Earth!...Fire!...Wind!...Water!...Heart!...
What was disheartening for me about Captain Planet and the Planeteers was that the creators oversimplified the problems by displaying exaggerations of cartoonish super-villainy: "I've created a machine the chops down the Amazon rainforest and turns the trees into toxic waste...mwuhahahahahahahaha!!!...." So it teaches kids that the planet would be safe if only a blue-skinned, green-mulleted depiction of what a committee lamely decided "cool" would look like showed up and used his Superman-breath (or whatever).
Much better (and accurately more morally complex) would be if you turned on the for 30 minutes the cartoon was just a headshot of Captain Planet's head, saying "Hey kids at home...your watching TV right now is contributing to the planet's ill-health. You're burning fossil fuels. Want to make a difference? Turn the the TV off. Go outside. Now. Turn the TV off. Turn it off. Go outside. Turn it off....."
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