POP CULTURE: TOP 10 IRRITATING CARTOON CHARACTERS OF ALL TIME

HERE’S A FUN LISTING FROM MY AMIGOS AT ASK MEN MAGAZINE: THE TOP 10 MOST IRRITATING CARTOON CHARACTERS OF ALL TIME. CHEERS & ENJOY

Top 10: Irritating Cartoon Characters

Even the coolest of cartoons had its lame-duck character. Here are 10 personalities who ruined our Saturday mornings.

By Ryan Murphy, Entertainment Correspondent

Page 1: Irritating cartoon characters

Robin from Batman is an irritating cartoon character

From the 1960s until the 1990s, Saturday mornings were synonymous with cartoons. Children from coast to coast knew they could park themselves in front of the TV with a bowl of Count Chocula in their laps and indulge in hours of mindless entertainment.

Mind you, it wasn’t always perfect. For every character you loved on a show there were literally dozens of irritating cartoon characters that you reviled. These animated annoyances were so incredibly awkward, meddlesome and arrogant that you wanted to take them by their scrawny little necks and give them a proper thrashing.

It’s with these supremely aggravating figures in mind that we proudly present our list of the top 10 most irritating cartoon characters to ever grace the small screen. Top off your bowl of cereal and tune in!

Number 10

Robin

Batman

Lame doesn’t even begin to describe what your life must be like when you spend your teenage years cruising around town with a 35-year-old man, wearing little more than a pair of green leotards. If he had served a better purpose it would have been one thing, but Robin’s primary duty was to get rescued by the Dark Knight while uttering idiotic lines like “Leaping lizards, Batman!” Thanks, but if our life is on the line, we’ll stick with Superman.

Number 9

Rocket J. Squirrel

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show

We’ve always believed that squirrels are just rats with better PR, which is one of many reasons we detest Rocky the Flying Squirrel. We also hate his morally righteous attitude and his voice, which is so gratingly high-pitched that it sounds like he has been squeezing his nuts rather than hiding them.

Number 8

Boo-Boo Bear

The Yogi Bear Show

It’s appropriate that Boo-Boo is named after a mistake, because that’s precisely what William Hanna and Joseph Barbera made when they added this pint-sized cub to The Yogi Bear Show. A genuine wet blanket, this blue bow-tie-wearing bupkes always brought the action to a grinding halt, preventing his old pal Yogi from satisfying his carnal need for “pic-a-nic” baskets. And what was the deal with his painfully plodding cadence? If anyone actually thought as slowly as he talked they’d still be deciding what to have for breakfast yesterday. Suffice it to say, this Jellystone Park resident was -- and always will be -- duller than the average bear.

Other irritating cartoon characters who ruined your Saturday morning…

Page 2: Cartoon characters

Number 7

Newton

The Mighty Hercules

Easily the most inept superhero sidekick of all-time, Hercules’ little buddy was constantly getting nabbed by Daedalus and even his cat Dydo. No matter how you do the math, the bare-chested, girly sounding Newton was half boy, half horse and all annoying.

Number 6

Dennis Mitchell

Dennis the Menace

The very personification of annoyance, Dennis Mitchell was a devilish little imp whose mischievous spirit caused headaches for everyone around him. From the smudge of dirt on his nose to the well-worn slingshot protruding from his back pocket, this spawn of satan was less welcome than mono at a make-out party.

Number 5

Tweety Bird

Looney Tunes

We’ve never subscribed to the belief that something is adorable simply because it’s pathetically undersized, and that’s especially true with Tweety. This cloying yellow canary’s schtick can be boiled down to a single redundant plot, a tiresome catchphrase and a voice so sickly sweet that it could send a listener spiraling into a diabetic coma.

Number 4

Olive Oyl

Popeye

We like our cartoon characters to be voluptuous vixens like Jessica Rabbit, which is why we’ve always been disappointed by Olive Oyl, a one-dimensional beanpole with enormous feet and breasts that look like mosquito bites. In addition to having a face that could stop a clock, Olive Oyl was also constantly disrupting Popeye’s schedule by getting kidnapped and tied to railroad tracks. Just once we would have loved to have seen the crusty ‘ol sailor man leave her there and get on with his life.

The top three irritating cartoon characters…

Page 3: Cartoons

The Flinstones' Great Gazoo was a very annoying cartoon character

Number 3

Lucy van Pelt

A Boy Named Charlie Brown

A fuss-budget of the first degree, Lucy lived to torment others. Whether converting Linus’ beloved blankie into a kite or swiping the football away from Charlie Brown at the last possible moment, her thoughtless actions always left a path of heartache and destruction in their wake. As if that weren’t bad enough, Lucy was also the group’s resident know-it-all whose psychiatric advice would always leave her patients feeling more distressed than when they arrived. It’s no wonder that Schroeder constantly rejected her advances.

Number 2

Woody Woodpecker

The Woody Woodpecker Show

One of the industry’s original screwball characters, Woody Woodpecker was a cruel prankster with the kind of voice that would make you want to drive a lawn dart into your ears. When he wasn’t polluting the air with his sickening laughter, Woody was stealing from hapless victims and drilling his razor-sharp beak into the heads of innocent bystanders.

Number 1

The Great Gazoo

The Flintstones

It’s never a good sign when you need to introduce an annoying green alien to help reinvigorate your program. It’s especially troubling when your program is set in the Stone Age. That was precisely what happened on October 29, 1965, when producers of The Flintstones foisted The Great Gazoo on an unsuspecting public. This blatant Mr. Mxyzptlk knockoff was constantly showing up at the most inopportune of times and would literally add insult to injury when he would refer to Fred and Barney as a pair of “dumb-dumbs.” Not surprisingly, The Flintstones was canceled soon after The Great Gazoo’s first appearance, bringing an inglorious end to an otherwise classic cartoon.

toon in

Unfortunately for today’s cartoon aficionados, annoying characters aren’t limited to a single generation. Irritating sidekicks and meddlesome villains continue to pollute our screens and ruin promising shows.