gotten is with DragonForce. I decided to listen to what younger me thought was a great band. Maybe it's because I decided to listen to them after finishing The Wall. That explains quite a bit really.

 

[SadakoMoose]

I used to watch wrestling back in the day. WWF with Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior. I saw an old video of it and it hurt to watch. Eugh the power rangers movie, the brady bunch movie, My little Pony is just full of morals, too many morals. Oh and Disney's Pokahontas. That properly sucked.

I still love Trap Door, Animaniacs and of course Count Duckula. Hell yes!

Yeah, Warrior vs. Hogan was awful...
Warrior vs Rude was actually not that bad though, of course Rude could get a good match out of a sack of crap if he wanted to. Also, Hogan's stuff from BEFORE he started doing the whole red and yellow "hulkster" thing is also something worth tracking down. Specifically, anything he did for New Japan Pro Wrestling. This was before he had a set "routine", and back when he was willing to do more technical wrestling rather than just "clothesline, body slam, leg drop".

If you're interested in getting back into pro wrestling then there are some very exciting things happening right now in the US, outside of the WWE, and it's never been a better time to watch Independent Pro Wrestling.

 

[Damian13]

Thankfully, Animaniacs seems like it hasn't aged a day.

Yeah i gotta get that on DVD

 

[SirCannonFodder]

Nostalgia backfired for me when I tried playing the first RPG I ever played again for the memories.

Spoiler

Adult Redlin finds this game boring. Couldn't get past the second map area before dropping the controller and admitting to myself that I wasn't having fun. When you're playing a game for the sake of playing it and not for your own enjoyment, you should stop.

The art-deco-style box-art looks nice, at least.

Anyway, tried reading a Goosebumps book recently. Used to love them as a kid, but good lord they're awful. Watched Wild Thornberrys again recently too, the Nigel bits are still great, but god damn Eliza and Debby are fucking obnoxious.

 

[Blunderboy]

The Animals of Farthing Wood really should be put down.

I regret ever bothering to try and watch it again.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

The A-Team was my favourite show when I was a kid (up to 7 years old, I believe). I would watch the episode, then the re-run the next morning, and then the next re-run the day before the next episode. I haven't watched it for a long time afterwards, but I always had fond memories. About a year ago I tried it again and holy crap, is that show cheesy and predictable. It doesn't even have the "80s glamour" value of Knight Rider, i.e. you can't even watch it with someone and pretend you're laughing at it.

I also remembered (somewhat more hazily) Allo Allo as being that wildly funny British TV show. Everyone could quote lines from it! Everyone remembered the jokes!
Then I tried re-watching it and suddenly realized why everyone remembers the jokes. It's because the same jokes are repeated every episode. "It is I, Leclerc", Carstairs & Farifax's constant confusion, Michelle having to repeat the explanation because somebody just entered the room... They're cheap laughs, but they work. Once or twice. Not fifty fucking times.

 

[Belaam]

Re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia. I probably read the whole series a dozen times over between 2nd grade and high school.

Little things just started jumping out at me, like if Aslan is the Christ analogy, but his name is Aslan, why the heck is everyone celebrating Christmas?

Several parts in several books also struck me as just ridiculously racist or sexist as well. I cringed my way through almost all of Last Battle.

Lucy used to be kinda cool, but now just strikes me as whiny.

I think one of the big reasons it has aged so poorly is that I wasn't really familiar with some of the things the books referenced. Puddleglum and the Green Witch's showdown is just a lot less exciting once you're read Plato's Allegory of the Cave and go, "oh, this isn't so much a battle as a short essay on why Lewis doesn't like Plato."

Far too many moments like that.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader probably held up the best, but even it seems kinda heavy handed as hell with its moralizing. Young Adult books have gotten a lot more subtle and far more relevant towards their actual audience. I mean, what second grader (when I first read and loved the books) is going to go, "Oh, I get it, the monkey named Shift is Darwinism!"

 

[Trucken]

Beverly Hills Ninja. Maybe every Chris Farley movie for that matter. When I was a kid I thought he was the funniest and goofiest master of hilarity ever. Upon adulthood, oh man. The gags fall so flat, the lines are cringe-inducing, and with the power of hindsight it's clear that the films were definitely to fund a coke and hooker habit. A shame, I wanted to love them, and tried, but I can't convince my mind that I'm seeing something better than what's there.

Yeah, most movies with Chris Farley were kinda crap, but I still love Tommy Boy and honestly think it's a really funny movie.

OT: a couple of years ago I tried watching two shows I absolutely loved as a kid, Bravestarr and Ghostbusters. Bloody hell, they were terrible. They had good themesongs though.

 

[hermes]

80s cartoons, like Thundercats, Silverhawks or He-Man are nearly unwatchable to me now. I have seen old cartoons and some I still enjoy, but almost nothing from that era seems to hold on pretty well.

 

[Juan Cantu]

Starship troopers and tremors, I used to watch them every year (they allways air in october in local t.v.) I watched the first one with a friend and told him its very good... and it takes like 3/4 of the movie to start (thankfully the last quarter is very good) so now I only watch the movie after they start fighting...

and tremors... i just lol

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The old X-men and Spiderman cartoons, when I watched them as a kid they were so intense and action packed, but I saw one again not too long ago, and it was just so... boring, the way no one ever dies, the plot is always Magneto has an evil scheme, he almost succeeds, the x-men show up, they fight for a bit, break off and Magneto runs away. The same thing every damn episode.
Great for kids, for adults not good at all.

Yeah I watched those on Netflix about a year ago and while the Spider-man one was still alright, I never realized just how terrible the voice acting was in that old X-Men cartoon.

 

[Queen Michael]

The X-Men cartoon. I only needed to get through 1/4th of an episode before I recoiled at the sheer lamery.

For this interested, this is the offending clip of the only episode I could stomach:

I don't get it. What's the problem with this clip?

 

[Gennadios]

The X-Men cartoon. I only needed to get through 1/4th of an episode before I recoiled at the sheer lamery.

For this interested, this is the offending clip of the only episode I could stomach:

Spoiler

I don't get it. What's the problem with this clip?

Let's just say it was alot cooler when I was 12. The attempt at edginess didn't hold up into my 20's.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Superfriends. Do I even need to explain that one?

Some shows aged worse than others, and sometimes it's just the wrong episode. Transformers was still cheesy but watchable in its first season, but could be insipidly stupid in its second, like Megatron trying to frame the Autobots as conquerors, only to film him men getting out of their disguises (and no one watched to the end of the tape). The GI Joe miniseries coulld be decent, then you see Cobra rob Fork Knox because no one thought about someone tunneling in, and the Joes catching their bullet train escape on fucking horseback. Some days you never realized how much these could insult your inteligence.