Eduardo Rodriguez
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The hero's tale requires that he overcome long odds to defeat the bad guys. We understand that; nobody would have rooted for Luke Skywalker if Darth Vader had been a small, handicapped child.
But many of the cartoons of our childhood took this idea to absolutely retarded extremes, to the point that it strained even our childish suspension of disbelief. These are the badass villains who had no business coming out on the losing end:
Dr. George Claw is the head of M.A.D., a criminal organization whose main purpose is committing crime and wreaking pointless havoc. Take notice that they don't mention profit or power as a main goal; those are only unexpected bonuses.
M.A.D. 1: You know, we could have looted some stuff before burning down that warehouse.
M.A.D. 2: Why?
There was one time when Claw teamed up with his Japanese counterpart, Waruda, to steal all the jewelery in the world. Yeah, you read it right. All the jewelry. From the Queen of England's crown to the ring in your great grandma's icy death fingers. Why? Presumably, for the hell of it.
They also had their logo stamped on everything. You might think it's a weird move for a criminal syndicate, but, you know, you can't underestimate the value of brand management.
Who Was He Constantly Losing To?
Inspector Gadget.
The whole "spawning any weapon from his hat" man machine thing sounds like he'd be a powerful hero, but then you realize he's less "combination of man and machine" and more "combination of machine and pure incompetent asshole."
Gadget is constantly being outwitted by his own dog and his 10 or 11-year-old niece. They were the ones who always ruined Dr. Claw's schemes, often by replacing the objects he tried to steal with worthless replicas. It's worth noting that Penny apparently had the same neurological condition as the guy in Memento as she needed to write down everything she was thinking in her 128kb laptop.
Really, Dr. Claw?
Well first of all, he is an evil wizard, and we're assuming the name isn't referring to a medical condition. He lives in a dark castle surrounded with dark clouds, where we suppose he performs some dark rituals of dark wizardry.
Look at that bastard. Dark robes, a cloak that hides his face in shadows, it's deformed features a mystery other than a pair of glowing, evil red eyes. He also has shadow minions, who may be more fucked up than he is. Whenever children are having good feelings, they just literally suck the feeling out of the children, injecting a creepy pedo-vibe that you don't usually get in Saturday morning cartoons.
Also, he is a shapeshifter, so he could just go and shapeshift into some world's leader and start World War III. We tried to find out what power would be more convenient for world domination and we only came out with a gun that had infinite ammo and also great boobs. Then again, he could shapeshift into an even bigger gun with even bigger boobs. Damn you, No Heart!
Who Was He Constantly Losing To?
The Care Bears.
Little fluffy bears who cared. And lived in clouds. Loving everything. Loving each other. Really, when these guys weren't throwing alcohol-free birthday parties they were baking cookies. They sprinkled some light out of their fluffy tummies. Tummies that No Heart should have been able to gut with a single swift move. Instead, they got him with the fluffy tummy light trick over and over again.
If the world's most ruthless shapeshifter doesn't stand a chance against fluffy bears, then imagine how screwed we are when the army of Teddy Ruxpin's finally become self aware and crawl up out of the land fills.
An evil wizard with a degree. He lives in a forest in the middle of nowhere in a run-down hovel, so we're not sure how much good it's doing him.
In his early appearances in the cartoons he wanted to capture Smurfs in order to make gold. Later, he decided he wanted to eat them instead. Finally, he got tired of making excuses and admitted he just wanted to slaughter Smurfs because murder is awesome. That's why he named his cat Azrael, which is a name for the angel of death.
In addition to being an alchemist, he has the godlike ability to create life, and once created Sassette, a female smurf. If he can make his own smurfs, why does he continue to hunt the free ones? Because he's fucking Gargamel, that's why!
Who Was He Constantly Losing To?
Tiny (just "three apples tall") peace-loving communists that survive on Smurf berries and very limited skills.
Each smurf is named for their single, completely worthless "talent." You've got Hefty Smurf (remember, very small), Brainy Smurf, Jokey Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Dreamy Smurf, etc. There is no Nucleary Smurf or Snipery Smurf or Impaley Smurf to be found.
A normal man of no supernatural powers shouldn't be losing to this group of penis-sized commies. Hell, the goddamned cat should have taken care of the whole village in an afternoon.
The Duke was once a fierce knight loyal to the crown of King Gregor, ruler of Dunwyn. If you know anything about the Middle Ages, you know what kind of shit this guy's got on his resume: Burning down enemy villages while little babies and peasant girls cried for mercy, collecting skulls for the castle's towers, going to war and coming back bathed in enemy's internal organs while bleeding horribly from his own gruesome wounds.
After forging his personality in the fires of cruel knighthood, Sir Igthorn became a duke and began a quest to take over the entire kingdom of Dunwyn. What he lacks in arcane knowledge or demonic blood paths, he compensates with badassery. Also, Igthorn commands a legion of bloodthirsty orcs. We don't know if you've watched enough Lord of the Rings to know this, but you don't win the loyalty of orcs with kind words. Igthorn, no doubt, killed half of them and tortured the rest until they swore loyalty with bitter orc tears in their eyes.
Who Was He Constantly Losing To?
The Gummi Bears.
Okay, not the actual candies, but the ones in the candy-inspired Disney cartoon.
The story goes that not so long ago Gummi Glen (sigh) was a forest infested with hundreds of Gummi Bears until Duke Igthorn cleared it out, single-handedly. Now, there's only six left and they are somehow giving him a hell of a fight to keep him from taking over the kingdom.
