If you were to travel back to New Year’s Eve 1989 and ask Kevin, who will be 12 years old in 19 days, to list off his favorite action cartoons I’m not sure if Thundarr the Barbarian would be among them. I don’t think I remembered too much of Thundarr until my cable company started to carry Cartoon Network. Even then I still got it confused with Herculoids. It wasn’t until the host of Stay Brony My Friends, DustyKatt, mentioned it a few times that my curiosity led me to revisit the show. One of the first things I came across was the Lords of Light documentary.
After watching that I knew I had to pick up the show on DVD. The show had everything I grew to love like a futuristic world in devastation, monsters, magic, and other sci-fi goodness. When I got the DVD set I was hoping that doc was on there too but it’s not. For those that grew up in the late 70s and early 80s Thundarr holds a special place in their heart and to have Masters of the Universe come along and dominate hurts. I remember listening to a horror movie podcast trashing both He-Man and Thundercats while praising Thundarr. I didn’t know at the time that Thundarr the Barbarian was the better show.
Warner owns the rights to Thundarr the Barbarian at least the archives so I wonder why they never relaunch the property? With what is being aired on Cartoon Network I can see why it wouldn’t be attempted now if they’re aiming for kids. They could farm out the work to a place like Netflix or Amazon in addition to DC making a companion comic. What I really want is a build up to when the story actually begins. It’s wishful thinking but the stories are there just waiting to be told.