I recall the wondrous fare on the Philadelphia's Channel 48 after school in those days, which had a profound effect upon my developing psyche. None of this Dragon Ball or Power Reangers dren, we had real classic anime/kaiju shows. Apart from the obvious Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, Star Blazers, and the original Ultraman, who else remembers:
Marine Boy. - Animated. Later than Speed Racer but earlier than Star Blazers. A strangely uptight young boy becomes a superhero thanks to his father's invention of Oxy-gum, which allows him to breathe underwater, and an electric boomerang that knocked out villains. He fought crime and rescued people from disasters in the undersea colonies of the future with the help of a friendly dolphin, two cops from the U.N. Ocean Police and their flying submarine, and occasionally an amphibious little girl named Cli-Cli from the sunken kingom of Atlantis. I remember the two cops were probably meant to look like Laurel and Hardy, but in hindsight they come off more like Gilligan and the Skipper. One of the weirder elements in retrospect is Marine Boy's disturbing lack of emotion. I recall one episode where a Marine Boy impostor was caught because he addressed his dad affectionately as "Papa" instead of the rigidly formal "Father."
The Space Giants - Live action. About the same vintage as Ultraman. A young boy discovers and befriends a family of androids from outer space: The gigantic Goldar, who looked like a gold version of the Tin Man, but with antennae on his head and a mane of shaggy blonde hair; his human-sized wife Silvar, who looked like she was wearing a shiny silver wetsuit; and their son, whose name escapes me, even if his ghastly little shorts don't. (Is it a law that all Japanese kids in giant-monster shows have to wear wedgie-inducing shorts?) The three of them could transform into bubble-canopied 60s-style rocketships at will, and they had come to Earth to protect it from an extremely silly alien conqueror. If I recall correctly, his name was Rodak, he wore a snarling kabuki mask with a ludicrous permed wig, and his sinister plans consisted of sending giant space monsters down to wrassle Goldar, who would thump them without fail. I could never figure out how Rodak managed to keep these huge monsters inside his relatively tiny ship (a cheesy model resembling a cut-out bat shape with a soup bowl glued to the bottom), let alone a whole army of them.
And of course, long before the Crypt Keeper, or even the lads of MST3K, 48 would show what seemed like all Saturday afternoon's worth of old monster movies, hosted by a character calling himself "Doctor Shock" on a crumbling haunted house/dungeon/mad science lab set. Often, this would mean a marathon of Godzilla and Gamera films; or black-&-white flicks from the Fifties full of Saucer Men and giant radioactive bugs.
adult's dream job???? ROFL!
, while he disputes the existence of 'The Magic Garden', 'Joya's Fun School,' and 'the Uncle Floyd Show'. 
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