History YMMV / CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Australian kids '''love''' ''Captain Planet'' unironically, and even the snarking over the silliness is more out of love rather than out of regret and the sense of "What the hell were we thinking, watching this as kids?" like it is in the United States. A ''lot'' of Australian children born in the late '80s to very early 1990s will fondly remember watching ''Captain Planet''. Not only was it on the free-to-air channel [[Creator/AustralianBroadcastingCorporatiom The ABC]], but it was in a perfect timeslot with popular shows on either side of it. Sadly, to the despair of several viewers, the ABC no longer has broadcasting rights. It is perhaps due to this that, as of 2017, Australia is one of the only two countries in the world (New Zealand being the other one) to have the complete series of ''Captain Planet'' released on DVD.

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Australian kids '''love''' ''Captain Planet'' unironically, and even the snarking over the silliness is more out of love rather than out of regret and the sense of "What the hell were we thinking, watching this as kids?" like it is in the United States. A ''lot'' of Australian children born in the late '80s to very early 1990s will fondly remember watching ''Captain Planet''. Not only was it on the free-to-air channel Creator/TheABC, but it was in a perfect timeslot with popular shows on either side of it. Sadly, to the despair of several viewers, the ABC no longer has broadcasting rights. It is perhaps due to this that, as of 2017, Australia is one of the only two countries in the world (New Zealand being the other one) to have the complete series of ''Captain Planet'' released on DVD.

** Though it dredges into NarmCharm depending on how one views it, almost every villain is just so ''[[CardCarryingVillain glad]]'' to do the most heinously [[ForTheEvulz evil]] or [[EvilIsPetty petty]] things they can come up with. Whether it be mass poaching, dumping radioactive waste, trying to destroy local ecosystems, placing bombs in populated cities, getting people hooked on a drug until they die, or even [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers harassing a guy who has AIDS while intentionally misinforming people about it]], there's nothing they won't do with aplomb and an EvilLaugh for their carnage and hatred towards the world and other people. This is all while trying to make them FauxAffablyEvil murderers that the cast should be treating completely seriously, if they aren't being LaughablyEvil.

** Verminous Skumm's plan in "A Formula for Hate" (spreading misinformation about AIDS to make citizens of a single town ostracize a single teenager, which he says will somehow help him rule the world) is such a blatant MissingStepsPlan that most fans just consider it an excuse to be a cruel bastard ForTheEvulz.
* AluminumChristmasTrees: While Looten Plunder sometimes engaging in poaching for entertainment sounds like typical cartoon villainy, according to some poachers-turned-rangers, some poachers actually do poach for sport rather for money, food, or some other reason, making Plunder more realistic in this regard than expected.

* CommonKnowledge: One frequent criticism of the show ([[RepeatedlyUsedOnThisVeryWiki even on this very wiki]]) is that all of the eco-villains are mere caricatures who cause environmental degradation purely ForTheEvulz. But this isn't the case for most of them: Hoggish Greedly and Looten Plunder are generally trying to make money, Sly Sludge's damage to the environment is borne out of CuttingCorners and [[DidntThinkThisThrough not taking the time to think things through]] rather than genuine malice, and Verminous Skumm is far more interested in destroying ''humanity'' than nature. The only major villain who this really applies to consistently is Dr. Blight. However, since Blight is one of the more frequently-seen villains, it's at least understandable.
** The show also makes it clear on numerous occasions that the eco-villains aren't the only source of environmental degradation, and there are lots of one-off villains who reform themselves. Problem is, said discussions on ecological harm caused by others rarely if ever affects the A-plot of any given episode, leading to the perception that all the ecological destruction caused in the show is by cartoon villains (who, truth be told, aren't really THAT over the top by the standards of contemporary superhero media). Further contributing to the perception is that the show basically never delves into how environmental problems got so bad in the first place and rarely delves into the long-term consequences of pollution.

