Remem­ber when Hol­ly­wood was obsessed with TV cartoons?

In the 1990s it seemed that any Hol­ly­wood block­buster, regard­less of its appeal to chil­dren, would even­tu­al­ly be turned into a tie-in Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon. This bizarre phe­nom­e­non saw every­thing from The Mum­my to Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors mak­ing their way onto our tele­vi­sion sets. With the cur­rent block­buster sea­son draw­ing to a con­clu­sion, we take a look back at 10 of the best (and worst) car­toons to emerge from this pecu­liar period.

Not to be con­fused with the Godzil­la series from the ​’70s, which is still fond­ly remem­bered by fans of the Japan­ese mon­ster, this one is based on the wide­ly dis­missed Roland Emmerich film from 1998. Set in the wake of the events of that block­buster, the series fol­lows a group of sci­en­tists known as H.E.A.T who bat­tle a num­ber of elab­o­rate mon­sters on a week­ly basis with the help of Godzil­la him­self. There isn’t any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly orig­i­nal to speak of here but the vari­ety of crea­tures on show makes it slight­ly more inter­est­ing than the film it was inspired of.

To cap­i­talise on the 50^th anniver­sary of the beloved 1939 musi­cal, DIC Enter­tain­ment decid­ed to pro­duce an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of The Wiz­ard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West has risen again and Dorothy is brought back to Oz in order to foil her once more. The Cow­ard­ly Lion, The Scare­crow and The Tin-Man are also present and there is some­thing to admire about the detailed accu­ra­cy of the series in com­par­i­son to the film. Aside from that, it’s a pret­ty gar­ish and tedious attempt to rein­vent a classic.

Rather than have Daniel mas­ter mar­tial arts and con­tin­ue to com­pete in tour­na­ments, The Karate Kid series saw him and Mr Miya­gi embark on a glo­be­trot­ting quest in search of a sacred shrine. This con­trived for­mu­la becomes increas­ing­ly tire­some, but con­sid­er­ing this was from the peo­ple that brought us GI: Joe, the action sequences are kind of awe­some. It’s also worth not­ing that this bears almost no resem­blance to the movies.

Despite com­ing out just three months after the release of the first Men in Black movie, this car­toon series appears to exist in a world where that film didn’t take place. J is still learn­ing the ropes at the agency and K is still employed and active in the field. There isn’t a whole lot to shout about here, as the series basi­cal­ly just sees the two leads defeat­ing dif­fer­ent aliens each week. Aston­ish­ing­ly, MiB: The Series ran until 2001. We can only pre­sume its last­ing appeal had some­thing to do with Will Smith’s famous theme song play­ing over the end credits.

In a rare case for this trend, actors from the orig­i­nal films – Keanu Reeves, Alex Win­ter and George Car­lin – voiced their respec­tive roles in this series, although their char­ac­ters are vir­tu­al­ly unrecog­nis­able. Although Wyld Stal­lyns still exist, both Bill and Ted are far more intel­li­gent and con­sid­er­ate than the slack­ers we ini­tial­ly came to love. The series con­tin­ued the time trav­el gim­mick of the films but our heroes could now inex­plic­a­bly trans­port them­selves into books and TV shows. This dull reimag­in­ing of Bill and Ted didn’t last long, and nei­ther did the live actions fol­low-up from 1992.

Where­as many series on this list are exten­sions of the films they are based on, this Juman­ji spin-off explored an aspect of the orig­i­nal 1995 block­buster that was men­tioned but nev­er actu­al­ly realised. Rather than tak­ing place in mid-’90s US sub­ur­bia, this car­toon trans­port­ed view­ers to the dan­ger­ous and mys­ti­cal jun­gle of Juman­ji, com­plete with the film’s orig­i­nal hero Alan Parish and the sneer­ing hunter Van Pelt. The show also main­tained a con­sis­tent nar­ra­tive through­out its run, that of Parish search­ing for an escape from Juman­ji, a rare trait of any series of this ilk – and for that it should be applauded.

Any­thing pro­duced by Tim Bur­ton in the ​’80s and ​’90s was a nat­ur­al fit for ani­ma­tion due to his exag­ger­at­ed visu­al style, yet Beetle­juice remains the only one of the director’s films to have been turned into a car­toon series. This ver­sion fol­lowed the escapades of the epony­mous ghost­ly con man and his friend Lydia in both the real world and the Nether World. Despite hav­ing a dis­tinct look, the sto­ries are mere­ly far­ci­cal come­dies and even began to par­o­dy Hol­ly­wood clas­sics, such as It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Shane, towards the end of it’s run. It was a big hit with audi­ences and received a Day­time Emmy Award for Out­stand­ing Ani­mat­ed Pro­gram in 1990.

For the most part, Back to the Future oper­at­ed as a his­tor­i­cal edu­ca­tion pro­gramme with near­ly every episode tak­ing place in the past. This wasn’t to the show’s detri­ment as it man­aged to con­tin­ue the strong cama­raderie that exist­ed between Mar­ty McFly and Doc Brown in the films. It also explored the Brown fam­i­ly set-up, some­thing that fans only got a glimpse of at the end of Part 3, with Mary Steen­bur­gen repris­ing the role of Doc Brown’s wife, Clara. The var­i­ous ances­tors of fran­chise neme­sis Biff were also along for the ride and the series did a good job of ref­er­enc­ing its orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al. How­ev­er, the most inter­est­ing thing about this series was the inclu­sion of Christo­pher Lloyd in live-action seg­ments in which he would con­duct exper­i­ments with actor Bill Nye, who went on to present his own sci­ence show in the mid-’90s.

Jack­ie Chan was not the first cult Hol­ly­wood star to receive his own ani­mat­ed series (Chuck Nor­ris and Mr T had already been immor­talised in car­toon form by the time Jack­ie Chan Adven­tures aired). But this show stands head and shoul­ders above the rest for actu­al­ly try­ing to build Chan’s brand beyond more than just kung-fu. Arriv­ing in 2000, this series wasn’t based on any of Chan’s films but instead cast him as an arche­ol­o­gist who was forced to bat­tle the evil Dark Hand organ­i­sa­tion. It wasn’t afraid to ref­er­ence Chan’s movies either, show­cas­ing a lev­el of humour, intel­li­gence and action that moved it beyond the realms of a mere cash cow for a celebrity.

Of all the above car­toons, none are more curi­ous than this trio inspired by Jim Carrey’s break­out films from 1994. Why? None of them were direct­ly aimed at kids. The Mask was a com­ic book before it became a film, mak­ing it an obvi­ous choice for a series. Ace Ventura’s antics and slap­stick man­ner­isms trans­lat­ed to the small screen and there was even a crossover episode between the two. By con­trast, Dumb and Dumb­er did not seem like a nat­ur­al fit for tele­vi­sion, but it worked all the same. Dumb and Dumb­er boast­ed the same sur­re­al charm as Ren & Stimpy and the unique look of many clas­sic Car­toon Net­work shows from the same era. It was nowhere near as suc­cess­ful as The Mask or Ace Ven­tu­ra and was duly can­celled after just one sea­son, but much like the film it had a bleak, broad and idi­ot­ic sense of humour that made it very funny.

Share your mem­o­ries of your favourite ​’90s car­toon spin-off with us at @LWLies.