Happy Halloween!!
While we could EASILY just mention Elvira's boobs be everything I enjoy about Halloween but let's take a break from Jem week (which I'm going to continue and hopefully wrap up on Sunday if I don't have anymore distractions in my personal life) and talk about some Halloween-themed cartoons.

Before people get pissed off, Ghostbusters is NOT on this list because that's like a given in my eyes, even more so for the Peanuts Halloween special.

Seriously... how does Cassandra Peterson/Elvira still look good after all of the years?? Isn't she like a thousand or something by now? The older I get, the more that I'm convinced that she's a fucking vampire...

Honorable Mentions:

  • It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!
  • The Real Ghostbusters
  • Ben 10: Omniverse - "Charmed, I'm sure"
  • Regular Show - Tales from the Park (ALL of them...)
  • The Simpsons - Treehouse of Horror (TOO many to mention...)
  • Doug: Doug's Halloween Adventure

The 13th Ghosts of Scooby-Doo



I have to be completely honest and admit that this is hands-down my favorite Scooby Doo series, followed by A Pup Named Scooby Doo in 2nd (Freddy and his "Red Herrings..." LMFAO). For once the monsters/ghosts were REAL, much like the "movies" in the early 2000s and the Scooby gang's antics finally served a purpose outside of the gang's usual meddling in some random goof's Saturday Morning cartoon-style supervillain's master plan at world domination...

Even though there were times I wanted to choke Scrappy Doo, but Flim-Flam made up for Scrappy Doo being so goddamn annoying. I thought it was a cool idea to pair Shaggy and Scooby with Daphne, sans Freddie and Velma. They were also joined by Vincent Van Ghoul, who was voiced and based off of Vincent Price.

The series only ran for one season, but many savvy cartoon fans should notice the style here by creator Tom Ruegger, who would go on and work on A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs that would each become renown for their fourth wall breaking humor. At the time of the cancellation, only eleven of the 13 ghosts were recaptured, although it is unknown if some of the ghosts captured in the two episodes "Ship of Ghouls" & "A Spooky Little Ghoul Like You" where more than one of the 13 ghosts were captured, are part of the originals.

Personally, I like to think that they caught multiple ghosts on that "Ship of Ghouls" episode and leave it at that.

Beetlejuice



Most people called this a cash-in from the live-action film of the same name that starred Michael Keaton, but of course this was scaled down in "horror" for kid-friendly audiences. Looking back at this cartoon amazes me for one reason as Tara Strong (who voices everyone underneath the sun in animation, including Batgirl in the latter half of the Batman: Animated Series, young Ben Tennyson in Ben 10, Raven in Teen Titans and Teen Titans GO!, taking over for voicing Harley Quinn in the Batman: Arkham games after Arleen Sorkin retired, and FAR too many roles to keep track of...) has doing voice work for over 20 years now.

I remember having some of the toys from this cartoon and movie when I was a kid, oftentimes pitting Beetlejuice against or teaming up with my Ghostbusters toys. Ghostbusters would have been on this list but that's like a given.

The episode above is one of my favorites mainly from the way how Beetlejuice wins the contest. Looking back at this cartoon reminds me how Lydia's parents were more scarier looking than anything in the NetherWorld...

The Addams Family



Much like the Beetlejuice cartoon, this was another "cash-in" on the TV series and live-action series of the same name with a lot of the gothic and horror themes scaled back a bit for a family-friendly approach. There's still a lot to enjoy here, especially the Normanmeyer's comical attempts to rid the town of the Addams Family and their weird obsession with underwear. In the end, it's mostly Uncle Fester's antics that always gave me a good laugh.

The Spectacular Spider-Man - "The Uncertainty Principle"


Unfortunately, I don't have a video here to watch, but you can stream the episode for yourself after following this link.

It's already awesome enough that the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon was influenced and based off of the Steve Ditko-era of Marvel Comics, but we're treated by Spider-Man having to deal with the Green Goblin, Tombstone, and Hammerhead on Halloween. As an added bonus, we get to see Mary Jane dressed up as a vampire.

I know people tend to shit on this cartoon just for the animation/art style but the storytelling MORE than makes up for it in my eyes. I'm willing to overlook that if the narrative is good.

Danny Phantom



Ah, Danny Phantom... This was my shit in high school and I'm sad that more people didn't know about this cartoon. During the latter part of the 90s to the early 2000s, Nickelodeon were still cracking out good cartoons and this was at it's forefront. Created by Guy Moon, creator of The Fairy Oddparents, The X's, and Tuff Puppy, this was his take onto the superhero genre. Danny goes throughout the series learning and adapting to his newfound ghost powers in the vein of Spider-Man. There were enough similarities to both Spider-Man AND Ghostbusters (good grief, the Ghostbusters references...) to make you laugh, but at the same time, Danny Phantom was it's own unique entity. They know how to make this dark at times while at the same time, keeping it PG enough not to scare the kids away.

The Ultimate Enemy is definitely my favorite episode from the series for a lot of reasons, but I won't spoil it for you guys. Sit back and enjoy this one.

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