Written by Jonathan Wojcik
Six Really Obscure Spooky Kid's Shows!
We've talked about a lot of spookular animated series on bogleech.com - like
The Trap Door, Courage: The Cowardly Dog, even a bit of
Scooby Doo...but it seems as if there's an almost bottomless well of cartoon shows featuring ghosts, monsters and zombies out there. Some are gorgeously animated and surprisingly witty, while others are cancelled and forgotten
for a reason, but I'll leave that judgement up to you. For now, here's six you can actually go watch in some form or another
right now!
WICKED!
(Full Movie Special Here!)
Even considering that it never came to America, I'm surprised I didn't know about this one until pretty much this very month. Beginning as a series of German comics,
Wicked pits a couple of children against an evil, hateful dastard of a man who has already achieved most of my life goals, such as having a giant, rotten apple for a head and an army of mutant worms at his disposal.
Moville Mysteries
(Watch an Episode!)
This one actually began as a pilot on Nickelodeon's
Oh yeah! Cartoons! before it was picked up by a Canadian network for a single 26-episode season. While not offering anything especially new or different in the way of "spooky mystery" cartoons, it has a charmingly messy art style echoing Klasky-Csupo cartoons like
Real Monsters or
Duckman, and as far as Spooky Mystery cartoons go, it offers some fairly decent paranormal hijinks - like this episode featuring mosquitoes that are
also actual vampires.
Strange Hill High
This "vinylmation" CBBC puppet series came and went unceremoniously in 2013, and to find episodes, you may have to google and delve into some slightly sketchier reaches of the internet. Its combination of stick puppetry, vinyl toys and animated lip synch gives it a fairly unique look, and of course, some episodes feature pretty interesting villains and monsters.
Phantom Investigators (Watch Here!)
This one is practically a "phantom" itself, absurdly running for only about
four weeks in 2002 during the twilight years of
Kid's WB!. It's incredibly difficult to find much of anything from the show since, but one of its very co-creators has been kind enough to upload the episode I link above. If the animation style looks familiar to you
at all, it's most likely because you've previously seen Nickelodeon's
"KABLAM!" and the
Life with Loopy segments, uniquely mashing together multiple animation techniques in not only the same show, but on the same characters in the same single scenes.
Staines Down Drains
(Watch series here!)
While this isn't really billed as a horror-themed show, it
is about a secret world of intelligent fungi, slimes and discarded food inhabiting the world's sewers and sink drains, known only to a select few humans who can shrink down and travel freely between the two realms. Among them, a mysterious maniac who calls himself
Doctor Drain, hides his identity under a biohazard suit and bosses around a gang of...mildew goblins, or something? I've actually been looking for this damn cartoon
forever, but at the time of this posting, I've still only seen the first episode. We'll be finding out how great this one is
together!
Haunted Tales for Wicked Kids
(Watch an Episode!)
This one isn't technically "obscure" depending on where you live; with a sense of humor only barely appropriate for children, this Brazilian Cartoon Network production has been a smash hit in multiple countries since 2013, but only recently began to air in English - and so far, only in the Philippines. You can find a dub of the first few episodes on youtube, but the
funniest episode in my opinion - featuring a suave, elderly Chupacabra - honestly doesn't need translating, and even feels
funnier when you're left to deduce what's going on through visual context and character acting.
What I love most about this cartoon isn't even the plethora of morbid gags or villainous monsters, but just how darn beautiful the color palettes, backgrounds and stylish character designs really are. Despite fairly cheap techniques, the animation can be pretty lively to boot.
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