What the Family Thinks

Cartoons ThunderCats (1985)
1

Just wondering… What do your families think of Thundercats? Does your significant other enjoy it, or think you’re absolutely weird for still liking a 20-odd-year-old cornball kids’ show? (Well, one in particular. :p) Have you converted the kids to the awesomeness that is Thundercats? What about what your parents thought when you watched the show as a kid?

As a 30-year-old terminally single girl I have to live through those of you who have families. :slight_smile: Though I am thinking of converting my nephews! (If I had the time and the luggage space to lug my entire DVD collection to Indiana I’d do it this Easter! :liono )

2

Chris here…

As a terminally single (almost-)27-year-old man, it’s a bit difficult to judge what my significant other thinks! :smiley: The only girlfriend I’ve ever (briefly) had liked ThunderCats up to a point, but was an obsessive fan of He-Man & She-Ra, so wasn’t in a position to really criticise! :wink:

My family all think it’s great that I’m still young at heart and enjoy ThunderCats - it slots right in there with the more mainstream fanboy stuff that I enjoy such as Batman, Spider-Man and the whole Marvel comics universe, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, etc., etc. My friends also tend to be cool with it, I have one friend who I’m sure from comments he’s made thinks I should grow up a bit, but given that he thinks it’s big & clever to do 70 mph on a 40 mph road, I don’t think I’ll be taking any lessons in maturity from him somehow! :wink:

At the end of the day, ThunderCats is just awesome escapist fun, I think as an adult I appreciate the escapism aspect even more than I did when I was young, and now with the release of the DVDs there’s a whole 65 episodes available to watch that were never broadcast in the UK! :slight_smile:

This is a great thread, looking forward to reading more responses! :slight_smile:

Take care… :slight_smile:

3

My mother and my sister probably thought I was nuts to like ThunderCats. But then how many other thirtysomethings back then also liked the show? :wink:

4

Hi everybody!

Well, I have a ThunderCats Room (with the Cat Signal on the door and everything)… My girlfriend thinks it’s great I collect ThunderCats, as long as I only display them in the TC Room! :liono

5

well i know that when i have kids and i hope that my gf enjoys the stuff toons i like, got to bring them up the right way you know:D

6

Well, Thundercats have always been close to my heart since I was a little tike. I was the youngest of 9 kids, and so I got away with a little bit more than my brothers and sisters did, so I got to watch more tv. Anyway, to make a long story short, when I watched the pilot one night, I was hooked for life. We didn’t have a VCR at the time, but I had a tape recorder that I used to record the episodes on audio tape. I’m sure I bothered my sister by listening to Mumm-ra’s evil laugh at night…
I was so connected to Thundercats, when they took it off the air, I cried about it. I’m sure my Dad didn’t completely understand, but he did everything in his power to find out anything about the show he could. It touches me to think how much he wanted to make me happy. Anyway, It fine and dandy now with the dvds on my shelf. It’s great to know I can watch any one I want any time I want. I let my kids watch it with me, and my son loves it. My wife likes it (she knows I’m a big kid anyway), and puts up with my obsession. :smiley:

7

my family totally dig it just like me.

they brought me up on thundercats, They bought me all the figures and taped me the show on vhs!

I have old home movies of myself at xmas opening the thundertank!!

i wish i still had it :frowning:

8

I’m 32 now. I went through the “toys are for kids” stage from about age 12 (when I gave all my old toys to my younger siblings) until I was about 19.

At age 19 I really got into Star Trek, and for some odd reason started collecting the action figures. After Star Trek, I guess I just fell into toy-collecting as a hobby.

I started recollecting and expanding upon the toys that I had as a kid. As it is now, I collect Star Wars, Star Trek, TMNT, Thundercats, He-Man, Justice League, Harry Potter, Legos, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, Real Ghostbusters, Any DC-related Barbie stuff, Pokemon figures, and many other little odds and ends (I just finished collecting the old GLO Friends toys).

My parter, who I’ve been with for about 9 years now, thinks it’s a bit odd, but he supports it none-the-Less, and will go toy hunting for me and call me when ever he’s at the store to see if there is anything he should look for for me. My family thinks it’s odd as well, but they do try.. Last christmas my younger brother got me some spider-man figures, which was very nice of him (I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t collect that line, but as the saying goes, it truly is the thought that counts!)

On a final note, I have to usually put a movie on to watch until I fall asleep at night, and it’s pretty much always one of the Thundercats disks. The only thing my partner has ever said about it is, “Can’t we watch a different one, we just saw that one a couple days ago!”

So no complaints here, I got myself the perfect man to support me and my “hobby”.

*Edited to add-

One of the cutest things about my partner is when I catch him humming the he-man or thudercats theme song while he’s walking around the house! :stuck_out_tongue:

9

Well, I met my husband in the Thundercats fandom, so it’s safe to say there are no conflicts there. :wink:

Being an only child, I have no siblings to make fun of me for still being into 80s cartoons, and my in-laws and parents have all pretty much accepted collecting 80s toys and enjoying our shows as one of our quirks. My non-fandom friends find the whole fandom thing a bit weird, but eh, I’ve long since stopped worrying about whether others think I’m dorky or not.

It’d be great if my 4-year-old ever gets into Thundercats or other classic 80s shows I like, but if not, that’s okay too.

