Cartoon Network’s “Atom Ant ⚛️🐜” Groovy is Quite…Groovy

 

(This is a screenshot from Cartoon Network’s Groovy music video Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 showing Atom Ant ⚛️🐜.)

 

Remember in my last post when I had a few surprises for the month of March that I thought you guys were going to like? Well, this is one of them. I’ll keep the other one a secret for now, especially since I’m planning on writing about it tomorrow or whenever I’m in the mood to write another post for this blog. Considering that I usually write a lot, and it usually takes a whole entire day to finish just one of these things, sometimes even two days, I do kind of need to a break the next day. Sometime to unwind and recharge my battery 🔋 so that I’m ready to write the following day. Depending on how long this ends up being, the other surprise post will either come out tomorrow (Saturday March 7, 2025) or the day after that (Sunday March 8, 2025). 

 

That is of course assuming that nothing comes up, and I don’t end doing something or going somewhere that keeps me from writing. I mean, I since I’m relegated to writing these on my phone 📱 (several of the keys on my laptop 💻 don’t work so I have to these things out on my phone 📱), I could really write anywhere anytime, but it is kind of hard to focus on writing when you’re out shopping 🛒, when you’re at a party 🥳, or when you’re eating at a restaurant. So, I usually like to write when I have free time, and nothing’s there to distract me too much. I still have YouTube, and that’s kind of a distraction, but it’s not like being at a birthday party 🥳 or at a graduation reception 🎓 or at a restaurant where there are other things to focus on and people are trying to talk to you. It’s certainly hard to focus on writing when you’re out grocery shopping 🛒 or when you’re shopping for non-food essentials like toilet paper 🧻 (my grandma calls them “bath tissue 🧻”), paper towels 🧻, Kleenex tissue 🤧, flushable wipes (wet wipes for wiping your butt after pooping), disinfectant wipes, air fresheners, dish soap, lotion 🧴, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, toothpaste, and floss. 

So, it’ll come sometime after I post this post, either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I’ll see how I feel after I write this. I guess I should be too hard on myself or stress myself out too much, this is still a hobby after all. I’m not getting paid to do this, I’m just doing it because I want to. This is still just a hobby for me, I should stop treating it like a job. But, I want to grow my platform, I want people to read my blog. So, I want to write as much as I can, and as consistently as I can, so when someone does find my blog, there’ll be plenty for them to read. Not just the top three most popular posts, but all of them. 

 

The most popular posts on my blog right now aren’t even really the most popular ones right now since they’re just the ones with the most views, and they only accumulated that many views because of me and me looking back to see all the edits I made or seeing what edits need to be made, or if I read and come up with an idea to make a new addition to it. The only one that really counts as a “popular post” right now is the Ruby Gloom review since it didn’t get to the top three spot because of anything I did, it got there because people were finding it online and were actually reading it. Still no comments though, no one has commented on any of my posts yet. 

 

On one hand, I’m hoping that I start getting comments because it means that people are engaging with my content and have things to say about it, but on the other hand, I don’t want to deal with hate comments or deal with people trying to antagonize me or start an argument with me. That’s what drove me away from DeviantART, someone left a comment on one of my journals, being all confrontational with me, trying to start an argument with me and telling what I can and can’t talk about in my journals because this is DeviantART and DeviantART is an art website 😒. I don’t want to go through that again on my blog. I mean, I shouldn’t, my About Me page tells you everything that you can expect from my blog, or most of what you can expect from my blog, and if you don’t like it, then you can leave. Go read some other blog, or go watch a YouTube video, or go read Reddit posts or whatever. So, I’m bummed that I’m not getting comments, but I’m also glad that I’m not getting any comments if that makes any sense. 

 

I’m hoping that I can start money 💵 off of this sometime in the future because it’s getting tough on there, and we in the Sanchez household need all the money 💵 we can get our hands on. I want to start contributing financially to the household somehow, and we aren’t depending on just one income, especially when that income is no longer guaranteed. We’ve been living off of my grandma’s Social Security money 💵, that’s what she’s been using to support all three of us, and it’s getting to the point where it’s no longer enough. 

