Captain Planet!

We grew up with a series where Black Jesus, a perpetually horny twink, a trans slug, a bucket of goo with identity crisis, a rehabilitated rebel/terrorist, and an Irishman reconciled cultural differences to restore a planet following a decades-long occupation. And it was awesome.

The only sad thing about Captain Planet was that it taught me that if you point out the wrong-doings of the rich and powerful, there will be correct action taken by the authorities to right the wrongs and to punish those responsible. The truth is much sadder imho.

People talk a lot about the ethnic stereotyping of the original Power Rangers, what with the Black Ranger being black (and of course majorly into hip-hop), the Yellow Ranger being Asian and versed in several Asian stereotypes, and the leader being the straight white male (who then gets displaced as leader by another straight white male).

What we don't talk about is how, to spite all of that, it was still a huge step forward for the time to make it such a diverse cast. It was progress, warts and all.

The original idea was to make the Red Ranger Native American which...wow. But still... it'd also have been note worthy for the time too to put a Native American character in this line up, let alone as the leader.

Honorable mention to Billy who, to spite the character not being gay, the actor was (and got harassed for it). I know he's said he never made Billy gay, but I can't help but think there's a reason I identified with Billy as a kid, and not just because he was the nerd.

Green hair and blue skin.

He blue himself. There are dozens of us.

I always felt bad for the kid who got the shaft by getting the lousy heart ring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwJaELXadKo

The reboot got dark

The 90's were such a weird time for representation. All the higher ups in media were still old white people, but some of them were well meaning and did think it was important to insert people of different ethnicitys and cultures into their programming. Problem was that none of the people of the culture being depicted were involved in the writing, so these characters were often offensive stereotypes. Apu from the Simpsons and Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager are two of the most egregious examples. This all paved the way for actual progressive inclusion in media, but man has a lot of it aged poorly.

We elected Hoggish Greedly as premier of Ontario.

Hair? With a MULLET. Not super woke, still impressive.

"I did it... They're all trees... They're all trees!"

• Takes one look at this thread's title and puts on... ♪Captain Planet, he's a hero! Going to take pollution, down to zero! We're the planeteers, you can be one too! Because saying the planet is the thing to do! Looting and polluting is not the way! Here is what Captain Planet has to say! The Power is yours!♪

Those kids are radicals

I'm 50 and I have no idea who captain planet is. When and where was that a thing? Did you need to have cable? Because like 5% of my friends had cable. I've still never paid for it.

Nobody I knew ever watched that show, it was Ted Turner's pet project he threw money into. It's a shame to have it included in the cartoons of that time.

It didn't reflect anything socially except egotistical social engineering experimentation by a megalomaniac.

I just wish I could watch a show where half of the women didn't happen to be revealed to be dykes halfway through it. As a woman, this legit gives me anxiety.