Being born in 1969, I was "After the fact" but I really got into the Supermarionation shows when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I happened to be big into things like GI Joes (not those garbage mini-action figures everyone played with in the 80s, I'm talking about the 12-inch guys with the Kung-Fu grip, the REAL GI Joes). And I was also big into things like model cars and planes, so shows like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet really turned my crank. And still do (I'm kicking myself for not buying the now-hard-to-find DVD set of Captain Scarlet when it first came out).
Unfortunately I get the sense today's kids aren't interested in things like cars and planes. And 12-inch, realistic "action figures" are things only grownups buy nowadays.
Also, Supermarionation shows fail with today's kids because a) there are no fart jokes every 5 minutes and b) none of the major characters are 12 years old (we'll ignore Joe 90 for now). I was channel-surfing the other day and saw the Iron Man animated series for the first time and I thought it was so stupid that they had to abandon the comic book and make Iron "Man" into some 16 year old nobody rather than a grown up hero. They did it with "Superman" in the kiddified Legion of Super Heroes cartoon as well, and with Teen Titans Go, they took characters who were supposed to be 18-19 and older ("Teen" be damned) and made them all 6 years old - or at least look like it. Joe 90 fails because Joe might be 10, but he takes orders from grownups, rather than being completely autonomous like Kim Possible. And there are no talking weasels or female characters, so most kids probably aren't even allowed to watch something like Joe 90 anymore.
I grew up in an era when my heroes were guys in their 30s like Steve Austin and Captain Kirk, or even older (Patrick McGoohan was 40 when he did The Prisoner). Likewise, the female heroes I liked were also, at youngest, maybe 25 - Jamie Sommers, Wilma Deering, etc. But these days kids are being conditioned to think their heroes have to be all around their own age. Or be animated sponges who make fart jokes. Yes, I know we have shows like JLU and the various Batman series, and the like. But frankly I don't think kids are watching those shows. People like US are watching those shows.
It's very sad. I can only hope a small percentage of these kids were born with either a nostalgia gene or a "we actually are interested in stuff before 2003" gene, so that shows like Thunderbirds, or the original version of TOS (none of that Remastered b.s.) don't get lost forever when these kids come of age and start deciding what gets preserved and what doesn't.
Alex