 

Plus, the Trump administration is trying to cut Social Security, so we may lose access to that money 💵, that money 💵 that has been the only lifeline we have since none of us are employed. That’s why my grandma has trying to get on this income support program put on by the Laguna Pueblo to help households get caught up on their utility bills, so we don’t get cut off on our water 💦 or our electricity ⚡️. A lot of people here in the Acoma Reservation are having this same problem of being behind on our utility bills, especially because the Acoma Tribal Administration is overcharging people on their utilities, especially on their electricity ⚡️. 

 

The electric company ⚡️ known as Continental Divide was providing electricity ⚡️ to the entire Acoma Reservation, and only charged $25 💵 each month, but then the Acoma Tribal Administration decided to cut them out entirely so they can start providing the electricity ⚡️ to the entire reservation. And they’ve been charging way more than Continental Divide ever did, charging over a hundred dollars 💵 a month, so most of the people living here on the reservation aren’t able to afford it including my family. Now, everyone is behind on electricity ⚡️ payments is under threat of being shut down next year. And the service isn’t even that good. The people running the electricity ⚡️ here on the reservation are incompetent. They don’t even have any licensed electricians ⚡️ handling any of this. Like, whenever we have a power outage (which happens from time to time), they have to call Continental Divide in Grants to solve the problem for them because they have no electricians ⚡️ on their team. They have no idea what they’re doing. 

 

But, right now, it’s the water 💦 everyone’s worried about, Acoma has been overcharging on water 💦 too, and everyone who is behind on water payments 💦 is under threat of being shut off next week, including us, and that’s my grandma wants to get on that program from Laguna Housing Division to help pay off the full amount due or half of the amount due so that we don’t shut off on our water 💦. She’s also hoping that my dad gets his lawsuit money 💵 so that he can help out with the bills, to pay off the full amounts due to Acoma Utilities for the water 💦 and electricity ⚡️, but so far he’s heard nothing from the law firm who’s handling his lawsuit, Keller & Keller. 

 

But, we’re all hoping he gets a huge amount, that the offer they give him is good, because we could really use it. So, I want to help out too, and bring in my own money 💵 to help out around the house, and I do it with this blog somehow, so that I’m doing something that I love while also profiting from it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get disability benefits through SSI since SSI is apart of Social Security, as I said, Trump and the Republicans are trying to make cuts to it just so that they can pay for all the tax cuts they want to make for billionaires and corporations in this country. 

 

I could also get the money 💵 to buy more of the movies and games that I have on my list, so I can actually review more stuff a lot more often instead of just reviewing stuff I already have at home, or waiting until I get an Amazon gift card or something, or wait until I get some of these movies and games as a Christmas gift 🎄, usually from my aunt. I could have enough money 💵 to the theater more often so that I can see more new releases when they actually come out, instead of waiting for them to come out on Blu-Ray 💿, or on streaming, or on VOD (video-on-demand). Whether it’s through Blogger’s monetization, or opening a Patreon, PayPal, Ko-Fi, or Buy Me a Coffee ☕️ for people to donate, I’ll think of something. I’ll even start a GoFundMe if I really have to, like all those Capitol police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th and then got fired while all the January 6th rioters (the insurrectionists) were set free on day 1 of Trump’s second term in office, but hopefully we don’t get to that point.

 

I’ve spent this time rambling about my writing process, my personal financial problems, and the plans I have for this blog in the future (to monetize it and start making money 💵 off of it somehow), and haven’t started talking about the topic at hand. I’m talking about the Cartoon Network Groovy for Atom Ant ⚛️🐜. For those that don’t know, Cartoon Network Groovies are these little animated music videos that Cartoon Network used to do, usually for classic cartoons, but also for their own cartoons, the Cartoon Cartoons, like Dexter’s Laboratory. They kind of stopped doing them after a while once they started shifting their programming away from classic cartoons more towards their own original programming, and they just moved all of them to their sister channel Boomerang, which became the new home for classic cartoons. At least, it was, until they just turned it into their own Nicktoons where it’s just a dumping ground for all of their old shows that they had canceled or had ended, or shows that they no longer have any faith in. 

