Nostalgia with a Twist: Extreme Dinosaurs
Welcome once again ladies and gentlemen to the bumpiest ride on the nostalgia highway. As I was lamenting on Twitter, this article is my favorite type to write, but they aren’t easy. At least to me, I always want to make sure that the style is fresh and “funny” and works for the spirit of the show. I also like to have it be selected by other people because honestly if it were up to me, we’d see like superheroes every week.
The reason it was on hold for so long was a lot of projects and proposals working on in the background, and was trying to fit it into the site’s overall theme, but there really aren’t many James Bond TV shows, other than James Bond Jr, which I may cover sometime soon. That said, I got a suggest from Mr. Pint (I think that’s what he wants to be referred to on the website) to do a feature on Extreme Dinosaurs.
As always, full disclosure on my history with the show. Honestly, until he mentioned it to me, I had NEVER ever heard of this show before. Not seen the intro or know what its about. Though from the name, I can surmise it stars dinosaurs who are extreme! Will they be skateboarding? Will they be snowboarding? Who knows! But they will be EXTREME! Without further adieu let’s get to the big board!
[youtube]8ErufN2Yp5c[/youtube]
First off, it starts with the logo which appears to be written on steel. It looks rather sterile, I don’t wanna say generic, but it doesn’t really stand out. On the bright side, the word is still EXTREME, which means this show predates the whole xTreme movement. Once the logo vanishes, we get to witness two dinosaurs pop out of the ground (Why would they be down there anyhow?) especially when one has wings you would think above ground would be his scene. And I realize these are dinosaurs so this may be tough, but I can only imagine these are the bad guys because they look rather menacing to be heroes. I mean it is a kid’s cartoon after all. Also and this tends to be a problem with these types of shows, they have the weirdest gear. Like not clothing but just like random belts and straps thrown about their person. Two of the dinos also appear to be wearing shorts, I guess they wanted to avoid a Winnie the Pooh type incident? Others just seem to have like arm bands and shoulder straps and I really don’t know who dresses these guys or girls. This is just a strange image, a rather red-ish looking dinosaur is wearing, I guess pink shorts with a spiked belt or waist line, and he has like green wings that retract into his arm? I honestly, don’t know who designs something like this. It really just screams of toy marketing.
One thing that has always bothered me about the liberal use of certain words is they kind of lose their meaning when they are attached to nothing? I mean the song reminds us constantly that these are EXTREME, EXTREME, EXTREME dinosaurs, but using what baseline really? I mean how are dinosaurs even extreme to begin with? I mean throughout the entire intro the most “extreme” thing they do is use a jet ski to grind alongside a ship. That’s it! Other than that, whenever Extreme is mentioned, its usually just them fighting or attacking something. That doesn’t make it extreme… that makes it like every other show of this cut. Speaking of random action, the rest of the intro is pretty much just that with a theme song that is supposed to pump you up! Not only are they EXTREME dinosaurs, but they go through EXTREME weather as well. We see them fighting atop/near an active volcano, we see them engage in battle on an icy land mass (which they of course break with their foot because they’re EXTREME), we see adventures in the air as they pilot let’s go with Dino-copters and finally they take to water to be EXTREME H2O! In addition to being EXTREME, there is also the fact that this is cut from the Ninja Turtles mold of animation. Which means they of course have a catchphrase, in this case “Let’s Fossilize Em”. I mean let’s ignore the scientific headache involved with actually trying to fossilize someone or something,  but what does it even mean? I mean Cowabunga worked because it sounded more like an exclamation of excitement than an actual threat.
1 Response
[…] Dinosaurs- I’ve never actually seen this show, but covered it for Nostalgia with a Twist before. All I know are the Dinosaurs appear to be extreme, extreme […]