And how do these stupid bears stand a chance against the bloodthirsty hellspawn known as Ightorn? Because of the Gummi Juice, a substance that gives the Gummi Bears the amazing power of BOUNCING.
Get those things bouncing and a bloodbath ensues
Wait a second. Were they really trying to sell us candy by portraying them as sentient, heroic and lovable? For a toddler, doesn't that take the fun out of biting their little heads off? Hell, maybe the whole thing was a roundabout pitch to get us to finish the job Igthorn started.
Imagine a place so vile that someone finds it necessary to form an organization of monsters and villains, just to get things working a little above pandemonium level. Now imagine what kind of badass it would take to rule this group. That's Quellor, the "Supreme Oppressor".
Quellor takes control of M.A.V.O. with an iron fist, surely in more ways we would like to imagine an iron fist can rule. No matter how odd, stupid, strange or outlandish his orders may be, they are obeyed without delay by each member of M.A.V.O. They know it's that, or a session with Quellor's iron fist.
Physically, he is huge and menacing, and throws some kind of electricity from his hands and has a ray that erases the memory of whoever he thinks deserves it. Like No Heart up there, it seems like this guy could rule the world pretty easily.
Who Was He Constantly Losing To?
Teddy Ruxpin.
Teddy is a Illiop, a bear-like creature with a kind disposition. If you're a certain age you may also remember the animatronic Teddy Ruxpin toy that talked out of a cassette embedded in his chest.
Then you've got Teddy's friends: Grubby, a kid sized worm that cares only about eating; Newton Gimmick, an absent minded inventor whose head appears to have been ravaged by Alzheimer's; a pair of 10-year-old princess siblings and some furry pink hobbit/yeti/glamorous drag abomination.
Well, nothing gay about that.
These guys have some precious crystals Quellor wants to get his hands on and, somehow, the Supreme Oppressor never supremely oppresses the fuck out of these furry dipshits.
The fist, man! Use the fist!
Professor Norton Nimnul is a talented mad scientist, however he is not the head of his criminal operations, as he works for Mr. Klordane the Crime Lord. In that capacity, the man has built laser cannons, a shrinking/enlarging gun (he once stole a whole motherfucking museum with it by shrieking it to pocket-size), an aging gun, a cat gun and who knows what else. Shit on the guy, he'll make a gun out of it.
Oh, and once he made an earthquake bomb out of nothing but fruit.
Who Was He Constantly Losing To?
The Rescue Rangers.
Don't let the name fool you, this is not a group of Chuck Norrises and Steven Seagals fighting the Professor's inventions with roundhouse kicks. This is a group of five rodents who started a club to fight crime.
There is one squirrel who is clever (for a chipmunk), another who is amazingly stupid (for a chipmunk), the muscle of the group (strong for a mouse) and a mouse-girl that actually is pretty good at designing gadgets and devices, but most of the materials she acquires are coke caps, plastic packages and a diverse array of the shit you could dig out of your couch cushions right now. So all of her gadgets could be crushed if the Professor stepped on them.
Also, they had a fly.
In fact, the whole team could easily die that way. As with Gargamel, it seems the professor should be able to take these rodents out without any of his inventions. A small child could do it, completely by accident.
Mythology makes it pretty clear: Nothing good can come out a half-goat creature.
Tirek, a gigantic half-goat/half-horse/half-man and 150 percent motherfucking hellspawn, lives in his Midnight Castle. Scorpan, his Yeti-with-wings minion, executes his evil commands, which oddly mostly consists of kidnapping ponies.
Tirek's plan involves using a powerful black magic, called The Power of Darkness, to turn said ponies into dragon slaves so they'll pull his "Chariot of Darkness" and perhaps some other appliance of darkness that requires dragon energy to work properly.
Tirek's dark powers come from a magical bag that contains, uh, "The Power of Darkness." This twisted power corrupts anything it touches.
Who Was He Constantly Losing To?
My Little Ponies.
Somewhere close to Tirek's Midnight Castle is a hidden magical land where all kind of mythical creatures live, named Ponyland. The little ponies, pegasus and unicorns make their home in a valley there called Paradise Estate. This is where these bonsai horses dance, sing and lick each other.
It is true that some of these ponies have some magical powers. But most of the ponies roaming around this place didn't seem to have any kind of power at all. They couldn't even talk like the magical ponies. How the fuck were they staying alive?
Anyway, as relayed in the cartoon, with the help of a little girl, highly complex choreography and a rainbow, these ponies managed to defeat a creature that seems to be the embodiment of the devil himself.
And now we've reached rock bottom of our insultingly incapable heroes. This is a pretty cruel trick society played on the little girls of the world who saw these cartoons and played with the toys.
While boys were taught that evil giant transforming robots could only be defeated with other giant transforming robots, girls were taught that evil could be defeated with the power of rainbows and flamboyant song and dance. Which one better prepared their audience for the real world? If you'd like to find out, go perform a choreographed song and dance number in the middle of the highway while a semi bares down on you. In your final moments of consciousness, imagine how much more terrifying this would all be if that semi was sentient.
Want to become your own evil-mastermind? Then check out 5 Deadly Sci-Fi Gadgets You Can Build At Home. And don't forget to pick out your very own wussy superhero who will defeat you at every turn by checking out 6 Real-Life Vigilantes Crazier Than Batman.
And stop by our Top Picks to find out who is always beating us (hint: there's no one, actually. We own the Internet, bitches).
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Bawitdaba, pass the green beans.
Going for that 16th minute.
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