The new Care Bears show “Welcome to Care-a-Lot” has been airing on The Hub since the begining of the month. Though the show does not seem to have attracted an adult audience like the Hub’s other show My Little Pony has, it’s nice to see that they’re still making an effort to include completely obscure references that would be completely lost on the target demographic. In last week’s episode “Show of Shyness” the human of the week Phoebe is performing in a concert with the “shady” Beastly on drums. Harmony encourages him by saying “Beastly, I gotta have more cowbell!”. This would be reference to the iconic Saturday night live skit in which Christopher Walken encourages Blue Öyster Cult to include “More cowbell” in “Don’t Fear The Reaper”. Check out a short clip of the scene:

The full episode is currently on the Hub’s web site, though it won’t remain online for long as it will likely be replaced with the latest episode later this week. The quote in question occurs in the 20th minute of the episode.

Welcome to the Powet Top 5, where we explore the top (and bottom) 5 items we think are relevant to any of a variety of topics that span the imagination. Sit back, read, and respond.

Pokemon! There are over 150, as the Pokérap tells us. It’s been a long time since that original set over 15 years ago. These days there are 648. Here I find myself tasked with distilling this list down to 5. Naturally with such a huge sample, everyone will have their preference. Narrowing it down a team of 6 is hard enough! If I wanted to be fair I could pick a Pokémon from each generation and fill out the list, but I’m hardly fair. I’m a biased human who remembers the best of times from my day and resents all this new stuff, so as far as my list is concerned there might as well be 150! Despite my love of the games and all the time I put into them over the years it seems my choices are highly influenced by what I saw in the anime, which was a great show up until Tracey showed up and then it was lame. With that, here are my Top 5 Pokémon. Feel free to share your own.

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After hyping up this new show for weeks the premiere came and went without any comment. Why, you might wonder? Well as a Canadian I do not have access to the Hub, but fear not as the “first” episode of Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot is now available for viewing online at the hub’s web site, for a limited time, to people who live in the US. I found the show decent, with some nice animation, some nice characters and a few good jokes, but ultimately probably too juvenile to find a home with adult fans.

One thing to note is that this was in fact not the first episode. This is episode 5 “Compassion — NOT!”. Why start with episode 5? I can’t pretend to understand the thought process of network executives. Perhaps this was a stronger episode they thought would hook more fans? All I know is that it not being the first episode was a bit annoying. From one of the preview clips we knew that “Care Kids” were transported to Care-a-Lot via a “Care and Share Charm”. This information would have been helpful to tell audiences in this episode, instead a girl named Penny is brought in by a rainbow and seems very unsurprised to be transported to this magical world of talking Bears who she’s meeting for the first time. Her acceptance of this incredible situation is something I can only compare to the unsurprised reaction of various characters from Megaman Upon a Star when Megaman enters the real world from the video game world. Another annoying situations is that Wonderheart Bear clearly has a belly badge, although a plot point of the first episode will obviously be her getting one.

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Terri Hawkes, the English voice of Sailor Moon, was recently a guest at the Florida Anime Experience, her first anime conversion. She talked a bit about her experience and then fielded a number of questions about her time on Sailor Moon.

Amongst other things in this panel Terri talks about jobs she did with Tracy Moore, fighting the Negaverse, her favourite episode to record and dodges a question about which Sailor Scout is her favourite.

Terri Hawkes was the second voice of Sailor Moon, following a few episodes recorded by Tracey Moore. She voiced the majority of the first two seasons of the dub so she’s likely the voice most fans associate with the character, besides the original Japanese voice of course. In later seasons Linda Ballantyne provided Sailor Moon’s voice.

Check out Sailor Moon Obsession for more about this panel and the convention.

Here is a review of the deluxe Superboy and Artemis figures. Kinda disappointed that Superboy didn’t come in his more common jeans/shirt outfit. Artemis is spot on, though the hands could use some work.

Enjoy the video! Buy these toys before they’re gone! They look great with DCUC figures!

Last night the Canadian network Showcase premiered a new science fiction series “Continuum”. It scored great ratings and seems to have hit a cord with fans, but without an American distributor, can we expect it to last much longer than the 13 episode season which has already been completed? To get a taste of the show check out the 3 minute trailer embedded at the bottom of this post.

The show’s premise is pretty solid. In word … time travel! The series’s first episode, “A Stitch in Time”, begins in the futuristic world of 2077, but the main character of Kiera, played by Rachel Nichols, travels back in time to the year 2012 along with a bunch of death row inmates. In a plot that’s not unlike the 90s TV series Time Tracks, but without the British hologram lady, she burdens herself with tracking them down.

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With the June 2nd premiere of Care Bears: Welcome to Care-A-Lot only a week away we have found an early review of the pilot episode “Compassion—-NOT!” by The Rock Father.

Fans have been wondering if favourite villain charcters like Beastly, Shreeky and No Heart from the 80s Nelvana cartoon would be making an appearance and it can now be confirmed that a villain named Beastly will indeed be in the show. Based on his appearance it doesn’t seem like much more than the name will be similar to the old character, but we will know more in a week’s time.

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Here’s what appears to be the theme song for the new Care Bears: Welcome to Care-A-Lot cartoon:

The song can be found on the American Greetings web site playing with the new “Care Bears Cheers For All!” game. The video from the clip above was added separately from other footage. An instrumental version of the tune can also be heard in the background of many of the videos that showed up recently introducing the cast of the new Welcome to Care-A-Lot series. It stands to reason this is the theme song for the show, but there has been no specific confirmation of this. We’ll know for sure come June 2nd at 8am when the show premieres on the Hub. How do you like the new theme song?

Check out the Care Bears section of the Hub web site for some new wallpapers and other cool stuff. I’ve included images of some of those below.

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