Spider-Man and Transformers (Two-Disc Special Edition) [HD DVD]" rel="amazon" href="http://www.amazon.com/Transformers-Two-Disc-Special-HD-DVD/dp/B000NU2NJ8%3FSubscriptionId%3D0G81C5DAZ03ZR9WH9X82%26tag%3Dzemanta-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB000NU2NJ8">Trans­form­ers are now two of the high­est gross­ing movies ever made. They appeal to kids and adults alike. Why? Because the adults that want to see them were brought up lov­ing them in car­toon form as young’uns. That and Megan Fox attract­ing most guys to Trans­form­ers and a spandex-clad dude in Spider-Man for other tastes.

So, what else from the past has poten­tial to be given the Hol­ly­wood treat­ment? Or has it all been used up already? Ghost­busters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles have been rinsed pretty well. But remem­ber Defend­ers Of The Earth? Make it!

The list was con­densed to 10, mean­ing some greats had to be left out. But when you watch these intro­duc­tion videos they’ll bring it all back. You’ll be on Ama­zon within the hour, and thank­ing us from the bot­tom of your wal­let for not giv­ing you too many more great ideas.

10. Dog­tan­ian and the Three Muskehounds

What is it? It’s a dog’s world quite lit­er­ally as Dog­tan­ian leads his mus­ke­teers in fight­ing to defend the King of France, Louis XIII. Based on the clas­sic Mus­ke­teers who are led by d’Artagnan, it can only be pre­sumed this whole car­toon is built around his name sound­ing like ‘dog’, sim­ple but effective.

Why it was great: Ani­mals in car­toons are always a win for the kids. Give those ani­mals swords and the script writes itself from there.

How to get your hit now: Buy all your goods and even enjoy some fan-made games at their very own site, muskethournds.com.

9. The Real Ghostbusters

What is it? After Bill Mur­ray, Dan Aykroyd and the gang blew audi­ences away with the Ghost­busters movie, this was the next obvi­ous step. And it was taken by the movie actors and car­toon cre­ators Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis them­selves. Iron­i­cally named as this was in fact, the car­toon ver­sion and not real at all. Just like ghosts… or is it?

Why it was great: Every episode fea­tured Slimer gloop­ing some­one. That and the traps suck­ing up ghoul­ish spir­its made for an action packed break from your home­work in front of the TV.

How to get your hit now: Ghost­busters and Ghost­busters 2 are still on every Christ­mas with­out fail and never get bor­ing. The new game has all the real actors and fea­tures com­pletely new con­tent, read about the Ghost­busters game here.

8. Duck Tales

What is it? The richest duck in the world, Scrooge McDuck, is looking after his grandsons Huey, Dewey and Louie. His weekly swims in all his money are at risk, and it's up to the grandsons to save the day, again. Luckily his wealth is usually intact at the end of each episode so he can continue swimming in it, not investing it, not giving it to charity, because swimming is what ducks like isn’t it?

Why it was great: Imagine swimming in money. That is almost enough to keep the series running. Coupled with baffling bad guys like Flintheart Glomgold, hell-bent on usurping Scrooge’s wealth, the show is never without adventure.

How to get your hit now: There’s, surprisingly, still a selection of duck-related stuff available including a DVD, computer games and even a comic. If you can find a chocolate money factory and an empty pool, you might even be able to recreate Scrooge’s cash dip with added chocolate sweetness. Ideal.

7. Defenders Of The Earth

What is it? Some of the greatest superheroes ever, all on one team. Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Mandrake The Magician, Lothar, and their kids. All up against none other than Ming The Merciless. The only thing missing is Brian Blessed shouting “Gordon’s alive!” every five minutes.

Why it was great: The intro song was so damn good it has been stuck in 86% of its viewers’ minds for the last fifteen years. Like that annoying first song you hear in the morning and can’t shift all day, but for a drug-fuelled musician's lifetime.

How to get your hit now: The Flash Gordon movie is a classic, with nothing but Queen as the soundtrack. For this reason alone it should be in your DVD collection. Because it’s a live action movie you can own it without the embarrassment of having a cartoon series in your room. Subtle geek chic.

6. Inspector Gadget

What is it? A bum­bling detec­tive whose efforts to foil The Claw on a weekly basis are only achieved through the aid of his selec­tion of gad­gets and his niece Penny, and dog Brain.

Why it was great: They use watches for video calls, the ulti­mate gad­get in the eyes of any child or adult alike. Extend­ing arms and a heli­copter built into his jacket make Gad­get the bumbling-bionic man of the future that every child wants to be.

How to get your hit now: Don’t watch the live action film star­ring Matthew Brod­er­ick for a start. It will ruin all your child­hood mem­o­ries. It will ruin your inner child’s soul for­ever. To see The Claw who was never seen in the series, go here.

5. Cap­tain Planet

What is it? The earth is in dan­ger of dying from pol­lu­tion – the new craze of the ‘80s. Accord­ing to the show it can be stopped by empow­er­ing kids with rings. The power of fire (cool), earth (solid), water (gnarly), wind (pow­er­ful) and heart (what? unlucky) are endowed on the heroes. Every episode they get into trou­ble and must com­bine their rings to unlock the green crew-cut hair of Cap­tain Planet to save the day.

