The Annoying Orange is a stupid, poorly executed web series that is inexplicably popular. Its YouTube channel has over two million subscribers, and it boasts another ten million fans on Twitter and Facebook. The idiotic video below, which I somehow watched for almost two minutes, has been viewed 18 MILLION times.

You know where this is going, right? It’s going to be a TV series.

Cartoon Network has acquired the rights to popular YouTube seriesThe Annoying Orangefor a half-hour animated series to premiere in 2012 as part of the cable network’s original programming block… The Annoying Orange TV series will feature online series’ signature character — an orange with a human mouth and eyes heckling other characters, mostly other fruits and vegetables. [Deadline]

I understand that as an adult, I’m not always going to understand the appeal of children’s programming to kids. But I also hope that as a parent, I’ll steer my children away from shows that blow this hard. “Go to your room, young man! And don’t come out until you’ve watched the entire catalog of Monty Python!”

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Okay, this is a lot to process. The video below aired during the “MAD” sketch show on Cartoon Network, and it is a dizzying assault of memes. At its core, it’s a battle between the new Thundercats and Dogfort characters, but along the way there’s a lot of impact font and lolcats and ragetoons and other memes. It all makes perfect sense to me, but normal people — that is, people who don’t spend 12 hours a day on Tumblr and Reddit and Uproxx — will be absolutely baffled by it.

But that’s all moot. I’m just posting the video because Lobster Dog was finally on TV, as a cloned foot soldier in the Dogfort army. Oh man, can you imagine a platoon of Lobster Dogs? I can. I dream about it every night.

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UPDATE: Now with working video thanks to BuzzFeed.

Here’s almost ten minutes of the Cartoon Network’s reboot of “ThunderCats,” which should be interesting to you if you’re a huge geek, a nine-year-old boy, or a normal adult who watched the original cartoon as a child and got confused by his attraction to Cheetara. I won’t name any names.

The new cartoon frames Lion-O as a brash heir to the throne, with Tygra as his dick older brother (so then why is Lion-O the heir?) and Cheetara as the sexy cat-person who shows up when he’s in trouble. Snarf and WilyKit and WilyKat also make appearances, although there’s no sign of Panthro, who only did, like, everything in the original series. Also, the original series featured the ThunderCats as the last of their line living on Third Earth after their home planet of Thundera was destroyed, whereas this new version treats Third Earth as the ThunderCats’ home planet. Um, that’s what some dork told me, anyway. I punched him in the stomach for knowing idiot nonsense like that.

Anyway, Topless Robot is hitting the inhaler pretty hard over this, but my enthusiasm is in check. It looks like a worthy remake, but I’m not going to make any plans to DVR it and watch it late at night and hit the slo-mo button when Cheetara’s on-screen. Nope. Not gonna do it. Swear.

Ever since Cartoon Network announced its intention to do an anime remake of “ThunderCats,” I’ve been skeptical. I mean, what’s the point of an anime remake if Cheetara’s going to be less sexy?

However, the trailer for the new series debuted this weekend at WonderCon (video below), and this looks downright promising. The action scenes look cool, Cheetara is properly stacked, and in general it’s the opposite of all the crappy laziness embodied in Arnold Scharzenegger’s “Governator” cartoon. My only complaint: there doesn’t seem to be any Panthro, which is downright criminal. Panthro did f*cking everything and never got any credit for it. And now they’ve written him out. Why they gotta treat a black panther like that?

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Back in December, Conan O’Brien visited the nearby WB lot, where he worked with animator Bruce Timm to create a superhero alter-ego: The Flaming C, a fishnet-wearing hero armed with a steaming oven mitt and a jai alai cesta. It was a solid remote segment.

Apparently, the WB followed through with the idea, expanding the rudimentary drawing into a scene on the Cartoon Network’s “Young Justice” (Flaming C takes the place of Superman). Watch the video from last night’s “Conan”:

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