Jem is an allegory about friendship and fame and being way too glamorous for that Ken-doll look-alike! And soul-stirring songs. Ah yes.

Ah, memories...As a child I often got Barbie and the Rockers confused with Jem and the Holograms. I kept mixing up their theme songs.

Jem is how I earned that you can kick someone's ass using only oversized castanets and a handful of wrist bangles.

This is the first time I've ever even heard of this 'Jem' of which you speak, but it sounds...erm...glittery, which is good.
And how dare you malign the name of the almighty, tight trousered, glittery goodness that is GLAM??
;-)

Jem is an allegory for the cold war.

If you'd only ever seen the Transformers, it might not have been obvious. But once you watch G.I. Joe, He-Man/She-Ra, and/or Jem, it becomes plain that in all dichotomous morning-cartoon universes, the bad guys are always cooler. (Punk is not dead; Misfits for life.) In some ways, Jem and the Holograms are the ultimate proof of this: an independently-wealthy singer with earrings that can create audiovisual holograms of anything she needs—in real time, well enough to fake a costume change—is pitted against a pack of rowdy girls whose special power is that they have green hair. And yet, the Misfits are still cooler than Jem.

Sparticus and Go-Bots were special cases, the former because it only somewhat qualifies and everyone involved was interesting, and the latter because both sides were equally lame. I could accept arguments that also put Visionaries (Knights of the Magical Light) in the former category.

This rule is notably non-applicable to unbalanced, or non-dichotomous morning cartoons. Witness the Smurfs, the Care Bears, Conan, Rainbow Brite, David the Gnome, Lone Star (the 80's best Sci-Fi Western morning cartoon about a Native American sheriff), and My Little Ponies.

Darn it, I loved Visionaries!! My toys have long been garage sale fodder but catching one of those episode on tv was so rare and soooo coooool.

Yeah. Totally awesome. The idea that the staves only worked once seemed really unnecessary, and the shape of them was pretty ridiculous, but everything else was fantastic.

Man, I think I have some episodes of Lone Star... and the animated COPS show, too.

Good stuff.

In all fairness, the Smurfs DID go up against an alchemist and the Care Bears had... uh... an evil star, that one time, I think. There was maybe a space submarine, as well, at some point.

Wow. Yeah, I'd forgotten about COPS.

I'm not trying to knock Smurfs and Care Bears, they just had a different sort of antagonist. Both shows (and My Little Pony and Rainbow Brite) had a single main villain character (Gargamel / Murky Dismal / Tirak), usually with a primary henchman (Azrael / Lurky / Scorpan) and occasionally some faceless lackeys. Which is fine, but all the character diversity is on the "good" side. When they split character diversity evenly (G.I. Joe, Transformers, He-Man / She-ra, etc.), the bad guys always come out cooler.

Actually... I don't remember quite enough of COPS. Miss Demeanor was pretty sweet, but then so were Bowzer and his robo-dog, Blitz.

I just got over my six-week period of They Might Be Giants' 'Why Does the Sun Shine?' I could certainly use my, oh, fourth or fifth ten-week period of Jem (the Freezepop version, of course).

I recently got a very wierd look for singing "Why does the sun shine?" at a 5-year-old. Apparently, she was not well versed in the basics of nuclear fusion.

and that is what the song is for!