The New Thundercats

Not good comedy mind you, just obnoxious shows.

Apparently having a werewolf bite Seth Green was insufficient.

Let's get Lumpy Space Princess to bite him.

lets have a zombie bite him

also, since he's One Of Us, we can twitter Steven Colbert on the matter, a Colbert Bump would be more convincing than a regulaar Netition

e.g. #savethundercats@colbertnation

I'm...hesitant to believe that could be done, but maybe. I don't use twitter that much though.

Man, the biggest crime that would happen if this show didn't get a second season would be to miss out on seeing how they were trying Silver Hawks and Tiger Sharks into this. :S

Way with the Siler Hawks? they only thing they have in common is the villens both have "ancient spirits of evil"

Maybe because Monstar was shown to be one of Mumm-Ra's henchmen.

I doubt Monstar was his henchman. He's probably a rival war lord. Some think it's possible that the War Stone was once Monstar's eye.

I have some new ideas to help save Thunder Cats.

First, the San Diego Comic Con is next month. This would be a great chance to get a bunch of Thunder Cats fans together and do something to show support. I don’t know what exactly, and I’m afraid I couldn’t go because I have a summer class, but maybe everyone can go “Thunder Cats Ho!” and wave around some Swords of Omens, or hold up signs that say “Save Thunder Cats.” I think it would help get people’s attention.

Second, we could contact Sam Register, the executive producer who made the decision to get the relaunch. Maybe if we were to send something to him directly it would get his attention.

Here are ways to contact him and others at CN: https://www.facebook.com/sam.register1

http://www.retrojunk.com/forum/post/list/5108

The emails listed may be outdated.

edited 21st Jun '12 12:17:09 PM by StarOutlaw

Sounds good, I'll try to contact them this weekend.

Looks like CN decided to air Ninja Go reruns instead of Thunder Cats reruns at the last minute. This network seems to just love pissing me off...

It's dead Jim. Beam us up and delete the thread.

This sucks. I'm still hoping for a Direct to DVD season 2 though. I paid for 2 DV Ds already, and the third's got a preorder.....

It's possible. WB Animation does a lot of those for their DC titles and Scooby Doo. I hope that they would be willing to invest in Thundercats like that.

Almost all of the 80s revival campaigns have failed, with the exception of Transformers and My Little Pony, who have been sustained throughout all these years by killer merchandise sales. See: the He-Man reboot.

Thundercats 2011 wasn't fantastic - it doesn't compare favorably to Avatar (or even the similar but more lighthearted setting of Adventure Time), but it's sad to see it go in favor of something like Lego Ninjas.

edited 23rd Jun '12 4:41:01 PM by Zeta

And watch 20 years from now Lego Ninjas will be in the same position as thundercats are in now.

http://www.facebook.com/thundercats?sk=wall&filter=1

"Headed to Comic-Con in a couple weeks? Look for posts all week featuring exclusive Thunder Cats items that will be roaring through San Diego. Check back later today for the debut of the first exclusive!"

Well, this seems like good news.

Merch is up: retro thundertank model.

Sounded like good news at first, but not if it's just retro-merchandise, unless season 2 will be a lot more like the 1980s Thundercats.

Which I would welcome, to be honest. So far the 2011 Thundercats has been really really really dark, dreary, and navel-gazing.

edited 25th Jun '12 10:41:46 PM by Zeta

It's been really... Uneven. Some episodes were great. (Generally all the flashback-past ones, as well as the finale) but others have been very meh, and character development has been all over the place. (generally it's lacked subtlety)

Still, the designs are lovely.

They mess up all the females that art Willykit.

I personally didn't like the Lino/Tigara characterizations. It was like they had a coin to flip to decide which one would be the brash brother and which one would be the mopey and introspective brother. The coin flip determined their personalities for the week.

I can only really think of three instances where I would call Tygra brash, and two are in the first half of the season. The first case (Song of the Petalars) was caused by his pride, which is a major character trait of his. His brashness the second time (Into the Astral Plane) seems to have been caused by him being frustrated with Lion-O. The third time, in the second to last episode where he bets the two stones they have, he pride was hurt by Vultaire's racist remarks.

Lion-O was the brash one a lot more times, at least five by my count. His brashness tends to be caused more by misguided good intentions than pride, such as seeking revenge for his father and attempting to help the Elephants by getting rid of the giant bees. He does have moments of pride where he wants to prove himself a couple of times, but it's not as big a problem for him as Tygra.

It's not as though both can't have their moments of brashness and mopiness. I can tell that each has consistent characterization over the course of the show. Tygra is more level headed, realistic, and conservative, able to see things more strategically, but is also very traditional, full of pride and set in the old ways of Thundera. Lion-O is an optimist, likes to dream and help anyone who is suffering, and can tell when tradition and the old ways won't work anymore, but he's inexperienced, doesn't always think things through, and can easily be misguided. I also believe that Lion-O is overall better under pressure and more flexible when things don't go quite how he planned, while Tygra has memorized fundamental and functional strategies, but isn't good at coming up with new things on the fly.

