Kidd Video

"Listen up. I'm an animation fan; I've seen all sorts of animation in my lifetime. I've watched countless cartoons from every decade, good and bad. The statement I'm about to make....might sound hyperbolic but it's true:

"Believe me when I say Kidd Video is bar none, the absolute craziest, strangest, chaotic cartoon I have ever seen. You know that Raggedy Ann movie? This is weirder!"

This cult favorite originally ran from 1984-85 on NBC. It involved a Garage Band who were brought to a very strange magical land called the Flip Side by the evil controller of cats, Master Blaster. Master Blaster wishes to kidnap all the musicians from our world (it's never really explained why; perhaps he had hit upon the idea of using The Power of Rock for evil). The band escapes with the help of the good Fairy, Glitter, and the rest of the series involves them getting into adventures in every city and battling Master Blaster and his Copy Cats.

As with the Dungeons and Dragons series, they're also ostensibly looking for a way to get back to the real world... but not really. The fact that everyone in the Flip Side loves their music relieves the sting of Failure Is the Only Option.

Much, much more importantly, this series is remembered for being a truly glorious perfect storm of Refuge in Cool, Deranged Animation, and The Eighties. Mass quantities of The Eighties.

The show was canceled for being too costly for NBC to produce.

Compare Jem. An extensive website, with episode guides, is maintained by Toolbot, who has also been kind enough to upload several episodes to YouTube. Which is good, because trying to describe the show is nothing compared to actually watching it.


Tropes used in Kidd Video include:

Robbie Rist: And I guess that “Kidd Video” was also responsible for what I believe is the worst cover of Where Did Our Love Go? that has ever been committed to media. It’s just…oh, God, it’s awful.

Robbie Rist: I don’t know what they put in the water cooler in the animation department, but it became this crazy thing that... it was like Lidsville. It was this acid-influenced, crazy animation. It became something like Alice in Wonderland, and I was in my twenties and watching these second-season episodes, going, “Is this for kids?” It was just a little bit too weird.

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