8. Animaniacs/Freakazoid/Pinky and The Brain
In the early to late 1990s, Warner Brothers and Steven Spielberg got together and created three very well known cartoon series: Animaniacs, Freakazoid, and Pinky and The Brain. While all three were comedies, they all differed in terms of tone and format. Animaniacs was more of a variety show, with skits involving a wide variety of characters and settings, including some educational bits (such as Yakko Warners
Nations of the World song). Freakazoid was an absurdist superhero romp littered with pop culture references, even featuring Ricardo Montalban as a recurring antagonist that spouted lines from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and asking people to laugh with him. Pinky and The Brain was all about the misadventures of two laboratory mice trying to take over the world. While most of the material for these shows, except for Wakkos Wish (an Animaniacs direct to video movie), has been released on DVD, most of it looks pretty terrible when you see it on an HDTV. Why? It was apparently all mastered on video tape, which blurred the image quite a bit (just watch the Nations of the World song in 720p). Even though the tape transfer is nowhere near as bad as it was on Star Trek: The Next Generation, it ages the shows a lot more than some of the dated pop culture references. Remasterin the shows for Blu-Ray sets certainly would give these shows a bit more longevity among collectors and for TV, now that channels like The Hub have shown that they are willing older material like Animaniacs.