Three awesomely terrible dinosaur cartoons you probably forgot about/didn’t even know existed

Everyone knows that the 1980s and early 90s were the heyday of everything Dinosaur. What you probably didn’t know is that peak dinosaur happened between 1987 and 1988. Yes there was the classic Dinosaurs (“Not the mama!”) and The Land Before Time (before it went straight to VHS) but there were also these three. L and I are going to sit down to a screening this weekend because thanks to thieving internet pirates you can watch nearly every episode on YouTube. Apparently even the copyright holders forgot about these amazing pieces of Americana.

Dinosaucers
Let me re-introduce you to Dinosaucers by way of the (amazing) opening voiceover:

We used to be four ordinary teenagers, until one day we met some new friends from out of town. They were called Dinosaucers. My friends and I became the secret scouts, allies to these Dinosaucers from outer space. And joined in their battle against Genghis Rex and the evil Tyrannos.

How could you not love that? Note that it’s the characters and not their ships that are called Dinosaucers. Some (I can only expect) extremely high studio exec ordered 65 episodes at which point some less high exec must have figured that the sooner this leaves the public’s view the better and jammed all 65 episodes into one season ranging from September 14 — December 11, 1987.

DinoRiders
This was one of my favorite toys circa 1988 (yes I was a nerdy 8 year old). It was also an amazing cartoon developed solely to sell the Tyco DinoRider toys. It combined dinosaurs with lasers and what must have been giants because of the relative scale between the “dinos” and their “riders”. There was also a super convoluted plot of warring alien races, because it was the 80s and that’s how we rolled.

The Valorians, led by Questar, after making planet-fall use their AMP necklaces to telepathically communicate with the dinosaurs they come across and befriend them. The Rulons, led by their leader Emperor Krulos, on the other hand used brainwashing devices known as brain-boxes to control dinosaurs for their own ends.

Denver the Last Dinosaur
1988 also brought us this Saved by the Bell/Encino Man (yes I know Encino Man came out in 1992, I’m not an idiot) mashup featuring an animated Corythosaurus that hatches from an egg found behind the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. It can play the guitar and speak English from birth, but it has to learn how to skateboard because that would be ridiculous — dinosaurs aren’t skateboarders.