Nicktoon-cember Part 6: KaBlam!

KaBlam! is arguably one of the stranger shows Nickelodeon was doing at the time. The whole premise of the show is that it’s a collection of short animated shows that all take place within a comic book called KaBlam! The show was also run by two host characters named Henry who was the serious no nonsense stay focus on the job guy and June who was the laid-back go with the flow kind of girl who’s prone to anger. They would have their own little subplots and exploits in between the shorts and also turn the page of the comic book to reveal the next short. This Nicktoon originally appeared on Snick which was Nickelodeon’s Saturday night line-up which feature shows that was more for the teen demographic. Snick would occasionally air other nicktoons that weren’t apart of the block like Ren and Stimpy and the Rugrats, but KaBlam! was the only nicktoon that was originally intended for Snick and nowhere else which is odd because I along with a few of my other friends use to love watching this show and at the time the showed premiered we were like 8 or 9 years old and from my understanding the bulk of the audience who watched this show was kids and not teens.

As I said the show was a collection of shorts that Nickelodeon had but didn’t feel they were good enough to be standalone shows. The shorts they showed were pretty good, funny, and each one had their own animation style. A few of the shorts I remember were the Off-Beats which just focused on a group of friends who were always getting bully by popular kids and they had a talking dog. Animation wise it wasn’t all that good but the music is what really drove the short. There was Life with Loopy which centered around the adventures of a girl named Loopy and her older brother. The show was done in stop motion with puppets and added in real people occasionally to the mix. This one was not one of my favorites but it’s one I remember seeing a lot on the show. One of the more popular ones was Prometheus and Bob. This short revolved around an alien named Prometheus who landed on earth during prehistoric times to teach a caveman named Bob everyday things and it backfiring in Prometheus’ face with him getting hurt each time. I really liked this one, it was always funny to see Prometheus get hurt and stuff. It was like another version of Tom and Jerry. But probably the best out of all the shorts and the one everyone remembers the most was Action League Now. This short featured a group of action-figures who were superheroes who fight crime against other action-figures in suburbia despite all of them being idiots. We had The Flesh a naked action figure, Thundergirl a mix between Thor and Wonderwoman, Stinky Diver a navy commander with a bad odor and attitude, and Meltman the most useless member of the group who really has no superpower. Just like Prometheus and Bob this short was freakin’ hilarious and the only short to briefly get its own spin-off series on Nickelodeon. I’m surprise it didn’t get its own spin-off from the beginning the short was hilarious, everyone who watched it loved it even my parents got a good laugh out of it. There were a few other one time shorts that were good but these are the four that everyone remembers the most and got a good laugh out of them. KaBlam! in the end was a good and funny show that gave us a lot of shorts that may not have been good enough to stand on their own but were good enough to be seen and remembered. If you can, go online and see if you can track down any Prometheus and Bob or Action League Now shorts, you won’t be disappointed and you’ll laugh.

Posted in Nicktoon-cember, Specials and tagged , , , .