Casual Conversation

Ren and Stimpy was doing some wild things back in the day

I was about 5 years old, and every Saturday morning I just HAD to watch The California Raisin Show. It was about these raisins who were a singing group and went on adventures. All of the characters were fruits and vegetables.

I grew up with all the strange ones from the late 90's early 2000's and loved them all; Rocko's Modern Life, Cow and Chicken, Catdog, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Ahh! Real Monsters

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

The 90s had lots of weird cartoons, but this one was one of the more wholesome of the word ones

Aeon Flux

Probably Ren & Stimpy, if we're talking actual weirdness. I also liked KABLAM! a fair bit. My all-time favorite weird show (albeit not a cartoon) was Pee-Wee's Playhouse. I was raided on that shit. Had his suit and tie and everything.

The Head from MTV back in the day

Invader Zim

H.R. Puffenstuff,

You can't do a little, cause you can't do enough

Ugly Americans was pretty wild, but Drawn Together was a whole different level of wacky.

Not sure if it counts as a cartoon, but 'The Oblongs' still lives rent-free in my head after seeing it on Adult Swim years and years ago.

Snorks were pretty weird. Like aqua smurfs sort of.

When I was really young, there were some fairy tale cartoons on super early in the morning.

They were broadcast in very short segments, about 5 or 15 minutes each, but the animation was amazing.

Many decades later, I learned these were Soviet productions from the 1950s and 60s, and a lot of the human motions were rotoscoped, i.e. traced from actual moving human models.

The Frog Princess, dubbed in English (more in the YT user's account): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY6sI3muOjc

The Snow Queen, dubbed in English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaF6oqHZ-GM

The Fisherman and the Fish, in Russian with subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHuSqNuv9Ng

Courage the cowardly dog. Has a great villain roster, good memories watching with mom, and some of its messages still live with me 20 years later. I think about the imperfection episode more often than I like to.

Angry Beavers

GKR, pronouned Geeker, sometimes got up extra early on Saturdays to catch it. It was about a super powerful robot guy who was absolutely insane, voiced by Billy West. Best friends with a sentient T Rex and a mercenary cyborg lady with a gun arm. Totally oddball, kind of cyberpunk, I'm sure it was garbage

The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

Animaniacs

Invader Zim

Ed Edd n Eddy

The Mighty Bee (this came out while i was a teenager but felt like a fever dream)

Ovide and the Gang - we had this one on tape and it was a touch of streaming without commercials decades before that happened. Animation was OK for its time but still had a lot of errors even a kid will notice. Something about it as a kid felt a little weird but the setting was refreshing.

Hammy Hamster - Grandma taped this one for us. If you like making dioramas and want your pet hamster, guinea pig, and other critters to be TV stars this laid the groundwork. Not a cartoon but it fits right in with them.

Wapos Bay - is also worth a mention. It's a more modern stop motion take on the Cree community in Saskatchewan. It has a unique brand of humor and that "way up north" feel to the setting and aboriginal community dynamics which makes for a good change of pace. It was almost like a cleaned up family friendly South Park.

All of these shows are Canadian in origin if that explains anything. Wapos Bay I didn't see until later in life but usually would drop everything if my dad told me it was on. First two I haven't thought of in so long I had to google them to make sure they were real and not my imagination. Truly weird TV shows are always worth the time because there's never anything like them.

For me it's Mr Bogus! I'm not sure how well I remember it but I loved catching it on some channel 30 or so years ago. Claymation and good stuff.

Vacalactica.

Courage the Cowardly Dog

I'm surprised I don't see Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo on here.

My brother and I used to watch it on on-demand when my parents were out of the house in the early 2000's. Absolute insanity. I tried to re-watch it a couple years back for nostalgia, and my more matured brain just couldn't comprehend it... That was before I started smoking weed, maybe I should give it another shot, it might make more sense if I'm zonked out of my gourd.

I'm going for the extremely weird angle, not a particular love angle as I found the show a bit lame as a kid:

The Dutch cartoon Purno de Purno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o6MIJ7Iq1U

It was animated on an amiga 2000. The titular character 'Purno' in his purple spandex suit has a couple of adventures that are very weird. In the linged cartoon he's searching for a princess hidden in 'de kiettelaars' grotto' where you must know that 'kietelaar' is a Dutch word that can mean 'the one who tickles' or 'the clitoris'. In this comic it is a weird looking guy that talks with an creole accent and is tickling Purno and himself in a rather well.. sexual manner. The 'grotto' or cave is a bit vulva-looking. He is rewarded byy the princess with many kisses. Purno reflects 'even though her beauty was stolen, shes a really good kisser'

This is no coincidence, there is plenty of overt sexual overtones, with Purno once entering the vagina of a giant naked lady.

To be fair, non of those sexual references register when watching it as a kid, but when you reflect on it later in life it is utterly bizarre that that was aired on regular televison in a kids' show.