Since the time I started working on creating custom ThunderCats Emoticons for the forums, a thought came to my mind. The number of good guys and the bad guys in the ThunderCats cartoon roughly balanced each other. In Season 1 especially, particular heroes were often pitted against particular villains such as: :liono VS :mummra, :panthroVS:slithe, :tygraVS:monkian, :cheetaraVS:jackalman, Snarf vs Ma-Mutt, Jaga vs Grune.
So I was wondering, would it have been a good idea to have a pair of “Evil youngsters” to pit against WilyKit and WilyKat? I’m guessing that even if such a thought crossed the minds of the creators, depicting young children as “evil” might have been too controversial for the 80s?
What are your thoughts? Would you have liked to have had a pair of Evil Youngsters to act as foils for the ThunderKittens? If so , what species should they have been? Mutants? Lunataks? Third Earthers? or an entirely different race?
In the equation above, Vultureman doesn’t get his own personal archenemy. So maybe instead of Vultureman, it should have been li’l WilyBird and WilyChick.
Maybe not evil youngsters, but they could have created a small race of mutants fot the kittnes, like mice or frogs (I know there were Slithe and Ratar-O), or as Ocean Doot said, a small kind of bird instead of a vulture (a robin or a sparrow lol).
Another interesting fact related is that, until Cheela’s appearance, there was no regular female evil character (yes, there were Ta-She, Queen Tartara and others, but they were no regular baddies). It was not until the appearance of the new TCs and the Lunatacks that things got a little more balanced, as you can say then there were more bad guys than good guys. Still though, in my mind, the Lunattacks were created as a stronger force against the original Noble TCs, not the new ones.
Yes, that’s one of the reasons I really like the Lunatacs, is that they gave the show its first recurring female villains, in the form of Chilla and Luna.
I do like the “Evil youngsters” idea too. I wouldn’t actually want Vultureman to be replaced with kids, 'cause Vultureman was awesome. A couple of junior Lunatacs would have been interesting, though.
Unlike the kittens, who always ruined it all, these lunateens could have been the ones who were always right among the Lunatacks, but they never listened to them because they were young, only to show they were right at the end.
I really like that idea! What could be more evil and annoying than precocious teen Lunataks! During their first introduction, it could have been shown that the ThunderCats underestimate them and go easy on them since they are “only kids”. But the Teen Lunataks would end up defeating the TCats and claiming victory, only to have their hard work undone by the adult Lunataks and their incompetence. :biggrin
Weren’t that formally defined - the only time it really happened is in “The Slaves Of Castle Plun-Darr”, where we saw all of those three pairing off against each other.
Interestingly, they are squaring off against their approximate opposite number in terms of muscle power, not necessarily hierarchical order - as Tygra is more senior than Panthro, but Slithe is in charge ahead of Monkian.
The only other time we see three isolated fights like this is in “Exodus”: Panthro goes up against the Jackals at the start, while Cheetara takes on the Reptilians.
It also happened in the end of “The Astral Prison”. Cheetara hits Jackalman on the SkyCutter. Tygra does the same to Monkian on his SkyCutter while Panthro casts his Nunchucks at Slithe in the NoseDiver.
In “The Mountain”, Panthro and Tygra face Slithe and Monkian, and end up getting trapped with the two in the cave. Tygra also squares off against Monkian in the beginning of “The Fireballs of Plun-Darr”.
Of course I never said it was a concrete pairing that happened all the time. But I also feel that generally this pairing suited the show as they seemed physically more or less matched for each other.
Some thoughts on the last posts:
[ol]
[li]I agree with Wilycub on the TCs vs Mutants rivalries. I have always considered Slithe vs Panthro, Monkian vs Tygra and Jackalman vs Cheetara; in my mind, it has always been that way. That might be because I’ve seen it in some eps, or because their physical characteristics matched one to the other (Panthro and Slithe being the big, muscular ones; Tygra and Monkian being the agile ones who often go up the trees and wander by Treetop Kingdom; Cheetara and Jackalman bing the “smaller” ones, maybe faster than the rest). Of course that changed when Vultureman appeared. I guess by then they thought Slithe should be Lion-O’s counterpart when Mumm-Ra wasn’t around, and Vultureman, being the Mutant’s brain and inventor, could have gone against Tygra or Panthro.[/li][li]Love the idea of the Teen Lunatacks to rival the kittens, and what we have said about being neglected by the adult Lunatacks just to be right at the end. Can you imagine an episode where both these Lunateens and the kittens feel useless, rejected and and neglected by their groups (I’m sure you can imagine the kittens there, as there were like 3 episodes around that topic). Then they work together not because they need to (like Panthro, Tygra, Slithe and Monkian in “The Mountain”), but because they feel they understand each other. By the end of the episode, of course the kittens return to the TCs and the Lunateens to the Lunatacks to be enemies again, but a feeling of respect and liking was born there. [/li]
[li]I also like, and have always rooted for, the idea of some female Mutants.[/li][/ol]
LOVE that idea! :biggrin I can almost visualize it, and it would sit very well with the tone of Season 3 episodes. Though I doubt that the Lunataks would lose even a night’s sleep over the missing teens!
As I didn’t see the later series until 2008-9, it was only then that I discovered the Lunataks, and Chilla always reminded me (visually, sort of), of a girl I knew at university.
During their first introduction, it could have been shown that the ThunderCats underestimate them and go easy on them since they are “only kids”. But the Teen Lunataks would end up defeating the TCats and claiming victory, only to have their hard work undone by the adult Lunataks and their incompetence. :biggrin