CaptainN

Marge Simpson's spread in Playboy was a groundbreaking moment for cartoon women everywhere. Her sensual skin pics paved new ground for the "feminine-animated."

She told the world that the women of animation aren't just vehicles for humor or straight characters to set up punchlines for the males on the paper. She helped us realize they have thoughts, feelings, emotions and yes, even urges that make them unique, infinitely interesting and utterly fascinating. They are, as Dr. Frasier Crane so eloquently put it, "like a fine wine: always intoxicated, ever surprising and only getting better with age."

And so, for the cause of gender equality and female empowerment, here are the ten cartoon chicks who should pose naked because it would be righteously awesome.

Like Saturday Supercade followed Atari in the '80s, Captain N: The Game Master followed the success of Nintendo in the '90s. Not unlike The Last Starfighter, in which a young man's video game skills are utilized to defeat an evil alien army, Kevin's talent for defeating various Nintendo games results in his being turned into a cartoon a la Kid Video and sucked into a strange land inhabited by a menagerie of product placements.

I was a Nintendo geek, so I remember watching this growing up, though not much of it has stayed with me. Watching some clips on YouTube, it's easier to see now that the show was essentially a half hour commercial like pretty much any other series based on a toy or game. There were some interesting touches, such as the use of video game sound effects. Ultimately, though, it's a half hour of bad dialogue and bad animation. Perhaps it would have some nostalgic value to folks my age, but it's mostly a relic of its time.

The four-disc set will be available February 13, 2007 from Shout! Factory.