 

Usually what these Groovies would entail is taking these classic cartoons from the 1960s and 70s (mostly Hanna-Barbera cartoons) and doing something new with them, do something experimental with them. Like doing a Jabberjaw music video set to a song by an alternate rock band where everything takes place on lunchboxes and is smaller scale, or doing a Josie and the Pussycats music video where the Josie and the Pussycats theme song is sung in different genres including disco 🪩, punk, country, hair metal (or heavy metal as it’s also known, and techno, or a Quick Draw McGraw music video where Quick Draw McDraw adopts his alter ego El Kabong (who is a masked vigilante similar to Zorro) and is set to an instrumental Mexican-style guitar music 🇲🇽, is in a 3D cutout style, and is presented as a gritty western 🤠, or in this case, an Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 music video that’s an esoteric remix of the original theme song, that in a newspaper cut out style 📰, and uses nuclear weapon ☢️ PSAs as samples. 

There were other ones too, but these are the ones that stick out to me the most, and the most stylistically unique. I gotta be honest with you, I’m really not that nostalgic for Cartoon Network. Looking back, I really was more of a Nickelodeon kid growing up, and I didn’t watch a ton of Cartoon Network shows. I remember watching Ed, Edd n’ Eddy, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy 💀, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, some Codename: Kids Next Door, some My Gym Partner’s a Monkey 🐒, some Teen Titans, and some Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. But, most of my best memories from that time, in the 2000s, are of Nickelodeon shows. 

 

My only real memory of Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, and Courage the Cowardly Dog, was seeing episodes of them included on that Scooby Doo & the Toon Tour of Mysteries DVD 📀 that I got out of a cereal box one time. I also vaguely remember seeing part of a Dexter’s Lab episode where Dexter pilots a robot bear and threatens to light a forest 🌲 on fire 🔥, kind of meant to be a perversion of Smokey Bear 🐻 and how Smokey always says “only can prevent forest fires 🌲🔥,” only here, Dexter’s using a robot bear to start a forest fire 🌲🔥, that fiend! 

I didn’t really start watching Cartoon Network until the 2010s when Adventure Time and Regular Show came onto the scene. I used to watch those two shows religiously growing up, as a teenager, I’d tune in every week to catch the new episode of both. They were breaking some ground with doing more story driven and character driven cartoons, where continuity was consistent and things would carry over from episode-to-episode and any changes to status quo would actually stick. Them and Disney Channel, because I was also watching Gravity Falls at the time too, it was one of the popular cartoons at the time, and even to this day it’s still seen as one of the best shows that Disney Channel (Disney XD) ever aired, and it still has a relatively dedicated fanbase. 

 

Certainly more dedicated than the Star vs. the Forces of Evil 💫 fanbase, that shit broke apart after the series finale. They’re even releasing new content for Gravity Falls, like the third journal and The Book of Bill, that book from Bill Cipher’s point-of-view. I don’t see them writing any Star vs. the Forces of Evil 💫 books 📖 now do I? All while Nickelodeon was dragging its feet, still chasing that SpongeBob 🧽 success, using SpongeBob 🧽 as a crutch, and canceling any shows that didn’t meet their expectations or become a near instant success like SpongeBob 🧽 did. They wouldn’t have a real success until they made that CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 🐢 cartoon and The Loud House, a show I just barely got into a couple of years ago, back in 2023. 

 

I also watched The Looney Tunes Show, which was a more sitcom take on Looney Tunes, like what if the Looney Tunes were placed in a more traditional sitcom setting and format? And while I liked that show a lot, it certainly wasn’t on the same level as Regular Show or Adventure Time. I also watched The Amazing World of Gumball, but not nearly as much as those other shows, and I stopped watching it before it really became popular and people started calling it one of the greatest cartoon shows ever made. I did eventually stop watching Regular Show and Adventure Time because I lost interest in both and I thought they both kind of went downhill, like the writing wasn’t good anymore. Now, they’ve both ended, and I guess Cartoon Network is trying to bring them both back, even though they aren’t that old and they ended a few years ago. Regular Show ended in 2017 and Adventure Time ended in 2018. Except that Adventure Time never truly ended since Cartoon Network kept doing these miniseries and specials with Adventure Time like Stakes, Islands, Elements, and Adventure Time: Distant Lands. 

