Teletoon’s Top 5 Sweethearts: All is fair in love and cartoons

A day for true love or a corporate scam? The jury’s still out on Valentine’s Day. But there’s no question about it – everyone loves cartoons. Teletoon Retro, Canada’s cable home for cartoon classics, is honouring the heartfelt holiday with a call for viewer’s choice inductees into the Retro Hall of Fame in their Top 5 Sweethearts competition. Vote daily at teletoon.com for your favourite cartoon couple.

 

With the tumultuous love-hate relationship of Catwoman and Batman currently topping the list of 18 nominees, the competition is cutthroat. From the rock-solid love of Fred and Wilma Flintstone, to the co-dependent mystery-solving affection of Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, cartoon romances and inseparable friendships abound from superheroes to chipmunks and even to Smurfs.

 

Here’s a quick look at two time-tested cartoon love affairs:

 

Even Megatron, the ruthless leader of the Decepticons, couldn’t squash the 15 million year courtship of Optimus Prime and Elita One. Re-built and reconfigured from defenceless dock worker Orion Pax and his girlfriend Ariel following their fatal wounding during Megatron’s first attacks, this triumphantly heroic robo-couple fought a 4 million year guerrilla style civil war to keep their vows to find each other once again. Alas, only Optimus Prime’s compatible power system could save the self harm inflicted by Elita One’s temporal disharmonizer. Even when she temporarily halted the flow of time, nothing could stop their timeless affection. Surely, a match made in Autobot heaven.

 

And of course, Valentine’s Day always brings out the hopeless romantic in all of us, a trait epitomized by everyone’s favourite French skunk and Looney Tunes lover, Pepé Le Pew. Much shunned for his odour, Pepé’s flirtatious ways just never seemed to sway the affection of Penelope Pussycat, no matter how hard he tried to win her feline fancy. But their true love proved itself when Penelope locked herself in a Limburger cheese factory to match Pepé’s stench, even if classic cartoon dilemma had locked Pepé in a deodorant plant, leaving the amorous mammal with a taste of his own medicine. Even in the cartoon world, such is love…