Forgotten Toons: Sam & Max- Freelance Police

As a kid, I never played many of the great adventure games like 'Full Throttle,' 'Day of the Tentacle' or 'Monkey Island.'  In spite of that, I loved the show I'm talking about today.  It was a strange, irreverent thing that amused my young mind.  Then someone cancelled it far too early!  How dare you stunt my freakish development like that!  Just for that, I'm going to induct this show on the page right now.  Check out...

The show was a spin-off of the video games, but you don't need to know that.  The pair are freelance police aka private detectives.  They solve really weird crimes or just do whatever they feel like.  That's pretty much it.

Seriously, this show is great.  The series broke the 4th Wall on occasion and just generally felt wacky.  In the last episode, they look at their 'previous adventures' while they are awaiting their deaths at the hand of their enemies.  The bad guys come back, see them watching clips on a projection screen and re-capture them!  At one point, they build a giant robot and do the only natural thing: move to Japan to fight monsters.  Another episode features a device setting free an evil version of Howdy-Doody (although obviously not called that).   In one of my favorite episodes, they hound a food inspector into re-certifying their favorite food: a Glazed MacGuffin.  Subtle, huh?

Watch this show already.  Unlike a lot of these shows I highlight, this actually has a DVD release.  If you like bizarre, esoteric cartoons like Animaniacs and Freakazoid, you'll love this show.  If you don't, well, we have ways of making you buy the DVD...

Up next, a cartoon action-adventure that was cancelled in mid-story.  Will the waters be less dark in the future?  Stay tuned...