New Kids on the Block was a Not Quite Starring animated series by DiC Entertainment based on the group. It ran from 1990 to 1991, around the time New Kids fandom peaked. Episodes
are usually not difficult to find on YouTube.
New Kids on the Block provides examples of:
- Activation Sequence: One of these shows up in "New Heroes on The Block" as Sam, the band's driver, starts up the bus. It ends as abruptly as it appears.
- Adventure Towns: The various stops on their seemingly endless tour.
- Band Toon: And it followed the associated tropes to a T: every episode they get into some kind of adventure and sing a song at the end.
- The Faceless: Sam, who makes only two appearances in the series, and is for some reason shown only from the neck down in both of them.
- In "New Heroes on the Block", she appears and disappears to the point of creating continuity errors in a few shots.
- Groupie Brigade: It was referred to as a fan club, but strangely enough it was almost a literal brigade. It was entirely consumed with stalking the New Kids, and the actions of its leadership were not unlike those of a brigadier and officers overseeing a theater of operations.
- Horrible Camping Trip: "Overnight Success" may as well be the type specimen. There is a slight subversion in that the characters actually know how to go camping, but it even has the requisite grizzly bears...in the forests outside Boston (which are real, but are lacking in the bear department).
- I Just Want to Be Normal: In "New Kid in the Class," Joey entertains the notion of quitting the group so that he can go to school.
- Not Quite Starring: The New Kids were voiced by professional voice actors.
- The Power of Rock: Figured in at least once every other episode.
- Rotoscoping: Featured in the opening when the live action New Kids turn into their cartoon counterparts.
- Shout-Out: "New Heroes on The Block" includes homages to Frankenstein, Star Wars and Robin Hood.
- Stock Footage: Actual concert and interview footage was edited into the series seemingly at random (ie, the cartoon's story would be interrupted by a clip of Jordan talking about his cats). A lot of the random cutaways and effects are due to the animation coming back from Wang Film Productions with lots of mistakes. There was no time to fix them, so they added all these video effects and cutaways to salvage what usable footage they had, and passed it off as "music video effects".
- Team Pet: Nikko the Shar-Pei. Somewhat justified in that he was the Knight brothers' dog in reality too.
- This Loser Is You: Personified by the character Fanny, who is basically an incarnation of
Fan Dumb. Other fans were portrayed as being just short of a Stalker with a Crush. Half the plots involved the New Kids looking for their few fans who weren't completely obsessed. - Totally Radical: To the point where you wonder if the writers are even aware of how people from Boston speak. (Or, one could argue, how people from Earth speak. Ballistic!)
