8. Cartoon Kong
Produced by children's TV animators Rankin-Bass, The King Kong Show cartoon series ran for 78 Saturday morning episodes from 1966-69. Kong was by now relegated to the status of an outsize monkey superhero, as underlined by his last Toho film outing: King Kong Escapes (1967). The bug-eyed gorilla costume donned for this was a considerable step down even on the previous movie with Godzilla, and the plot was entirely drawn from the TV kiddie show. Kong, as the hero, defeated both a dinosaur and his own robotic counterpart, Mechani-Kong. When he swam back home (now called Mondo Island) at the end, it closed the most non-ferocious chapter in his career. Netflix have announced a new animated series entitled Kong: King of the Apes for 2016. Given the advances in animation techniques over the previous decades, and the revival of Hollywood interest in Kong himself, let's hope we'll see a slightly more feral beast this time around.