* RootingForTheEmpire: Some fans actually cheer on the Eco Villains, often purely out of spite for how UnintentionallyUnsympathetic the Planeteers and Gaia can be in [[AesopEnforcer enforcing the Aesop]] of the day. The writers themselves may have caught this because they made it happen in "Whoo Gives a Hoot?" by having Looten Plunder succeed in clear-cutting a forest where endangered animals lived and even rubbed his success in the Planeteers' faces. Needless to say, it was quite a DownerEnding.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Many see Captain Pollution (who only appears in four episodes) as a wasted character, especially thanks to being one of the few genuine threats to Captain Planet himself. What's more, some fans of the series feel that he should have had a VillainTeamUp with Zarm, and helped bring back together the five Eco Villains who originally summoned him along with the EvilKnockoff power rings.

** When it comes to the eco-villains, while they frequently represent a cartoonish [[BlackAndWhiteMorality black and white]] distortion of reality, people like the corporate executives responsible for the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster Bhopal Disaster]] and other fossil fuel billionaires do prove that there really are people in positions of power who hold contempt for the environment and the people affected by their profit-extracting activities.

* CompleteMonster: There are these two [[KnightOfCerebus Knights of Cerebus]], who are [[CardCarryingVillain proudly]] motivated more by [[ForTheEvulz sadistic enjoyment]] than mere {{greed}}:

** The show also makes it clear on numerous occasions that the eco-villains aren't the only source of environmental degradation, and there are lots of one-off villains who reform themselves. Problem is, said discussions on ecological harm caused by others rarely if ever affects the A-plot of any given episode, leading to the perception that all the ecological destruction caused in the show is by cartoon villains (who, truth be told, aren't really THAT over the top by the standards of contemporary superhero media).

* CondemnedByHistory: ''Captain Planet and the Planeteers'' was initially seen as just a harmless kids' cartoon about environmentalism with {{Green Aesop}}s galore, but eventually the kids who watched it grew up and realized environmental politics are far more complicated than cartoon supervillains polluting the earth ForTheEvulz. Admittedly, this was a conscious decision on the writers' part so that kids wouldn't think less of their parents who might work for such companies, but it's now widely believed that the show did its viewers a disservice by taking all nuance out of the issues it presented.

** Similarly, the way Hoggish Greedly seems to take pride in polluting as much as he can is actually not too far removed from the real-world phenomenon of "rolling coal", where people customize their trucks and SUVs to emit illegal amounts of exhaust as an anti-environmental statement.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: While Looten Plunder sometimes engaging in poaching for entertainment sounds like typical cartoon villainy, according to some poachers-turned-ranger some poachers actually do poach for entertainment rather for money, food, or some other reason, making Plunder more realistic in this regard than expected.

* ValuesDissonance: While the show's overall intention of promoting environmental and social responsibility remains resonant, quite a few individual morals and characters have become rather outdated as a combination of [[HistoryMarchesOn history]], society, and [[ScienceMarchesOn science]] marching on.

** Thought it dredges into NarmCharm depending on how one views it, almost every villain is just so ''[[CardCarryingVillain glad]]'' to do the most heinously [[ForTheEvulz evil]] or [[EvilIsPetty petty]] things they can come up with. Whether it be mass poaching, dumping radioactive waste, trying to destroy local ecosystems, placing bombs in populated cities, getting people hooked on a drug until they die, or even [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers harassing a guy who has AIDS while intentionally misinforming people about it]], there's nothing they won't do with aplomb and an EvilLaugh for their carnage and hatred towards the world and other people.

** Thought it dredges into NarmCharm depending on how one views it, virtually every villain is just so ''[[CardCarryingVillain glad]]'' to do the most heinously [[ForTheEvulz evil]] or [[EvilIsPetty petty]] things they can come up with. Whether it be mass poaching, dumping radioactive waste, trying to destroy local ecosystems, placing bombs in populated cities, getting people hooked on a drug until they die, or even [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers harassing a guy who has AIDS while intentionally misinforming people about it]], there's nothing they won't do with aplomb and an EvilLaugh for their carnage and hatred towards the world and other people.