The Things Best Left Unremembered

One of the things you should never do is Google your childhood.

One thing people my age (who grew up in the USA) like to do is lament the loss of the great Saturday morning shows in the 1970s. We are convinced that modern Saturday morning fare is crap and we were the few, the happy few.

This is mostly because we remember how the shows made us feel not how they actually were. We also tend to remember the theme songs. We also don’t realize how demented we’ve become because of them.

The king of all shows was The Krofft Supershow. We mostly remember it for hosting a bunch of other shows. What we didn’t remember was Kaptain Kool and the Kongs. When you watch this, you will understand why we blocked it out.

Having watched this once, I then forced myself back into very dark places, I first dared explore one of the shows that first gave me an inkling of, well, puberty, Electra Woman and DynaGirl.

The song is still catchy and the main actress still, um, electra inspiring. (I should also add that Judy Strangis aged well and/or had a good plastic surgeon.) If you want to explore true madness, however, search for an actual episode. (Electra demented.)

The other shows, and probably the ones with the best theme songs were Doctor Shrinker (warning the acting is terrible and lead woman is named BJ).

and Wonderbug

Unfortunately, this greatness was ruined in Season 2 when Bigfoot and Wildboy and Magic Mongo were added to the line up. And then it was completely ruined in Season 3 with the addition of the Bay City Rollers.

Now, those still wallowing in denial will point out that all the networks had their own line up. One channel gave us superheroes with Shazam! and The Secrets of Isis (come on, how many of you, for a brief second, think “Oh Mighty Isis” when you hear news out of Syria and Iraq? My hand’s raised) but these were just badly acted, not demented. They also didn’t have catchy theme songs.

In the end, I suppose, what current Saturday mornings miss is the variety of twistedness and dementedness. Well, maybe that’s because we’ve become so demented we don’t remember. Whatever the truth, the theme songs aren’t as catchy as they used to be.

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