YMMV / The Kangaskhan Kid

• Base-Breaking Character: Tommy's dad tends to attract two extreme reactions: those who like him find his parenting to be so bad it loops around to being darkly hilarious, while others simply find his parenting terrible and idiocy annoying. His willingness to put his life on the line to protect Tommy from Team Rocket is another point in his favor, though for his detractors it doesn't make up for the sheer carelessness he's shown beforehand.
• Crosses the Line Twice: For those who don't mind Tommy's father, his cartoonishly awful parenting is morbidly funny.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Tommy's father losing him while dangling off the edge of a helicopter seemed like cartoonish buffoonery in 1998. Nowadays, it brings to mind when Michael Jackson hung his then-infant son over a balcony four years later.
• Squick:
  • In the original Japanese version, Tommy insults Misty by making an inappropriate request regarding her chest, prompting the moment where she hits him in the head. Understandably, this was changed in the English dub where he asks if she's a Pokemon.
  • Tommy asks Misty, and later his mother if he can drink milk from their breasts. Now you know why Tommy's father opens his shirt upon their reunion. Good luck getting that image out.
• Tear Jerker: A mild one, but the sight of the horribly injured baby Kangaskhan and its agonized reaction to Brock's Super Potion can definitely pull on the heartstrings.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The father's haircut and mustache make him look a lot like a certain German politician of the 1930s.

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