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My sister will be so pissed her B-day gift is now redundant. I'm glad they're doing the seasons separate though.

How do you even have Adventure Time toys without P-Bubs? I can't imagine Pendleton Ward supporting this decision, so it must have been a bunch of Cartoon Network suits in charge of the deal.

Though I wonder what McDonald's thinks of the fact that Beemo is sometimes a she, sometimes a he, and sometimes an it.

What kind of collection is it, really, if it doesn't have Lumpy Space Princess you guys?

My daughter will still want to collect them all, but the show is brimming with female characters that ought to have been represented. The four males chosen are "core" in a sense, I suppose. I think The Onion are correct that the decision regarding what chars would be included was influenced by McDonald's stereotypical "boy" toy versus "girl" toy paradigm. I wonder what the show demos really are. I always thought it was pretty appealing for girls (although my wife has no time for it)...

The show definitely makes an effort to be approachable to all genders, but the marketing cabals (and to be sadly honest, a not insignificant swath of parents and their daughters) probably instantly equate "Adventure" with "boy." I'd guess that while the adult fanbase is probably more evenly split than "My Little Ponies" (which I'm assuming swings disturbingly male), the kids demo finds that boys mostly watch the former and girls the latter.

I mean, there's a whole gender-swap cast that has several episodes, for chrissakes. Princess Bubblegum is an enterprising (and, at times, unnervingly amoral) scientist. I think it has very widespread appeal and even makes a conscious effort to subvert gender paradigms.

The season 4 episode, The Sons of Mars, is one of the weirdest, funniest things I've ever seen. Where was this level of imagination and creative freedom in the kids' shows of my youth? (tho', honestly, I've forgotten most of them, so that's not a fair question).

Australia is getting a complete series box in October. Apparently US WB gave up on Blu-rays after season 6, but I imagine we'll see an American version of the complete box announced soon. I lost track of this show a long time ago, but it's one I'd like to get caught up on at some point

After a cursory search, I can't seem to find any mention of this in the forums, so I’d like to make a suggestion to all who enjoy Adventure Time.

A few years ago, when I was the manager of Library Services for a Toronto art comics shop, a slightly socially awkward co-worker and pal of mine, who knew I was fond of Adventure Time after putting their comics in libraries for a few years, came up to me after my son's second birthday and said that, though he knew Ellis wasn't ready for it yet, when he turns five, STEVEN UNIVERSE will be the most important show in his life.

Well, after an odd assortment of best-of DVDs, Cartoon Network finally released the first season of SU this past year. I surprised my seven year-old son and five year-old daughter with it, and we dove in right away.

They loved every second. So did my wife and I.

A warm, funny (though, quite often, heartbreaking) gentle bath of musical whimsy, our entire family looked forward to our viewing nights.

Adventure Time is great - almost frightening in its portrayal of pure imagination - but there's something more grounded and, honestly, revolutionary about STEVEN UNIVERSE. It is maybe the most inclusive show on television, celebrating diversity and challenging reductive perspectives like nothing else I’ve seen.

Most importantly, it’s simply open. To everything.

Take from that what you will, but for my family, the rest of the series can't come out soon enough.

I'm a big fan of Steven Universe, myself. I think its success with certain adult audiences puts it into the same "kids cartoon mostly successful with nostalgic hipsters" camp as Adventure Time, but it more than makes up for such classification by having such genuine, tremendous heart, sensitivity, and warmth. I would say its a lot more solid than Adventure Time as well - looking back at the early episodes, its clear to me that the show knows exactly what it is, and what its about, from the beginning, which makes for a tremendous watch. Even the seemingly throwaway "townie" episodes are utterly important to both the emotional and moral fabric of the show, and in the end, sometimes even its larger sci-fi fantasy story, such as when

Spoiler

Lars, arguably the show's most unlikeable side character, winds up being redeemed, and transformed without ever discarding his core person

. And in the reverse, the fantastic monster aliens themselves are so often brought down to Earth (no pun intended) and humanized in a way that is absolutely unheard of in cartoons or anime, and I'm forever grateful that its stuck to its guns like this. Don't tell the kids this, because I'm a grown up and they tend not to take good advice to heart, but I think its the kind of show that kids SHOULD watch.

Not to use this perceived solidity as a cudgel against Adventure Time, mind you - part of the fun of that show was that it wasn't sure what it was, and that it had to invent itself and re-invent itself as it went. And unlike a lot of shows, I think its succeeded at doing so without losing itself - bumpy though the ride has been at times, it matured and grew as itself. Its chaotic imagination - a lack of "solidity", really - is its identity, and its embraced that from the start, right to its final four-part episode, which aired Monday, and which is a beautiful mess. There's quite a few kids' cartoons from the last decade I've enjoyed a good deal - Regular Show, the new Voltron and DuckTales, Wander Over Yonder, the second season of The Looney Tunes Show (what a shame that it was cancelled just as it found its footing), Gravity Falls, Legend of Korra...but those two shows are the ones which have stuck with me as being the current zenith of kids' cartoons in general.

