One of the side effects of growing up so far from places like America and the UK is that I would be endlessly fascinated by ads for things I could never see or buy. And the United States looked like paradise, because the full-page ads featured so many toys I'd never see, and they would show for Saturday Morning TV looked incredible - superheroes and science fiction and cartoons and all sorts.
Over here, we got 10 minutes of Thundercats or Dungeons And Dragons on a Saturday morning, surrounded by two hours of dumb live-action kids content, and that was it! That was the kids programming for the week! So the things you could see in those ads that came in the back of Justice League comics, all the from the distant land of America, looked like a dream.
They promised hours of Super Friends and Daffy Duck and Popeye and Smurfs and a Happy Days time travel cartoon. Loads of Scooby-Doo and Godzilla, a Lone Ranger and Tarzan adventure hour and some apocalyptic thing called Ark II, which looked mind-bogglingly exciting. They had Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman and Plastic Man and Mr T adventures, and they had the Drak Pack.
Time has marched on, and now I could easily find at least some episodes of every one of those programmes on YouTube or some other video platform, and could watch them anytime.
I never do. The actual television can never match the promise of those advertisements. I know Ark II will look cheap and cheesy and an embarrassment to watch, and I bet the Drak Pack wasn't that good anyway. I'll stick with blissful ignorance, and those gorgeous teases.
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