10

No. It’s not okay. Let the brainwashing of the next generation begin. :wink:

11

Random post on seeing this thread, bored at work…lol

My Dad is a fan of toys too so when we lived together it was no problem, we had displays of wrestling, sports, Transformers, and of course Thundercats in all the different rooms. He lost more stuff when I moved out than his divorce! lol
Now I live with my girlfriend and the entire basement is toys but the upstairs looks like the cookie cutter HGTV house like she likes. My stuff is in the basement under lock and key for when people come over there is no one wandering around and of course her mother and people like that wouldn’t understand my hobby so they don’t need to go down there. We have a nice understanding. She did draw the line at naming our actual cats though. We had a stray around the house when we were working on it but not living there yet I named Panthro because he was big and gray. We fed him for a few weeks but he went away and Holly thinks he got hit by a car on the next street…anyway he never actually lived with us. So fast forward a few months and she got offered a few week old rescue kitten, had to be bottle fed and the whole works. I found a humane society cat I wanted for free because it was an adult to be it’s companion…I’m thinking the whole time Jaga and Lion-O for the kitten even though the kitten wasn’t the right color. But that was harshly denied so we ended up with Bruce (instead of Jaga) and Frankie (Lion-O). Musical icons are apparently more socially acceptable to her for pet names. But previously my sister and I had a cat named Pumyra that still lives with my mother so I’m still representing on some level. :slight_smile:

12

This is a hilarious thread, I’ve really been enjoying it.

I’ve always collected quirky stuff. It was marbles and Garbage Pail kids cards, and a huge passion for years in my teens was comics. Like most people on the forums here I was really into He-Man and ThunderCats toys too.

For some reason I veered into collection animation art about five years ago and that has been a compulsion. I think I like it because it combines the art, the memories of my favourite cartoons and the unique aspect of owning pieces of history.

I think my family tolerated my collecting enthusiasm growing up but were perplexed when in my twenties I continued to collect and obsess about ThunderCats. To this day I think they keep waiting for me to grow out of it. When they find out what I sometimes pay for new additions to my collection they have the same look on their face as I think they’d have if I said I was addicted to crack cocaine and had squandered my life savings on my latest fix.

I once spent more on a ThunderCats item as I did on my car. Granted, I drive a cheap car but still.

My girlfriend and I share a home and she’s decided to overlook the geeky hobby that came with me when I moved in. I suppose I have enough redeeming qualities for her to still think I’m worth keeping around which I am grateful for. She’s gradually allowed me to display some of my collectibles and we have an agreement that I can put three framed pieces up in various rooms in the house. I think the basement would be her preference but she’s giving me the option of other rooms in the house too. She is a real sweetheart.

We recently got a little Boston Terrier puppy and named her Tyla. It was the closest I could get to Teela but I think a successful compromise.

My friends tease me mercilessly of course. Its my own fault, I would watch TCat episodes when living with roomates and had boxes arriving constantly from ebay purchases. So my dirty little secret was always out in the open. And frankly I enjoy the jokes because even while they’re laughing they also loved these shows when they were growing up.

I take a LOT of heat from my buddies for my collection of She-Ra animation art though. Which is to be expected, but I can’t help but want to own hand painted images used to film the show of things like Castle Brightmoon or the Frightzone. It’s just too frikkin cool!

I hope my kids would enjoy these shows too one day when I have them. If they didn’t I’d be cool with that, and as an old man one day I expect even grandkids will laugh a bit about their weird old Grandad who has old toys and cels in his home from cartoons from decades ago. That’ll be fine by me though because there is something pure and good about this escape to fantasy. Something that makes being human just a touch more interesting.

13

I am a collector

I have respectable collections of Magic the Gathering, Redline Hotwheels (this was costly to complete) G.I. Joe and Thundercats, I also collect comics, movie memorabilia, and the list goes on and on lol.

I also collect Japanese Honda Parts (JDM) to include aftermarket stuff, I collect Muscle cars - I have 2 GTO’s and 3 Barracudas plus another 30 various parts cars (this collection takes MUCH space)

I will be significantly downsizing in the coming years, keeping the Thundercats line, and choice pieces from the other collections. To me it is more about the hunt than the actual collection, I don’t care if I have the largest in the world, but finding the 1of1 piece and being able to add it, if only briefly, is what matters to me.

14

My mom used to watch me freak out over the show years ago. We only had 1 TV and I would beg her to let me watch the Thundercats “movies/specials” since they aired later in the evening when her shows would come on.

She liked them well enough and would watch with me and comment on how buff the guys were:D

I told her about this new show and she saw the opening to it and wasn’t impressed at all. I told her the crew that made it knows and stated they can NEVER top the original.

Then she saw the new designs of the characters and her exact words were:

“What is this crap?!” “This is Thundercats?!” LOL She does not like the new show at all and has no desire to watch it.

15

My parents have apparently forgotten the existence of it. I had, my currenty small, collection near the kitchen, so each time they came to my house they always saw it. But they’ve never commented..not even a “Oh, hey it’s Lion-O”.

When I started watching the Toonami airings my dad would always sit to watch them with my brother and I. And when my mom took notice of the, then, new obsession my brother and I had she mentioned we used to watch it with her and my dad when it aired on the local network in Spanish when I was two.

I think now they see those toys and shrug it off as “Great..she has MORE toys in her house.”. >_>

16

No significant other. In my family, no one ever really critisized anyone for liking a particular show, as long as it didn’t interfere with a show they wanted to watch. :wink:

My siblings were all teenagers when the OS ThunderCats came out and I don’t remember them watching it with me back then. I did tell one of my brothers about the new series awhile back though before it first aired and he did seem intrigued by it. Don’t know if he’s been watching it or not tho.

17

A girlfriend once agreed to dress up as Pumyra. I don’t think she considered it particularly weird - it was one of my less disturbing requests.