Why it was great: The awe­some pow­ers of the rings were enough to tickle any child’s inner des­per­a­tion to be all grown-up and pow­er­ful. Teach­ing chil­dren about being lit­ter aware paved the way for a gen­er­a­tion of eco-friendly, earth-conscious adults who are now try­ing to avoid destroy­ing the planet. So in a way Cap­tain Planet actu­ally was really sav­ing the earth every Sat­ur­day morning.

How to get your hit now: A real-life foun­da­tion for fund­ing to help those fight­ing for the planet at captainplanetfoundation.org. In the words of Cap­tain Planet, “The power is yours”. That’s not cheesy.

4. Trans­form­ers

What is it? Liv­ing robots called Auto­bots from the planet Cybertron have come to earth. Thanks Japan­ese imag­i­na­tion. Some good and some bad, they bat­tle it out to pro­tect us puny humans. Like a TV show of big older broth­ers pro­tect­ing us and doing our bid­ding, it was always going to be a hit.

Why it was great: Toy cars were great when you were three, but by four it was get­ting bor­ing, then came Trans­form­ers. Cars became planes and planes became robots, the pants-wetting joy was end­less. Despite the whole series basi­cally being a giant advert to sell the toys, feel­ing bit­ter is impos­si­ble because of all the robot bat­tling joy this series added to all our childhoods.

How to get your hit now: The record break­ing explo­sions of Trans­form­ers: Revenge Of The Fallen have drawn in mil­lions already. If you liked the car­toon and haven’t seen the films then you’re miss­ing out. Not only do you get the action of your child­hood in blind­ingly real­is­tic spe­cial effects but now that you’re grown-up you can appre­ci­ate the slow-motion run­ning of Megan Fox.

3. Spider-Man

What is it? Spider-Man is so famous that if you don’t know his leg­end by now you must have been liv­ing under a rock with some of his dis­tant spi­der cousins. The car­toon was made by Mar­vel and stuck to the comic’s orig­i­nal sto­ries. It tells the tale of Peter Parker and his bat­tle to bal­ance a nor­mal stu­dent life, with his span­dex cos­tumed alter-ego that went out to bat­tle super-villains and save super babes.

Why it was great: It’s not too child­ish for adults to watch, but is sim­ple enough for the kids to love too. The likes of Venom and arch-nemesis Car­nage fea­ture in a mini-series that even see peo­ple being killed. Shock­ing stuff. Big laser weapons and lots of witty lines aren’t bad either.

How to get your hit now: If you haven’t seen Spider-Man on a bill­board, or bought the lunch­box, then you must have seen one of the films. It’s every­where, if you’re not play­ing the com­puter game at home you can even take a 3D-simulator ride in Uni­ver­sal Studios.

2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

What is it? The slimy lit­tle tur­tle broth­ers and their rat mas­ter Splin­ter got cov­ered in exper­i­men­tal goop that made them big. They learned to fight. Shred­der, Beepop and Rock­steady try in vain to stand in their way. But even Krang can’t crush their spir­its, despite his best efforts to under­mine them by arrang­ing anchovies on their pizzas.

Why it was great: April was one of the all-time great car­toon hot­ties in her yel­low all-in-one. Michelan­gelo showed every young child how to party like a mind­less ani­mal from a young age. They were allowed to kill most bad guys as they were just robots. Eat­ing pizza in a sewer became accept­able as a child. Take that mum, try­ing to con­vince me clean­li­ness is nec­es­sary.

How to get your hit now: The TMNT movie was as near to the car­toon as you could get. The orig­i­nal ‘90s movies are still avail­able, if you dig deep enough, and fea­ture tracks by the likes of Vanilla Ice. The arcade game was a mas­sive hit too and can still be played on Xbox 360 as a free down­load. Win.

1. Thun­der­cats

What is it? Lion-O wear­ing a near S&M out­fit dons the Sword of Omens, using the Eye of Thun­dera to pro­tect his team of Thun­der­cats liv­ing on earth – the last sur­vivors from the dead home world Thun­dera. Mumm-Ra is their arch-nemesis, hell-bent on killing the Thun­der­cats for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son. Weekly bat­tles with no deaths and rarely any injuries ensue from there.

Why it was great: Every episode fea­tures Lion-O bat­tling to sur­vive in a “must reach ledge” strained speech type sit­u­a­tion. Excit­ing for a child to think he might die at any moment. Buy­ing the box set as an adult might leave you a lit­tle deflated by com­par­i­son. Chee­tara was hot in her leop­ard skin lycra, teach­ing chil­dren every­where what it was to feel a stir­ring in one’s oth­er­wise Lion-O only lov­ing loins.

How to get your hit now: The box set is still a great watch for an episode or two. The movie Thun­der­cats! Ho! is still great fun too. There is talk of it being adapted for a live action movie with imdb.com fea­tur­ing it as a 2010 release, unlikely, but we can still hope.

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