A Saturday Morning Cartoon Crush at the Pound

Those who lived before Nickelodeon was the norm in every household know all too well that cartoons were not a 24/7 gift. We had to get what we could after school and sometimes before, but come the weekend – it was time to party with a bowl or two of cereal in hand. With the joys of cartoons until the early afternoon also came a Saturday Morning Cartoon crush…or two. Brittany High came through this week to talk about hers, but before we get to that – let’s talk about the coolest pup in the pound, Cooler from ‘Pound Puppies.’

Looking back at my animated crushes, the cool (but nice) guy has been a common thread; Robin Hood, Arnold, Buster Bunny, and Prince Eric. All of the above fall into that category and does does Cooler from the insanely shortlived ‘Pound Puppies’ series. It actually went off the air before I was old enough to understand was a crush was having ended when I was a mere eight months out of the womb. However, thanks to syndication and a handful of cherished VHS tapes, I became enamored. 

Every character was a gem, but again, there was something cool about Cooler. So yeah, guess the name fits. He was the leader of sorts of a ragtag group of dogs that lived in a pound. If you can’t tell, the ’80s were a simpler time. It was also the decade we saw a giant boom in pop culture and consumerism. Pound Puppies were a toy line, therefor it got a TV show in order to pimp out the toys. Again, being a barely functioning human at the time – the toys that inspired this show were never something I wanted. All I ever knew was that this show was awesome and that Cooler was the type of guy I wanted to be my boyfriend. 

In many ways, those early cartoons were really great at portraying stereotypes that would impact how we moved about life later on. One has to wonder how many that crushed on Cooler then went on to idolize the likes of Mike Seaver and Zack Morris? Can someone pay me to write an in-depth book on modern-day pop culture’s influence on crush habits? 

Writing aspirations aside, Cooler was one of the many cool guys from Saturday Morning TV to make his way into my heart, and later this week we’ll find out who partied his way into Brittany High’s heart…