 

They even have a spinoff they got going called Adventure Time: Fiona and Cake, set in the genderbent universe. That show is a Max exclusive, it’s a Max original, and it’s not for kids. It’s a full on adult show. Which is funny because when Adventure Time (and Regular Show) first came onto the scene, some people (namely BentheLooney) were saying that they looked Adult Swim shows that were made for kids and somehow ended upon on the main Cartoon Network channel. Well now, they actually are making them for adults, funny how that sort of came full circle ⭕️. 

 

If that Regular Show reboot does end up happening, I do hope it’s for adults because what kid nowadays is going to care about a Regular Show reboot? Most kids now probably haven’t even heard of Regular Show, let alone seen it. It’s only the adult fans (the ones who were kids when the original came out and are adults now) who care about this reboot and probably watch it, good or bad. I mean, it’d be better having Regular Show-lite but for adults which is what Close Enough was. It’s not I just thought of this recently, but in my mind, Nickelodeon is like the Marvel of the cartoon world while Cartoon Network is the DC of the cartoon world. Makes sense right? I mean Cartoon Network is owned by Warner Bros. and Warner Bros. owns DC, so it fits. Teen Titans is based on a DC comic series, it is a DC show. 

I did watch Boomerang a few times as a kid, where I’d catch a few shows like Top Cat and The Pink Panther Show, maybe even The Ant 🐜 & the Aardvark which aired as a segment of The Pink Panther. I remember all those iconic bumpers that everyone talks about and gushes over. But, I really don’t remember any of these Cartoon Network Groovies, or I guess Boomerang Groovies now. I might’ve seen a couple of them, but I’m not so sure. It might just be a false memory that I think I might’ve had but didn’t. I think I might’ve seen the Josie and Pussycats one (even before I started binge watching nostalgia content on YouTube of stuff from the 2000s) and I definitely saw the Yogi Bear one with Ranger Smith which I don’t think is nearly as visually interesting as any of the other ones I’ve mentioned already. 

 

I have more memories of those Cartoon Network Shorties, which were different animated shorts based on the various classic cartoons that were aired on Cartoon Network and later on Boomerang. Though that too maybe a sort of false memory as the only real thing I remember is that little bumper of those dolls of those two mice characters 🐭 sitting on a projector 📽️ that would show whenever a Cartoon Network Groovy or Cartoon Network Shorty would play, as I don’t remember any of the actual shorts themselves. Maybe if I rewatched them my memory would be jogged, but right now, I’m unsure. 

I certainly don’t remember watching the Jabberjaw Groovy, or the Quick Draw McGraw one, or the Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 one, as the Jabberjaw one was no longer in circulation by the time I started watching Boomerang, every time I was tuned into Boomerang, I missed the Quick Draw McGraw Groovy and the Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 Groovy. But, even if I don’t have a lot of memories of watching these on Cartoon Network or on Boomerang as a kid, I still get a very nostalgic feeling from watching them now on YouTube as an adult. I don’t know, I think it’s just because they’re relics of a time gone by, and have a very interesting way of making you feel like a kid while you’re watching. They give you the feeling of watching Boomerang late at night past your bedtime or perhaps putting Boomerang on to go to sleep 😴 to. They just don’t make things like this anymore, especially not for children’s network. 

 

I know that this has become a cliché to say now, modern TV network branding is just bland now, it feels so hallow, and corporate, and lacks any of the personality they used to have back in the 1990s and 2000s, or even the 2010s. In case of Cartoon Network and Boomerang, ever since WarnerMedia merged with Discovery and became Warner Bros. Discovery, and David Zaslav took over as CEO, they’ve been completely stripped down and have been reduced to shells of their former shelves. Cartoon Network Studios was completely folded and was absorbed by Warner Bros. Animation. So, these Groovies are good reminder of what these networks used to be like before the age of streaming and back when these network executives at least pretended to give a shit, and let creative people decide the look and feel of their network. 

