Here's Comes Proto The One-Celled Amoeba!

Back in the late 80's Ralph Bakshi, famous for his 70's era X-rated cartoon features Heavy Traffic and Fritz The Cat, put out the Saturday morning cartoon The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, which I watched religiously when I was in college. That on top of Pee Wee's Playhouse seemed like one of the most subversive programs on television that didn't come on after 11:30pm.

This episode, "Don't Touch That Dial", really knocked me on my ass when it first aired. Remember that this pre-dates Ren & Stimpy, or any of the other modern kids shows that reference pop culture as well as skewer their own genre constantly, to the point where it's no longer innovative or shocking. But up until this point in my life I had never seen a cartoon program satirize and skew the likes of The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and badly produced anime in such a biting, vitriolic manner. It really blew my wee 18-year-old mind at the time.

I finally found a VHS boot of the entire run of The New Adventures Of Mighty Mouse for sale at Midtown Comics in Manhattan, which in a bizarre twist of irony was recorded off the television from somebody in my home town, because they kept giving my local station's call letters during commercial breaks.

This show, by the way, was cancelled after protest from the era's resident zealot-in-chief Rev. Donald Wildmon after he saw what he claims was Might Mouse snorting cocaine. Actually it was a scene where Mighty Mouse was sniffing flower petals and they flew up his nose, which I guess if you were really stretching like Wildmon obviously was you could call it out as a potential choking hazard.

Anyway, good times. Wacky memories. Totally fucked up cartoon.