CAPTIN PLANET RING GIF SERIES

Gi, the bearer of the water ring, was inspired by Chee Yoke Ling, a Malaysian human rights advocate who attended the 1992 U.N. Linka, who controlled wind, was loosely based on German Green Party co-founder Petra Kelly.

When creating the characters, Pyle drew inspiration from specific individuals, many of whom were prominent in the environmental movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Unlike the show’s exaggerated villains, the inspiration for the Planeteers were very much grounded in reality. That way, no child would go home and say, ‘Oh, daddy, you’re in a blah blah business.’ It would be horrible for some child to see their family member as a Captain Planet villain.” “That’s one of the reasons we made the bad guys and their plans so ridiculous,” she explained, “We tried to point the finger at behaviors rather than industries. Pyle didn’t want kids to see their family members as evil, ecologically speaking. That family edutainment goal affected a lot of the show’s writing. But I was hoping parents or grandparents watching alongside kids would pick up on the message too.” “In my head, my target demographic was people born around 1985. “I wanted to make a show that was cross-generational,” she said. That’s because Pyle had a secondary audience in mind: parents. The arc is kind of intense (and disturbingly prescient) for a kids’ cartoon show. Greedly’s strategy is to go back to the 1950s and “burn all the coal and fossil fuels” and use global warming to melt all the ice. Blight - voiced by none other than actress Meg Ryan.

Naturally, he and his sidekick solicit the aid of mad scientist Dr. Take, for example, the two-part, season one episode “Two Futures,” in which pig-faced villain Hoggish Greedly decides to open up a golf resort in the Arctic. Doing my part for the planet seemed as easy as cutting the plastic rings on a six-pack of soda or flipping off the light in an unoccupied room.īut the seeds of the real climate crisis - the one that adult show creators like Pyle and Boxer knew was coming - were always there in the show’s plotlines. I assumed it was a piece of fiction, like talking gargoyles or sewer-dwelling mutant turtles. The environmental hazards and villains I saw on the screen were so cartoonishly over the top, it didn’t occur to me that they might pose actual threats to my future wellbeing. Watching Captain Planet in 2021 is a lot less entertaining than it was in 1990.Īs an 8-year-old, I focused on the action sequences, the cool time-travel narratives, and the inevitable triumph of good over evil. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist.

CAPTIN PLANET RING GIF SERIES

The series was one of the longest-running cartoons of the 1990s, with six seasons, 113 television episodes, and one set of Burger King collectible action figures. All the same, kids like me kept watching. Sure, he could deliver a well-timed dad pun while punching an offshore drill rig, but he also spent a significant portion of his airtime straight-up lecturing viewers about recycling and conserving electricity.

When those powers combined, as they predictably did at some point every episode, Captain Planet would rise majestically into the air, ready to do battle with a wide array of pollution-spewing supervillains.Ĭompared to the dark and brooding superheroes of the DC and Marvel universes, Captain Planet was a bit of a dorky doodle. He could only be summoned by the Planeteers, a group of five internationally diverse teens with magical, element-themed rings: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Heart (the last one being a combination of empathy, telepathy, and extreme persuasion). It starred a preachy, green-mulleted, pollution-sensitive superhero who used his powers to combat issues like oil spills, greenhouse gases, and nuclear waste. But thinking back on those many hours 30 years later, one show’s staying power rises above the rest: Captain Planet.įor those unfamiliar with the series, Captain Planet was an unlikely hit. and didn’t require cable, I probably watched it. You name it - if it came on after 3:15 p.m. Like many older millennials, I spent quite a few of my after-school hours in the 1990s parked in front of the TV. This story is part of Grist’s Summer Dreams arts and culture series, a weeklong exploration of how popular fiction can influence our environmental reality.

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