I would say that the Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 one is my favorite, which is why I’m writing about it today, or whenever I end up posting this. Even if it’s based on a character who I know pretty much nothing about other than he’s an ant 🐜 with superpowers. Apparently, after looking it up on Wikipedia, it seems that the original Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 cartoon was a segment of another show called The Secret Squirrel Show 🐿️, it was a Hanna-Barbera show of course, and it originally aired in the 1960s. The Atom Ant ⚛️🐜/Secret Squirrel 🐿️ Show started airing in 1965 and came to an end in 1967, when it was presumably canceled. The Atom Ant Show ⚛️🐜 was basically a superhero show about this anthropomorphic ant ⚛️🐜 who had superpowers, he was a superhero called Atom Ant ⚛️🐜, and he would basically beat up criminals and save the day from various supervillains such as Ferocious Flea and Professor Von Gimmick. He had super strength, super speed, invulnerability, and the ability to fly. 

 

They basically took the idea that an ant 🐜 is able to lift things several times its size to its natural conclusion, and had him lift things like people, cars, buses, airplanes ✈️, and even an elephant 🐘 like in this Groovy. Given that his name is Atom Ant ⚛️🐜, I think it’s safe to assume that he gained his powers from nuclear energy ☢️. Like, he was a regular ant 🐜, but after he was exposed to nuclear radiation ☢️, he gained sentience and developed superpowers. He was Ant-Man 🐜 before Ant-Man 🐜 was really a thing. Even if Ant-Man 🐜 did already exist by the time Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 came onto the scene, but you know what I mean. 

 

He wasn’t really vigilante from what it seems like since according to the Wikipedia page he was usually contacted by the police and the police would ask him for help, and he would work closely with them to take down the bad guys. Like all superheroes, Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 had his own headquarters, his own Batcave. Except, since he’s an ant 🐜, his headquarters was in an anthill, and inside that anthill, he had a mainframe computer and exercise equipment. It was sort like a parody of the 60s Batman TV show with Adam West, like it was going for that sort of vibe. He even has a catchphrase, just like a lot of cartoon characters and superheroes back then, “Up and at ‘em, Atom Ant ⚛️🐜!” which is used in this Groovy. 

The reason why I like this particular Groovy the most over the other ones, even the Josie and the Pussycats one, is that I like the aesthetic of it and I like the premise or story of it. This music video actually tell a story, and I’ll discuss it in a little bit, but first I want to talk about the art style and the overall aesthetic. This Groovy has the unique art style of all the Groovies besides the Quick Draw McDraw one. Like I said before, it has a newspaper cut out style 📰 where everything, even down to the characters, looks like it was made out of newspaper 📰 and magazine clippings. 

 

Some of the characters are even made out of letters, like parts of their bodies are made out of letters, in the Times New Roman font, which is the most common font you see in newspapers 📰 and in books 📖. Even that little trail that Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 leaves behind whenever he flies is made out of letters. And I just like the other aesthetic of this. They incorporated a lot of Cold War era Atomic Age ⚛️ iconography, not just the use of nuclear weapons ☢️ PSAs as samples in actual music, but in a lot of the imagery too. There’s a lot of atom symbols like this ⚛️ towards the beginning and towards the end to represent Atom Ant ⚛️🐜. They took the atom ⚛️ part of his name, and his presumed nuclear origins ☢️, and just ran with it. 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from the Cartoon Network Groovy, Atom Ant ⚛️🐜, showing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as presented in the music video.) 

 

 

 

The story in this fantastic. They don’t have Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 go up against any of the actual villains from the show, instead, they have him go up against the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I thought that was really cool. It’s nice juxtaposition to have Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 go up against biblical figures, something scientific go against something supernatural. It goes to show you Atom Ant ⚛️🐜’s power that would normally take multiple heroes to take down (like the Four Horsemen would be an Avengers-level threat or perhaps an X-Men-level threat 😉), Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 is able to do all by himself. It’s a very original and esoteric concept, as one of the comments. And as far as depictions of the Four Horsemen go, this music video has some of the most unique depictions of the Four Horsemen. Even if it wasn’t really clear to me which Horsemen is supposed to be which in this music video. I mean, I know that the general-looking one 🪖 Is supposed to be War, and the one at the end who leaves all those bombs 💣 in the major cities is supposed to be Death (according to one of the comments that I saw). 

