Private Events Specialist Greg is here today to talk to you about cartoons!

Hey there, gentle Morning Rounds readers! This is Events Specialist Greg, here to pour you a big bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs and channel surf to some trivia about cartoon theme songs.

We've been having a great time prepping content for our upcoming After School Cartoons theme nights, and one thing became clear as the writing process continued: there are so many cartoons! The era of syndication in the ‘80s and early ‘90s led to vast swaths of animated content. And when you're trying to punch through the noise of a busy household of that era, a theme song that "goes hard" (as a recent Twitter thread stated) goes a long way. The basis of the thread was "Run With Us," an absolute jam of a song (with a sax solo!) from a Canadian cartoon I'd never heard of called “The Raccoons.” In fact, there were so many shows I'd never heard of, I began thinking I had slipped Mandela-effect-style into a parallel universe: “Mighty Orbots”! “The Galaxy Rangers”! Recent Kate Bush fan converts might enjoy “Honey Honey”! And if you want to hear a full live version of "Run With Us" by the impeccably-named Cybertronic Spree, a cosplay-and-cover band decked out in elaborate Autobot outfits, I don't blame you: It rules.

The main task of some theme songs, as we shifted into even more of a toy-driven animated economy, was a catchy hook. Some theme songs were almost exclusively hooks! While it's not animated (and therefore dodged our purview for this theme night), the broadcast version of the “Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers” theme was purely composed of hooks, lodging itself Lord Zedd-like into the vulnerable brains of children worldwide. But the full version does feature a martial arts lesson: "They know to only use their weapons for defense." Important!

And then there's the entire mutant-animal industrial complex of critters combined with some genre of warrior. The leaders in the form, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” have delivered absolute jams with nearly every generation of the show. But their imitators are no slouches. “Street Sharks” delivered on their "They're Jawesome" tagline with another rollicking sax solo. “Biker Mice from Mars” roll in on robot vocalizer and strictly guitars. “Samurai Pizza Cats” (yes, this was a real show) drew their inspiration very strongly from the B-52's. They even directly called out their competition: "They've got more fur than a turtle EVER had."

I'm tempted to use that song to jump into anime theme songs, but there's just too much to cover there. (Toonami/anime fans, reach out if you want to read more on that.)

Comedy shows weren't without standout themes, either. “Rocko's Modern Life” got the actual B-52's to deliver a surf rock classic. “Pepper Ann” was much too cool for seventh grade. “Danny Phantom” is the gold-standard in synopsizing your show through hip-hop. “Loud House” leans hard into the era of pop punk, while “Angry Beavers” finished the Warped Tour pairing with some lively ska. “Rugrats” wormed its way to iconic status with digital keyboard effects and vocalizers, and not a single word of lyrics.

Despite the prominence of the “Skip Intro” era of cord-cutting and streaming monoliths, the theme song hasn't faded in prominence. Other recent classics of the genre include the “Adventure Time” opening and closing themes. Rebecca Sugar took their experience writing standout songs within that very show to write the opening and closing themes to “Steven Universe.” The unique element of those is that they eventually found their way into becoming diegetic, written and performed by the characters themselves. Spoilers for the end of “Steven Universe Future,” but here's the needle drop of the closing theme finally making its way into the show in its final moments.

If you want to indulge in nostalgia for those times you had to rush your walk home so as not to miss these iconic opening credits, be sure to come out to our After School Cartoons theme nights next month. It's BYOCereal, though, for most of our venues. (Kidding! Please don't bring in outside food, honestly, unless its explicitly allowed. ;) )

(P.S. I realize I'm leaving out an elephant-sized Mouse in the room here, by not including themes from the Disney afternoon lineup. You might just need to come out and play the theme night to see why that might be. But I've got to give a hat-tip to my ringtone for the last 10 years, “Gravity Falls.” It's an iconic instrumental track that sets the whimsical-yet-creepy-yet-folksy tone of the show perfectly, with a mix of synthesizer, whistling, and theremin. It's perfect.)