Here are a bunch of sexual innuendos taken from children’s cartoons like “Rugrats,” “Animaniacs,” “Batman,” “Spongebob,” and so on. And if you think this is bad, you oughta see what some of the cartoons in Japan do.

[via pleated jeans]

That quote’s all you really need to know about this Funny or Die video starring Don Cheadle as Captain Planet (embedded below). Possibly the crappiest superhero ever conceived, Captain Planet was easily one of the worst cartoons of the 1990s, a paper-thin character attempting to broaden children’s respect for the environment by making it look like supervillains took joy in cutting trees down and polluting water. This video starts with that conceit, but Captain Planet soon turns into an angry badass who F’s people up and flies away saying, “Don’t summon me again unless you ready for that pain. Peace, dickholes!” It might be Cheadle’s best exit line since Maurice Miller crushed goldfish in Albert Brooks’s hand and told him, “That’s how you do the shake.”

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Smurfin’ Smurfs. Like most Americans raised on TV, I learned about the Smurfs not from the 1950s comic strip in which they first appeared, but from the Hanna-Barbera series that ran from 1981-1989 on NBC. Who could forget when Greedy Smurf got greedy or when Brainy Smurf said something smart? Not I, says everyone. But as much as the new Neil Patrick Harris-starring Smurfs movie would like you to remember otherwise: the Smurfs kind of suck, and the TV show really sucks. But! It’s not the worst series to come from Hanna-Barbera — which, to its credit, did create some great series like “The Flintstones,” “Space Ghost,” and “Johnny Bravo.” But this is the Internet, so let’s talk about the ones that sucked hardest.

Here they smurfin’ are.

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Here’s the first look at the new iteration of “Beavis and Butt-Head,” resurrected by MTV 14 years after the last episode aired. Judging from this clip, the only thing that’s changed is that Beavis and Butt-Head are now reacting to “Jersey Shore” and MTV reality shows instead of videos — a sensible (and very funny) development.

“I felt like TV was getting too smart,” says Mike Judge on the Comic-Con panel when asked why he’s bringing back the show…

Judge then screened the long version of the Beavis preview. It included segments taking on 16 & Pregnant, Teen Mom and the Twilight films (where the duo try to find somebody to turn them into vampires to pick up girls). Fans went absolutely nuts over the footage, and it’s like the show had never been away. [EW]

For better or worse, it really does feel like the show hasn’t been away. Although the story segments of this clip — Beavis’s “Bungholio” alter ego is worshiped by a cult — didn’t feel as funny to me, I’m willing to admit that that’s because I’m in my 30s now, and not my teens. Fifteen years ago, the phrase “TP for my bunghole” would send me into fits of laughter. Now I need rape jokes. People change.

With Transformers: Dark of the Moon opening this week, there’s been a lot of talk about Michael Bay’s unapologetic anti-intellectualism, the 3-D craze, and movie audiences’ weak spot for explosions and giant robots fighting each other. In all the hype, we forget what the Transformers story is REALLY about: a quest for Hasbro to sell robot toys that dates back a quarter-century to the TV series debut in 1984.

Yes, as much as we love to think TV is some sort of high art form, it’s basically just a way for companies to advertise their goods and services to you. The way it’s supposed to work for a half-hour show is 22 minutes of programming and 8 minutes of commercials. But businesses quickly found a way around that, and they’ve been essentially airing 30 minutes of advertising to unsuspecting children for decades now. Below are ten of the most blatant examples — with “Transformers” and “G.I. Joe” excluded, because this is the advanced class. Intro to Obvious Examples is down the hall.

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