 

But, I’m not sure about the other two, like three-headed guy ♂︎ with the trench coat 🧥 and the robotic steel looking one, I don’t know which Horsemen they’re supposed to be. Maybe, the robot one that breathes fire 🔥 is supposed to be Famine considering that there’s black smoke coming out of him, and he’s breathing some dangerous and potentially toxic. Maybe’s actually Conquest because we see him rampaging through a city like a giant monster. But, I don’t know about the three-headed guy ♂︎, which Horsemen he’s supposed to be. Out of all the Horsemen, my favorite one in terms of design would have to be the robot one that may or may not be Famine (or Conquest), I think he’s the coolest looking one.

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from the Cartoon Network Groovy, Atom Ant ⚛️🐜, showing one of the Four Horsemen, who is unknown. He maybe Famine or Conquest.) 

 

 

You really don’t see that many movies or any other work of fiction that feature the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as bad guys, as the main antagonists. You see a lot of movies, TV shows, video games, and books 📖 about the Seven Deadly Sins and them being physical beings who are the bad guys, but not so much with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The only things that really come to mind that feature the Four Horsemen in a prominent way as main villains are X-Men: Apocalypse and the 1998 PS1 video game Apocalypse starring Bruce Willis. Yes, Bruce Willis was in a video game in the late 90s where he played a guy ♂︎ fighting against the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. 

 

He wasn’t originally meant to be the playable character, he was meant to be a non-playable companion controlled by a partner AI who accompanies the playable character and tells wisecracking jokes and has witty one liners whenever the player kills an enemy. But, at some point during the development, they decided to make Bruce Willis’s character in that game, Trey Kincaid the playable character instead, recognizing that people would want to play as Bruce Willis rather than some nobody who’s partnered with him. It’s a third shooter game that often changes perspectives (like the position of the camera changes) depending on where you on the map. There are very various enemies you have to mow down, and each of the bosses are the different Horsemen themselves, except for the final boss, who is the Beast (the Devil 😈). 

 

It takes place in a dystopian future, it has a very dark, gloomy cyberpunk Blade Runner look to it. It’s a good game, it looks like a fun, if not a bit simplistic, and I’m planning on reviewing it for this blog, even if I’m never played it myself. But I have watched a longplay of it, that’s gotta count for something. I do find it funny that Bruce Willis was in two things in 1998 that had titles that were just different words for the end of the world, and were about the end of the world, Armageddon ☄️ and Apocalypse. One was a movie and the other was a video game, one was about an asteroid impact ☄️ and the other was about a mad scientist creating the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to try to destroy the world for his own purposes.  

 

Now You See Me doesn’t count because it’s about magicians 🪄 (or illusionists if you prefer) and the Four Horsemen is just their stage name, the name of their group, they aren’t actually the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If they ever do an Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 movie, they should make the Four Horsemen the bad guys, make it a direct adaptation of this Groovy, and if not, then I’ll write something where the Four Horsemen are the bad guys, either a short story, or a novella, or a full-on novel. Maybe, even a screenplay for a movie, make a movie where the Four Horsemen are the main bad guys.

 

If I was pick anyone in real life to be the Four Horsemen, it would be this: Vladimir Putin would be Conquest (if Adolf Hitler were still alive, I’d choose him for Conquest, him or Napoleon Bonaparte), Benjamin Netanyahu would be Famine (if Mao Zedong or Pol Pot were still alive, I’d choose one of them), Bashar al-Assad would be War (since War is usually meant to represent civil wars rather than wars of conquest which is what Conquest is supposed to represent), and I don’t know, maybe RFK Jr. can be Death (I was originally pick him as Disease/Plague before I realized there is no Horsemen representing Plague/Disease, and instead only Famine). I can’t really think of anyone else who would be Death. Maybe Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could be Death since he was the chief architect of the 9/11 attacks. 

 

Maybe if Osama bin Laden, Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were still alive I would pick them. Maybe Josef Mengele since his nickname was “the Angel of Death,” or maybe Shirō Ishii since he was the Japanese equivalent to Josef Mengele 🇯🇵, or maybe Joseph Stalin since he killed a lot of people during his rule. Stalin would also be good pick for Famine since he caused the Holodomor, which was a genocidal famine against ethnic Ukrainians inside the Soviet Union ☭. Come to think of it, Donald Trump would make an alright pick for Famine since he’s a fat man who likes to eat a lot of fast food (especially McDonald’s) and his economic policies might lead to a recession or a depression (the Second Great Depression) which would cause famine-like conditions. Or perhaps his Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. 

