Product Spotlight – March 15, 2023 – Barbarian Cartoons

Welcome to another Hemlock Bazaar product spotlight. This is a semi-regular series of posts where we highlight interesting or noteworthy items from our collection and showcase things worth talking about. Today we’re talking about Cartoons! Specifically, Thundarr the Barbarian and The Herculoids.

The Herculoids was produced by Hanna-Barbera in the late 60s, with a brief revival in the 1980s. It is about a family living on an alien planet, and their monster pets/friends. It is, in a word, beautiful; in two words, buck wild. There’s a dragon, there’s a rock monster, there’s a dinosaur that fires projectiles, and there’s a family of goo creatures.

The Herculoids was the first cartoon to really explore the Sword and Planet style of science fantasy, and it’s real wacky.

Thundarr the Barbarian was produced in 1980 by Ruby Spears. Until recently, I thought Thundarr was another Hanna-Barbera production. This isn’t especially surprising, as I later learned that Ruby and Spears were former Hanna-Barbera employees, and that both had written for, you guessed it, The Herculoids.

Thundarr is set in a post apocalyptic wasteland, in the far future year of 3994, following a catastrophic event in the less far future year of 1994. It’s another Sword and Planet style science fantasy series, with lightsabers and wookies and magic. It has a lot of DNA in common with The Herculoids, but it’s darker, less goofy, and even weirder.

If you’re a child of the 1990s, it’s likely you encountered each of these shows in infrequent re-runs on Cartoon Network or Boomerang. It’s equally likely that you were baffled by them. But you didn’t hallucinate, they were not a dream, The Herculoids and Thundarr the Barbarian were real, and they’re available now on Blu-Ray.

Of course, if that’s not your thing, we have lots of other cartoons: