U gotta B kidding!
Oft-used nickname of MC Hammer, also known as Stanley Kirk Burrell.
Hammerman was also a cartoon produced by DiC Entertainment where MC Hammer was a superhero. Reimagined as a mild-mannered, big-hearted inner city youth worker, Stanley Burrell used a pair of magical shoes that he inherited from another musical superhero who had just recently retired. Ah, the Celebrity Toons of the early 90s. This one debuted in 1991, lasting for 13 episodes.
This here show contained the following tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Monster of the Week for one show was a robot programmed to be The Perfectionist.
- And Knowing Is Half the Battle: MC Hammer introduced every episode and called special attention to its lesson (don't make fun of short people; don't paint all over the wall unless an adult says it's okay; and so on). Seems the show was directed at very young children. (Maybe it was for the parents, so they know what their kid is about to watch.) A lot of parent websites say for the parent to watch a show or movie before their kids. The show telling them what is going to happen skips that part for parents/guardians.
- Animation Bump: The animated sequences in the theme song are much more fluidly animated than the rest of the show. One wonders why the team who made the intro didn't help work on the rest of the series.
- Art Initiates Life: Defacely has a magic spray that brings graffiti to life as giant monsters.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Defacely Marmeister claims to love being a bad guy while spraying.
- Clark Kenting: Somehow, Jody doesn't realize Stanley is Hammerman despite not only knowing him in both identities, him being unmasked in both identities, and her knowing all about the magic shoes and how her grandfather was the previous hero who used them. It's also unclear why, given her knowledge on the subject, Stanley feels the need to hide it from her.
- Clothes Make the Superman: Specifically, talking shoes that turn Stanley into Hammerman.
- Clueless Aesop: The show's attempt to use the superhero formula to capture an audience sometimes resulted in morals that seemed confused, or hard to apply to real life. For example, in the episode "Defeated Graffiti", the intended moral (don't deface other people's property with your art) was pointless because people in the show's target audience were generally too young to be graffiti artists. The taggers above that age range probably not only never saw the show and didn't hear the message, they weren't going to be swayed by the fact that Cartoon M.C. Hammer told them not to do it.
- Cool Old Guy: Gramps, who used to be the hero Soulman, also an Expy of James Brown.
- Expository Theme Tune: Pretty much the whole opening song takes its time telling us how Stanley became Hammerman.
- Humanoid Abomination: The supervillain Defacely Marmeister looks like a walking, talking Picasso painting. And the spastic animation doesn't help make him less freaky.
- Invincible Hero: Hammerman could do basically anything the writer could think of connecting with dancing and music. Accordingly, a lot of episodes weren't actually about Hammerman trying to defeat a villain so much as they were about Stanley trying to overcome the problem of being unable to transform into Hammerman. Once he did, all opposition folded up like a cheap card table.
- Limited Animation: It goes off the wall for a DIC cartoon, ranging from just plain cheap to downright erratic at points. Strangely enough, the animation in the intro is very fluid.
- Live Item: Stanley's shoes are alive and can talk.
- Man of Kryptonite: One of Hammerman's foes was a thief who specialised in stealing shoes; considering that Hammerman's powers come from his shoes...
- The Napoleon: Rapoleon. He tries to find a way to make himself larger, but settles on making everything else smaller.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: More accurately, the show didn't really bother to clarify what Hammerman's powers actually were. In general, if he needed to do something and the writers could think of some way to work in music, dancing, or musical imagery, he could do it. In at least one episode his pants act like a parachute.
- Not Quite Starring: While the real Hammer performed the theme song, his character was voiced by Clark Johnson.
- Passing the Torch: Stanley becomes Hammerman in the first place because Gramps couldn't cope with the strain of the role.
- The Power of Rock: The shoes give Stanley "the Power of Hammertime," providing him with a barely-defined set of superpowers based around music and dancing.
- In one episode, Gramps dons the shoes again, and it becomes "The Power of Soul".
- Raised by Grandparents: In "Defeated Graffiti", Gramps states that Jody has no parents.
- Satchel Switcheroo: In one episode the problems arise because the bag Stanley was carrying the shoes in got switched with an identical bag belonging to another musician.
- Space Whale Aesop: Did we mention that it would be more accurate to say, "Don't make fun of short people because they may shrink everyone so now they will be tallest" and "Don't paint all over the wall because someone might make a spray that makes graffiti come to life and Kill All Humans"?
- Transformation Trinket: Stanley's talking shoes, which turn their wearer into a superhero with music-based powers.
- Villainous Underdog: Pretty much all the villains who appeared, since Hammerman was effectively all-powerful.
