Today, we bring you another in our series of retro/classic Saturday morning cartoons: Turbo Teen.

To understand Turbo Teen, you have to set the stage properly. Studios were in a flurry of doing toy tie-ins with Saturday morning cartoons. Everything from cereal, pasta, light-bulbs and toys were fair game. The mid-late ’80’s were full of shamefully crappy shows and toys for kids.

The cynics say that it hasn’t been that much different since the invention of television, at least in marketing towards kids. Only today, we’ve got the invasion of anime themed cartoons

Turbo Teen was about a teenage boy who got caught up in some secret expirament that turns him into this red Knight-Rider like Trans-Am.

Basically, it was a KITT rip-off in cartoon form. The cartoon was okay, but didn’t last long. The animation was pure cheap ’80’s junk, no where near the smooth animation that we see today or even in American classics like Yogi Bear or the Jetsons.

Turbo Teen is so bad, that it’s campy-good.

You can still grab Turbo Teen clips on YouTube and that’s about all. No rumors about bringing the single season camper to DVD. You might be able to catch a modernized, if not super-funny clip of a Turbo Teen knock-off on Adult Swim. It doesn’t end well for our hero, but you’ll laugh ’til you can’t breathe.

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