Regular readers know that I like to use as many obscure titles as I can for reviews, often they are OVA shows like Jewel BEM Hunter Lime & the Debutante Detective Corps; on the other side of animation, big projects used for discovering talent can make household names of people even if their original cartoon failed such as Seth MacFarlane's Larry & Steve or Butch Hartman's Pfish & Chip. But there are other shows that barely made the grade at all due to several reasons, and it's these reasons that make for interesting stories.
1. Fighting a Juggernaut
Trying to tackle such a huge opponent like the Ninja Turtles was always going to be a hard task, for Battletoads it was too big a challenge after only airing a pilot episode, Bottom line there's no room for two animal warrior cartoons at the time and Battletoads only redeeming quality is the stupidly hard videogame on which it was based. Equally for Bubsy aired at the same time couldn't compete with the juggernaut popularity of Sonic the Hedgehog but unlike Battletoads, Bubsy has no redeeming qualities.
2. East vs West Divide
American's are notorious for trying to retool foreign shows for it's people, see the features on Saban Moon & Doozy Bots for their results and trust me they are frighteningly bad. Not that Japan is any better as they attempted to retool Ninja Turtles for their audience turning into a half baked sentai show; but an even stranger case is with Mario & Sonic. In their home nation, neither show made the desired impact it hoped for with a failed OVA for both and a horrible TV show for Sonic, yet in the States both franchises enjoyed successful cartoon shows, that cemented their identities in the world today. So much so that the general consensus with Mario is that he's an Italian American Plumber from Brooklyn.
3. Unfortunate Timing
Out of all the one-shot shows, this one had the most potential but sadly due to certain events around the same time, the subject matter was inappropriate.
4. Live Action to Cartoon Fail
A failed attempt at creating a Buffy the Vampire Slayer cartoon, barely made a pilot beyond the promo.
5. 2nd Time Lucky
The X-Men cartoon could've been so different had the first version succeeded beyond it's pilot, the main character would've been Shadowcat, Dazzler would actually have a significant role to play, Nightcrawler would've been more common and Wolverine would've been Australian, let that last one sink in for a second.
6. Only One Joke to Work Worth
A lot of reasons why certain shows weren't able to continue beyond the What-a-Cartoon project is simply that the majority only had one joke to work with, case in point was Pfish & Chip who were Bomb Squad police but every episode would be lots of bombs, a Spanish robot who serves coffee and an ending which never sees them actually catch the villain, but mostly bombs. It also doesn't help that a number of these cartoons suffered from number 7.
7. Gave Away All Their Best Stuff
Shake & Flick the biggest example pretty much giving away their entire selection of gags of a stoic flea beating up a blue poodle. Another one, Jof the Cat which has no dialogue other than "Help" pretty much used every joke in the book to do with over reacting, as each doctor attempts to use extreme measures to cure a bruised finger. The bottom line is that, a show doesn't survive if the pilot has given away everything, half a reason why Courage the Cowardly Dog succeeded was the creativity of it's aliens and monsters.
8. The Executives Refused to Fund it
Elf Princess Rane used a 4th Wall joke to beg the audience for more money to fund it. In fact most of the above reasons probably lead into this.
9. World Wasn't Ready for it
Parody comedy wasn't popular in Japan until Excel Saga, which adds fuel to the reasons why Dragon Half didn't continue. Another factor in Growing Payne's failure was Pseudo-Anime hadn't caught on yet in the states.
and finally
10. It was Simply Crap
But say what you like about all these shows and the large number of failed live action shows, the bottom line is that most of them were critical failures when they were released.