 

Trump would also be a good pick for Conquest since he wants to annex Canada 🇨🇦, Greenland 🇬🇱, the Gaza Strip 🇵🇸, and the Panama Canal 🇵🇦 (maybe even Mexico 🇲🇽 too), or War since he might cause a civil war in the United States 🇺🇸 if he does indeed become a dictator and uses the military to violently crack down on protesters 🪧 like Assad and Muammar Gaddafi did. Maybe, Nicolas Maduro would a good pick for Famine since his economic policies led to famine-like conditions in his country, Venezuela 🇻🇪. Elon Musk would be a decent pick for Famine too since he shut down USAID 🇺🇸, and that will cause famine-like conditions in many countries, especially ones in the Global South. 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from the Cartoon Network Groovy, Atom Ant ⚛️🐜, showing another one of the Four Horsemen, who might be Conquest.) 

 

 

This Groovy also includes so subtle and rather poignant political commentary. There’s a famous scene in the Groovy where the three-head Horsemen with the trench coat 🧥 goes into an alleyway and tries to sell smiley faces 🙂 to a woman ♀︎ until Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 shows up and bonks him on the head with a streetlight, knocking him out cold. Some people were confused by this moment, and even took the comments to ask about it. One person asked, “what was so bad what the three-headed guy ♂︎ did?” and Nightowl Studio, the YouTube channel who posted this, replied saying that this particular Horsemen was “selling smiles 🙂” and they went onto explain that “selling smiles 🙂” was a mid-20th century term used to refer to when the government lies to public and tries to reassure them and convince them that everything’s okay when it obviously isn’t. 

 

Even the three heads themselves on the Horsemen are supposed to further convey this theme or message as they each embody the 3 branches of the US government 🇺🇸: the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and Judicial Branch. That is so compelling, it’s deep as one commentator said in the replies, and it’s very subtle. It’s so subtle that 99.9% of people didn’t notice or get it, and the only way people would understand it is if they already understood the phase and what it mean, if they knew about mid-20th century political culture and the terms that were used back then. I feel like this moment would be even more poignant if we knew which Horsemen the three-headed guy ♂︎ is supposed to be. 

 

 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots of the comment exchange where Nightowl Studio was explaining to a commenter the meaning of the scene in the Groovy where the three-headed guy is trying to sell smiley faces 🙂 to some random lady ♀︎ in a dark alley, and Atom Ant ⚛️🐜 comes to stop him.) 

I would highly recommend that you watch this music video. It is sensational, not just from an artistic point-of-view or a music point-of-view, but also a story point-of-view. It tells a story, and the story it tells is quite compelling and would make for a good movie. At least, I think it would make for a good movie. I’ll put the video down below for you all to watch since the channel Nightowl Studio uploaded this one to YouTube, as well as all of the other ones, and remastered them all in beautiful 4K. That’s how I was able to get screenshots I used in this post. Though, I was only able to download it in 1080p HD, I wasn’t able to download it in 4K, not even 1440p HD, which is less than the full 2160p 4K but still higher res than 1080p HD. 

 

Nightowl Studio, for those that don’t know is the studio that created all a lot of the bumpers for Cartoon Network up until the 2010s when they started rebranding. Like, they said in their channel bio, they created the look of Cartoon Network. And of course, they created all of the Cartoon Network Groovies, the ones that people feel nostalgic for and still rewatch to this day, including this one. I don’t know if they had a hand in creating the Cartoon Network Shorties as well, but they definitely created the Groovies. So, they know what they’re talking about, and had access to original masters of these bumpers and videos and were able to remaster them in 4K. For the ones didn’t have the original masters of them, they find people who have the best quality versions of those bumpers and videos and upload those. 

 

(This is a screenshot from the Cartoon Network Groovy, Atom Ant ⚛️🐜, showing the title at the end.) 

 

 

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(This is the Cartoon Network Groovy, Atom Ant ⚛️🐜.)