Hammer Man ran for thirteen episodes in 1991 and tells the story of Stanley (Hammer Man) saving the day with dance, rap, and magic shoes.
One of my favorite things about terrible eighties and nineties cartoons is their terrible eighties and nineties theme songs. There’s a sort of guilty pleasure in these cartoons and the theme songs have it in concentrated form.
Hammerman, Hammer,
Hammerman, Hammer.
Whenever there’s a crime,
Some crooks are gonna do time.
They all better beware,
‘Cause the Hammerman will be there.
Here’s how it started,
Along time ago.
The legend of the Hammer,
And how it began to grow.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Returning you to your regulary schedule theme song lyrics
He was given magical shoes,
From a hip-hop mo-town dude.
Together they had power,
They stood up for what was right.
But Gramps was getting old,
And he couldn’t keep up the fight.
RIGHT!
So Gramps and his granddaughter,
They went out on the road
To find the man they knew could tell
Who was worthy of the load.
They met a guy named Stanley
Who was dancing every night.
He helped the kids play everyday,
His heart was out of sight.
So Gramps opened up the bag,
And took out the magical shoes.
He set them on the ground
And they soon began to groove.
The shoes knew at once,
They had finally found their man,
They hopped right on his feet,
And he became Hammerman,
Hammerman, Hammer,
Hammerman, Hammer,
Hammerman, Hammer,
Hammerman, Hammer.
Oh Yeah!
Let’s not talk about the terrible animation, it’s bad, and get right into the terrible story and writing.
Disclaimer: While it may seem like I’m hating on this cartoon, in truth I’m not. It’s the thing that makes old cartoons so fun, how terrible they are. Looking back, almost nothing holds up. Nothing looks as good as it did through the beer goggles of bad taste and naivety we had as young children. It’s best just to embrace it for what it was and try to recapture a glimpse of the happiness it brought you when you were a kid. If everyone takes a deep breath and calms down for a minute it’s really not that hard, let’s have some fun.
Usually you expect the first episode of something to be an origin of sorts. Hammer Man takes care of that in the theme song and jumps right into the action.
A little girl, her grandpa, and some neighborhood folks are having a dance party in the street. This is the little girl and grandpa mentioned in the theme song. Grandpa clearly has some dancing skills left over from his days as Soul Man, the original wearer and bearer of the shoes power.
A fire engine flies by on it’s way to a burning library, the little girl (Jodie) and Gramps cut their dance party short to help. Jodie provides the concern while Gramps provides quips like “It’s burning hotter than James Brown on opening night!”
It almost immediately feels like it’s trying to hard, but I can’t tell if that’s just a feature of the nineties.
A woman screams for help from within the burning building and climbs out onto a horizontal flag pole in an attempt to escape the flames.
Suddenly two backup dancers appear. They show up several times throughout the episode in matching nineties hip hop outfits. They provide absolutely no help or public service at all. I’m surprised the townsfolk put up with them.
“We need the Hammer. OooOoooOooo look.” they say… and OooOoooOooo look indeed! Hammer Man is here!
Hammer appears atop a building and floats to the rescue using his trademark parachute pants, and the power of music like some kind of hip hop Mary Poppins. He then begins dancing and rapping in the street.
The power of his music animates a water tower which walks toward the library and puts out the fire. The day is saved by Hammer Man! Or so we think. Cue ominous tones.
Cut to- Jodie working on a painting when a pipe bursts, ruining it. She tries to get the attention of several people including Stanley (Hammer Man) but no one has any time because of the leak. She runs away like an overdramatic little girl, which is appropriate because she is indeed an overdramatic little girl.
Jodie runs into a friend of hers spraying “Joker” on a city wall. He offers to let Jodi try. At first she declines but we all know that as powerful as dance is, the real power is in peer pressure. Jodie’s so called friend taunts her and accuses her of being unable to draw. Jodie just can’t abide that kind of insult so she takes the can and begins a painting of some flames.
Underground a sinister looking man watches the events.
He turns to his dimwitted lackey and asks him to start making a batch of Marmisters’s Malicious Multicolored Mayhem Making Paint Potion.
Marmister approaches Jodi and says he’s from the Mayor’s office and they want help beautifying the city with murals. She responds to the positive attention for her painting.
Marmister puts a coat of his Malicious Multicolored Mayhem Making Paint Potion on Jodi’s flame painting and it comes to life. Holy smokes!
Cut to- the shoes playing Go Fish inside a locker.
Stanley arrives to retrieve them and become Hammer Man.
Stanley mixes up his bag with an identical one and misplaces the shoes.
When he reaches for the shoes instead he finds, a sandwich.
Whatever will we do!?
Without his shoes and their powers, Stanley is captured by the evil Marmister and chained to the wall where he begins psychoanalyzing the villain.
“Marmister, you’re just doing this because you had an unhappy childhood. Wanna talk about it?”
But Marmister doesn’t want to talk about it, he likes being bad.
The giant animate flame painting arrives with a remix of Marmisters paint potion and begins spraying Stanley. The potion begins to slowly change him into a painting.
Marmister leaves and sprays every piece of graffiti he can find, creating a living two dimensional army and instructs them to steal, plunder, and make scary noises.
The kids are running out of paint so Jodi goes to find Marmister and get more.
She sees the Joker tag running around in the shape of a dinosaur and knows she was conned by Marmister.
Jodi goes to get Grandpa and they begin to search for Stanley.
They find Stanley and restore him to his normal three dimensional self. Oh thank heavens!
Stanley retrieves his bag, jumps into the shoes and becomes Hammer Man
If you thought you were getting out of this episode without hearing Can’t Touch This… you were wrong. It’s the soundtrack to the entire ending fight sequence.
Marmister kidnaps Jodie and threatens to turn her into a painting. While the villain is monologue-ing Jodie paints a police officer on the wall and brings it to life effectively stopping Marmister.
Let’s not even talk about the wanton disregard for the rights and feelings of the many apparently sentient life forms brought in and out of existence by a villain, a child, and a dancing hero. I’m sure it’s all fine.
Hammer appears at the end with a PSA. He tells the kids that tagging other people’s property is illegal and wrong. So next time you want to make some art, do it on a piece of paper. Who knows, some day you may end up drawing a cartoon like Hammer Man….. And in 20 years I’ll write a piece about how terrible it is, and also how wonderful.
If you want to watch this episode of Hammer Man for yourself you can do so by clicking the videos below from top to bottom.
Note: The only video I could find is highly annotated. You’ll want to go into settings and turn off annotations, unless you’re into that sort of thing.
Cheers.
