Jem

JEM
Made by: D.I.C.
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1985 onwards

Here are some things about the 1980s: political correctness was born, women became more prominent in the workplace, and pop groups had big hair and appalling clothes. Somehow, this American cartoon thought they could capitalise all of this. Jerrica, in her late teens, was the pretty leader of the all-girl pop group, The Holograms, along with Aja, Kimber (who played one of those keyboard-guitars, which dates the programme if nothing else did), Shana and Raya. She presided over the orphanage run by her late father, but he also left another legacy; he invented a kind of computerised holograph thing, which Jenna wore in her earrings, and which allowed her to become Jem. Now Jem was “truly outrageous!”, or so the theme song claimed, but all I can remember was that she was slightly more glamorous and less girl-next-door than Jenna, and that she wore even worse clothes. She had a boyfriend of course, called Rio - also the band's manager (how unprofessional) - who was Ken to her Barbie, but he didn’t know about her transformations. Like all good cartoons, there were bad guys or, in this case, girls - the rival pop group, The Misfits, made up of Pizzazz, Roxy, Stormer and Jetta. They all looked like they might be a bit ‘easy’. There was absolutely no point to Jem, except for a lot of moralising, and the opportunity for a lot of twangy computer-pop, but it was very popular. It was shown as part of the Wide Awake Club, and was a competition where kids as young as four or five would send in photos of themselves and their friends dressed as Jem and her band, often including some extremely reluctant brother/cousin/boy from off the street, who would be forced to don a white suit and bow-tie and pose as Rio. And parents were up in arms when young girls wanted to be the Spice Girls…

SQUARE EYES RATING: 2/10

(Thanks to the Universal Appeal Jem website for the borrowed pic)