Homestar Runner
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Homestar Runner is a Flash-animated Internet cartoon series created by Mike and Matt Chapman, also known as The Brothers Chaps. Its comedy mixes surreal humor, self-parody, and references to 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s pop culture, in particular video games, classic television, and popular music.
While the site originally centered on the title character, Homestar Runner, the cartoon series Strong Bad Email quickly became the site's most popular and prominent feature, with Strong Bad becoming a breakout character. Since 2000, the site has grown to encompass a variety of cartoons and web games featuring Homestar, Strong Bad, and hundreds of other characters.
Why It Rocks
- Decent animation, which is amazing considering the limitations of Flash when the show first started.
- Spawned 3 spin offs named Strong Bad Emails, Teen Girl Squad, and Cheat Commandos. Which are good.
- Nice voice acting. Even better is the fact that all of them (except Marzipan, Teeg Dougland and the Powered by the Cheat imitations) are voiced by one guy, Matt Chapman.
- Amazing soundtrack.
- Pays homage to pop culture superbly, such as in the Halloween specials, where the characters dress up as characters from pop culture, from Mario to even cereal mascots.
- Homestar Runner is pretty funny with its clever humor and likable protagonist.
- Strong Bad is a perfect anti-hero for the show. As it clearly shows in his own sense of humor.
- There are other likable characters such as Marzipan, Coach Z, Strong Sad, and a few more.
- Creative looking designs.
- The voice acting from Matt Chapman, Missy Palmer and Mike Chapman is really well done.
- Lots of amazing/decent toons such as the dragon, comic, and virus Strong Bad Emails.
- Spawned lots of internet phenomena, such as Trogdor the Burninator (who even got his own board game via Kickstarter), the Doge meme (from Biz Cas Fri 1), and Stinkoman.
- There are some great puppet and live-action segments.
- The jokes can be clever and creative.
Bad Qualities
- The early toons made (while decent) aren't very good compared to the newer ones, due to the characterizations starting out to be rather weak (particularly in the early toons with Homestar competing against Strong Bad). The Brothers Chaps have stated that they themselves aren't very fond of their older toons and it wouldn't be until "A Jorb Well Done" when the humor would pick up. Two of the early cartoons, "Marshmallow's Last Stand" and "A Jumping Jack Contest", are considered to be the worst of old shame and have been removed from the main site, although mirrors of both toons exist.
- Even worse, there are some bad/mediocre toons like cliffhangers.
- Strong Bad can be a jerk at times.
- Decent amounts of toilet humor in some of the earlier toons (especially on The Poopsmith).
- Overuse of the word "crap", which is excusable because of the fact the site is mainly family-friendly, although the series is meant for young adults.
- Inconsistent schedule: The show was originally updated twice a week, then once a Monday, then once a week, and eventually several hiatuses, including a big one from 2010 to 2014. Nowadays, the show is mainly updated through Halloween specials, although the schedule has started to pick back up since 2018.
- Similar to The Simpsons, it started to decline in quality in 2009 after the Strong Bad Email videography.
- Some names are laughable like King of Townmail.
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