He’s my friend and a whole lot more!
The cartoon intro reviews seem like a hit, so here’s another one.
Anyone remember ‘Denver, The Last Dinosaur’? I know I watched this show way back when, but I really don’t remember much about it except for the awesome theme song. Enjoy:
Quite disturbing, in hindsight. As if the line ‘he’s my friend and a whole lot more’ wasn’t icky enough, the kids are seen frolicking with their dino buddy while that line is sung. Let’s see… last dinosaur, Cretaceous… 65 million… yep, that’d make Denver the First Pedophile, too.
The show came out at that time in the late 80s/early 90s when dinosaurs were HUGE, and I don’t mean that as a pun. They were everywhere. The Land Before Time, Dino-Riders, that ‘Dinosaurs’ sitcom that lasted for like three episodes, the Flintstones on home video… and then Jurassic Park came along and capped it all off in ‘93, proving once and for all that dinosaurs are fucking awesome.
The juxtaposition of neon lights and rock lettering on the logo is just too cool. It reminds me of those episodes of The Flintstones where they’d go to ’Bruce Springstone’ concerts in ‘Rock Vegas’. And those electric guitars/keytars look like they’re straight outta The Jetsons Movie.
I love that bit where they show the world of the dinosaurs, and the t-rex and parasaurolophus are snapping at each other as if they’re in some kind of prehistoric bar fight. That’s no contest, man. A parasaurolophus will FUCK YOU UP. More like P-Rex!
As I recall (not having seen an episode since I was like 5 years old), the show featured a bunch of multiracial stereotype kids (seriously… they were like doppelgangers of the Burger King Kids’ Club) who found Denver’s egg and hatched it. This relies on the time-honoured kids’ entertainment plot device whereby children who find aliens or dinosaurs or nuclear weapons don’t tell any adults about it, and instead just fuck around with it themselves.
The episodes all revolved around the kids helping Denver escape from some record producer whose intentions toward Denver were those of Carl Denham toward King Kong, all the while showing him a good time late 80s style. You know; skateboarding, fluoro clothing, pink sunglasses, bleach-blonde mullets, Walkmans with Van Halen mix-tapes in them…
I’m pretty sure that amongst all the extreme sports and hair metal there were various social and ecological messages in the show’s storylines. Denver was part of the same tradition to teach kids progressive values as Widget the World-Watcher and Captain Planet. Didn’t work, Mr. Turner! This generation turned out just as materialistic and unconcerned about social and environmental issues as our predecessors.
This show is actually coming to DVD as WEP is going to release all their properities including the Japanese Voltrons and Saber Riders in the next year or so.
Yup, Dinosaurs were huge I remember I had a themed birthday party with them when I was 8 and all the great Dinoriders toys they had at the time.
Hooray for materialisim, Now if you’ll excuse me I need to eat a bald eagle and wipe my ass with a 100 dollar bill.
This show was pretty big when I was about 10. My favourite character was the black kid named Mario with the California surfer dude voice. Post-Modern.
I had a dino-themed party for my 8th birthday too. The cake was T-Rex shaped and we played “Pin The Tail On The Raptor”. I think my mum tried to bullshit us that the “Pass The Parcel” was a dinosaur egg, but we didn’t fall for it.
Ahhhh…Remember how smart our parents thought we were when we were 5 or 6 just because we could name a few dinosaurs??? T- Rex and Raptor were post Jurassic Park names…Back in my day Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptors were the names I knew! Oh, Velociraptor was Dinonychus when I was little…Do you remember Dinosaucers? I liked Bonehead…Or was it Boner?
Heh… Dinosaucers. The Tyrannos ruled. How could you NOT rule with a guy named ‘Terrible Dactyl’ on your team? (Though ‘Terror Dactyl’ would’ve been awesomer.)
I was the ‘dinosaur kid’ in my class. (Every class had one!) My teacher used to hate me because I was forever correcting her on the finer points of paleontology. I haven’t retained any of it, of course.