Thunder Thunder Thunder Thunder... Cats! Thundercats, Why?

As I wrote a few weeks ago, my son has a bizarre interest in strange or awful cartoons. Recently he discovered one from my youth, Thundercats. It is way odder than I remember. Unlike the broader social messages of He-Man, Thundercats is more about a dimwitted man child, Liono, and the little lessons he learns as he grows up. This seems very strange, since he appears to be thirty, but okay, I'll accept it. Combine it with the surreal Rankin/Bass animation, some mummies and mutants, and you have a mid-eighties romp into madness.

Viri loves it. He's been drawing Thundercats, playing that he is a human/cat thing, the whole shebang. (That always weirded me out about the show-- are they can people? Why no tails? Why no fur?) There is one episode with a space-policewoman, which he is crazy about, as you would expect. Police, laser guns, and cat people? Viri heaven!

The premise of the show has always confused me. These cat people are on some strange planet. I'm not sure why they are there, or why they brought the ghost of a dead leader. How do they survive with only one woman? (That's a very Ryan question, I apologize.) Why is the man named Tygra, which is clearly a woman's name? The whole show is crazy, it doesn't surprise me that it is quickly becoming Taviri's favorite. His taste tends towards the bizarre.

Here is a fun fan trailer of a Thundercats movie.