"The Adventures of the Little Koala" was one of the last truly good shows on Nickelodeon. In the early 90s, the network had morphed into this cutesy channel that didn't have cartoons to offer older kids. They stopped playing shows like Maple Town and The Mysterious Cities of Gold, and showed "The Little Bits," "Maya the Bee," and a lot of boring live-action shows.
Koala was a great, imaginative show with... Weather. I had a pretty severe schoolgirl crush on Weather because he was so smart and mysterious. As with some other characters in the show, there were two different guys who did Weather's voice, but both went uncredited. The more aloof, deeper voiced one I am sure was Vlasta Vrana, and it sure got my adolescent heart fluttering. Yeah, Weather was the man. He always had all the answers, and he always had cute little Mingle hanging out with him. Mingle was whiny at times, but still adorable and looked so cute with Weather. What a mismatched but complementary pair they were.
This was a nice little show, innocuous and sometimes too toddler-oriented for its own good, but it still made for a lot of great times when I was little. I remember many of the stories, though one of my favorites was when Mingle had to fly down from the mountain to warn the village, and he crashed through a window. Then there was the one where Walter and his brothers brought that huge log to the village bazaar and the one where Roobear and his friends go "Back to Nature," and the one where there's this hundred year old camera and you have to sit still for 10 minutes for it to take a picture? And then the one where they try to make a painting of the big tree, and they do it on little pieces of paper? And the wind blows all the papers away and they try to put the picture back together.
Ah, what wonderful memories.
I wish they'd bring this show back, and I bet kids today would really enjoy it. I remember it so well even though it's been 15 years since I saw it: That's the kind of impact a great 80s cartoon like this one will have you. Now if only they still made good cartoons.... and what a shame that this one is in the Nickelodeon Vault along with lots of other great programming, and instead they air stuff like "Slime Time Live." Whatever happened to GOOD cartoons being the norm?