I am curious as to what the future will hold for quality kids' cartoons - I have a little nephew now, so I feel its my uncley duty to keep up on these things in the future, even if I myself might inevitably lose interest. Voltron, probably the biggest of the 'streaming only' kids cartoons, is ending after its next season, Adventure Time is over now, Korra, Regular Show and Gravity Falls are long gone, Wander and Looney Tunes ended prematurely, and Steven Universe seems to be winding down to its final conflicts. Even the Pony show, which bores me to tears but certainly has notoriety beyond its humble intentions and origins, is ending after a very impressive run of nine seasons - it'll have over 200 episodes, twenty two or so minutes in length, to its name, which eclipses the '87 TMNT, which I think is the champion of the merchandise driven half-hour cartoon series in terms of productivity and longevity (and its worth noting that the horse show had a much less bumpy ride to get there). Only DuckTales seems a likely staple for the future, with its first season having just ended. Is there anything interesting on the horizon? Some things I'm missing?

Presumably Adam Muto is going to do something now that Adventure Time has ended.

To add a good word to Adventure Time I think that ungainly growth it experienced is largely reflective of its protagonist the same way that Steven Universe's complex emotional assurance is reflective of its protagonist. In a weird way this is like Boyhood where we get to see Finn start off as an adventure ready land of imagination kid and age into an intellectually assured adult. In a weird way he has become Billy. Also narratively it really is hard to emphasize just how new it has been. In American television the only real precedent of action and comedy was Teen Titans which had a much larger division between animation and drama to the point where the later more serious seasons dropped many of the animation gags.

Thanks for the wonderful insights What a Disgrace. Our family hasn't moved beyond the released first season set, so of Cartoon Network ever gets around to releasing the rest of Steven we have much to look forward to.

jazzo wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:14 pm Thanks for the wonderful insights What a Disgrace. Our family hasn't moved beyond the released first season set, so of Cartoon Network ever gets around to releasing the rest of Steven we have much to look forward to.

Steven Universe doesn't seem to be over yet (there is a TV movie, at least, coming later in the year) but the latest four parter feels like it would have been a phenomenal conclusion to the story. There's a particular moment in the episode which would have terrified and elated me as a kid, and is affecting today,

Spoiler

in which Steven is split from his gem, and is seen to be very clearly dying, suffering physically and emotionally, while the gem side itself, manifested in its purest form, is an emotionless, unstoppable force until the two reunite, in which the two dance in laughter and ecstasy, the way Gems do before a fusion, and then becomes himself again

. The animation in this sequence is particularly effective, and both the concept and the emotional undercurrent of it all is unheard of in children's cartoons. A lot of people give the show (as well as Adventure Time and a few other cartoons) flack for being a kids' show aimed at 30-something adult hipsters, which it is at least in part, but I also think its just what happens when you let 30 something adult hipsters make cartoons for kids. I can only imagine what those kids will be able to make in 20 years.

Mondotees will be releasing a complete soundtrack for the show on vinyl.

Does anyone have the Madman complete blu ray box set who can attest to its quality? Still seems to be the only way to get the whole series on blu and I thought I had heard rumblings that it was censored in Australia and this was reflected on the other Madman single season blus, but maybe that’s hogwash

It's a pleasant surprise to see this thread bumped. I've been watching the series on Hulu since I never really finished it. One reddit user said he watched a few episodes on the Madman blu-rays back to back with uncensored episodes and didn't see any cuts. It's a shame there's no comprehensive region A blu ray set for what was Cartoon Network's flagship show for a decade.

That’s helpful, thanks! And I agree, it’s easily my favorite CR.

The AU Madman set seems absent from any sites that may ship to the U.S. including eBay sellers. Deepdiscount has been listing it as DVD for a while, so my inability to check if this is an error has halted me buying from them, though Madman’s site doesn’t have a DVD version listed the picture on DD doesn’t have the blue blu-ray top lining so the jury’s out

According to some reviews here, the linked set is region free, which is surprising.I'm tempted to test this out.

Murdoch wrote: Thu Apr 16, 2020 4:00 am According to some reviews here, the linked set is region free, which is surprising.I'm tempted to test this out.

Yeah, the only problem is that there doesn't seem to be a seasons 1-5 blu set by Madman, though there is one from the U.K. which was also rumored to be censored, so I'd feel more secure buying both from the same company. The complete blu box set appears to be either OOP or unavailable across the internet for the most part. There is one that ships from a third party seller on Amazon.uk but only offers Standard Shipping, and out of the 10 or so orders I've placed through amazon.uk without tracked shipping, I've only received one, so I'm apprehensive. Does anyone have any luck choosing that option, or have other ideas of where to look?

Apparently I missed the boat on the Distant Lands specials during early COVID, but a spinoff series titled Fionna and Cake premieres today on MAX