Tygra and Lion-O are essentially foils to each other, having many of the same emotions and desires but have very different outlooks on life, and I feel that was handled well. I also have this theory that a lot of Tygra's behavior was influenced by Grune in his younger years, based on that flashback in Old Friends. Tygra learned from Grune's example, and tried to work hard and overcompensate in order to make himself stand above the supposed rightful heir. Tygra came very close to turning into Grune, and could have become a usurper if things were different. Tygra was fighting the system to prove that heredity shouldn't decide who should be leader. If someone is going to be king, they should have to work hard to earn it, and if that didn't work, Tygra could have taken Grune's advice by overthrowing Lion-O and taking the throne himself in some sort of violent coup.

Since I mentioned Grune, I like to believe that early on he really wasn't that evil, he just had big dreams and a lot of ambition, and may have been trying to fight the caste system of Thundera. If having a tail makes you a second class citizen, then big ol' fangs probably aren't much better. Grune probably wanted Panthro to share in that dream, two lower cats defying social norms and becoming Thundera's heroes. Of course, after they got sent to find the book, that dream got all twisted, and it wasn't hard for him to full turn to the dark side.

Tygra resents Lion-O for not having earned his leadership, at least early on. And a big part of the series is about Lion-O having to earn his title. Lion-O's not too hard to figure out. He's been on the receiving end of Tygra's resentment for most of his life, and knows how it feels to be pushed around. This gives him great empathy and a need to help others. Because of this, Lion-O is a lot more open to the plights of the poor and persecuted. However, Lion-O often shirked his responsibilities. He never asked to be king, never wanted to be king, and never got any enjoyment from the pressure imposed on him. Because Lion-O avoided responsibilities though, he became unprepared for being king and lacked the experience required, leading him to making poor or brash decisions. Lion-O only fully accepts his responsibility as king when he realizes that it's now up to him to save his people and the rest of Third Earth.

I think his original love of technology came when he met Jorma, who introduced him to it. Some have said that Lion-O is a spoiled brat, but I just don't see it. None of the things he was given for being royalty have ever really made him happy, and it's not as though he constantly makes unreasonable demands. He doesn't revel in his role as king. Tygra's probably a little more spoiled than Lion-O, since it's clear he was a lot more popular with the people.

edited 26th Jun '12 9:10:35 PM by StarOutlaw

Here's some new info on Bandai's TC toy line that shed some light; according to a Bandai employee, the company actually is being supportive, and the line actually has not been discontinued. It seemed that way because Amazon listed the toys as being discontinued, but Dan Norton commented that this was a mistake Amazon made.

Here's the post: http://thundercatslair.org/forums/showpost.php?p=81665&postcount=15

Also this: http://thundercatslair.org/forums/showpost.php?p=81758&postcount=21

I've been observing the ratings for TC 2011 since the show began, and while they've never been incredible, for the most part they have been consistently good and at the very least comparable to the ratings of Ben 10, Young Justice and Green Lantern within that block. That's just the second half of the season, which supposedly had much better ratings than the first half did in its supposedly bad time slot. Even in the bad time slot, the ratings seemed okay. I guess all those numbers then were adults watching. I can only imagine how much better the ratings would have been if they had aired it in a good time slot for kids right from the start.

With this info in mind, I have to question just how "unsuccessful" the show has been. Talk is that it has bad ratings and toy sales, but the insider info and data points to it having done just fine. What we are sure of is that it still hasn't been renewed, so the problem seems to lie with Cartoon Network. It's been skeptical about the show from the beginning, it barely ever advertised it past the first few weeks, and quickly replaced it with Ninja Go reruns once its season was over. To me it looks like the people in charge of CN simply do not like the show, and I'd hate to say it but I think they want to get rid of it. I don't know what the reason is though, other than maybe they only want to air programs their studio produces rather than WB's stuff.

edited 28th Jun '12 3:43:46 PM by StarOutlaw

Silver Hawks was a production sequel to Thunder Cats.

Okay, time for a couple updates.

Amazon.com finally corrected the error on the toys. They no longer say they're discontinued.

Also, at the DC Nation panel at SDCC a producer claimed that they're still waiting to see what happens next. Seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sUKWPSuqpQ

edited 15th Jul '12 8:51:58 PM by StarOutlaw

For the one year anniversary of this series, I wanted to do something special. This is something I've wanted to make since the show began. With the season done and since I finally found a better editing program, I finally had the means to create my own fan intro that recaptures the feel of the classic intro while adding some of my own touches. I've done a lot more for this than what I usually do with videos I make, including some masking and color correction.

I also wanted to make this to help with getting the word out about the movement to save the Thunder Cats and the petition. So it would really help if this video could get spread around, maybe to show to people who haven't seen the series yet. I think it works as a trailer for the first season.