This week, the League has been asked to recall a pop culture property that they hated as a kid. Honestly, my adolescent self was pretty easy to please, and I had a tough time coming up with anything–but then it hit me like a bucketful of ice cold water spit out by an anteater…
The Wonder Twins.
I loved to watch my favorite super heroes combine forces to fight nefarius villains. Super Friends was a Saturday morning staple, but for whatever reason, the Wonder Twins seemed to get a lot more air time than anyone else, or at least that’s how I remember it.
Two people/aliens who have no powers, unless they give each other a fist bump, along with a blue monkey named Gleek, and his unusually long tail. Usually, two super heroes fighting as a team is pretty cool, but not this duo. Zan could turn into water, and Jayna could transform into an animal. On paper, that might sound pretty good, but it never approached the level of awesome that it might have. No, in the cartoon, there were lots of buckets of water being sloshed around by eagles and such.
This parody video pretty much sums it up…
A gopher moat!
Sean Hewlett is a much better writer than me, and has an excellent Wonder Twins “tribute” over on McSweeney’s:
THE PERSONAL JOURNAL OF ZAN, THE MALE HALF OF THE WONDER TWINS.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that my biggest problem with the Wonder Twins might have been their little blue sidekick, Gleek. It had to be the comedy relief that grated on my nerves so much. Super heroes wee serious business to me as a kid, and characters like Gleek just cheapened the whole thing. Some similar characters who made the Hulk rage come on were Snarf, Scrappy Doo, Orko, and Jar Jar. Don’t try to defend them.
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Other League members have sheer hated boiling in their veins. Check them out: Toyriffic, Monsterfink, Dorkette, Geeky Vixen, and more!
They were Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog 2.0
dingdingding!
Scrappy! I should’ve written about him. I’d forgotten how much I hate him until I read this.
Todd covered Scrappy Doo in detail here: http://neatocoolville.blogspot.com/2013/04/sorry-scrappy-doo-but-i-think-i-hate-you.html
Blip would beat the snot out of Gleek.
True dat!
Now that is the battle I want to see – The Wonder Twins versus the Jan and Jace from Space Ghost. And of course the monkeys will have to fight to the death.
nice glad to finaly see i am not the only one who hated the wonder twins for thought not only were their powers wasted and had potential but gleek mostly looked like a deranged animated comic relief nightmare. but mostly the wonder twins were one of the stupidest characters added to dc
Gleek had like the worst name ever. Just a grody name. And I agree, I was never really big on the Wonder Twins. They look cool, but they were just not for me.
I loved the justice league episode though where they revised all the lame as hell Superfriends fodder the wonder were renamed, Shifter, and Downpour. Still got their butts handed to them by Aquaman- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWuFjWNMrc4
Ha!
I almost went with this myself. Orginally, Jayna was going to be able to morph into anything and Zan was going to have abilities similar to Plastic Man, but the producers felt they would either be as powerful as the rest of the Super Friends if not more so. Ultinately they might have been more interesting characters. Some producers need to be de-activated as well.
Has anyone watched a Super Friends episode with Wendy and Marvin lately? Wendy pretty much took care of every conflict the Friends had. Go Wendy!
I loved Scrappy-Doo… Just saying.