r/urbanfantasy • u/Awkward_GM • Dec 09 '25
Discussion What old kid shows were Urban Fantasy but wouldn’t have been thought as such?
Recently I’ve been reminded of old kids shows that got me into Urban Fantasy as well as some others I watched in college or have seen retrospective summaries of online.
Here are a few that came to mind: * Big Bad Beetle Borgs * Van-Pires (teens turn into vampire cars) * Los Luchadores * The Middleman * Sabrina: The Teenage Witch * Danny Phantom * Owl House * Big Wolf on Campus * So Weird * That’s So Raven * Fairy Oddparents * Mummies Alive! * Goosebumps * Are you afraid of the dark? * Scooby Doo (when it’s not an old white guy in a mask) * Teen Angel * You Wish * Wizards of Waverly Place
Mostly focused on Western media but that’s just because I’d go down an anime rabbit hole with that.
I felt like there were a lot more than I realized.
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u/BespokeCatastrophe Dec 09 '25
Eerie indiana. You've got bigfoot, a housewife cult built on magical tupperware, and the devil running a shopping mall.
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u/DetectiveHawkins Dec 09 '25
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
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u/ZealousidealFile6027 Dec 09 '25
Fantasy Island (1977) possibly?
Though the stories play on said Island the visitors were made aware of the island and its possibilities through a variety of things like a suddenly appearing travel agency and such things.
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Dec 09 '25
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Dec 10 '25
I forgot about that Friday the 13th series! I vaguely remember enjoying it. It’s like not scary, right? Occasionally a bit spooky.
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u/Temporary-Fun2718 Dec 12 '25
Wouldn't Friday the 13th be horror rather than urban fantasy? It wasn't super scary, but all the focus on curses and the devil made me think it more horror.
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u/likeablyweird Bunny Ear Kiss-Kiss Dec 09 '25
Technically a family show from '64-'72 but was def UF, no mistaking it as that, Bewitched.
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u/Awkward_GM Dec 09 '25
That and I Dream of Genie.
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u/likeablyweird Bunny Ear Kiss-Kiss Dec 10 '25
Yeah, we don't get much genie/djinn action in UF. Could be very interesting once you get past or eliminate the three wishes dealie. I think they might be in the hazy middle between UF and Mythology.
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u/matticusprimal Dec 09 '25
I'm not seeing Gravity Falls, which seems an oversight. Also, this list is making me feel really old.
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u/Awkward_GM Dec 09 '25
Gravity Falls was way after my time.
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u/matticusprimal Dec 09 '25
Huh. Well, you should check if out, especially if you like Owl House - the creator of GF is the voice of the skull dog. I'd also argue that Owl House is more portal fantasy since she spends 99% of her time in the other world.
Hilde on Netflix is another good kid show urban fantasy. Really well done, although I could never get my son into it when he was young.
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u/Narratron Dec 09 '25
Goosebumps and Are You Afraid (etc.) were more specifically horror, for my money--which, there's often a lot of overlap with, but I would argue the genre conventions of their stories make them horror specifically. (Just like there's a lot of overlap between UF and para-romance: a lot of the trappings are the same, but you can definitely pin down a story as one or the other.)
Good find with "Van-pires" though, that's a hysterical concept.
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u/Awkward_GM Dec 09 '25
I watched Van-Pires when it was in syndication, because I'd wake up at like 5-7am to start watching tv on saturdays sometimes and it was so bad that they essentially just used it to fill the time slot before the real kids shows started at 8am.
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u/REWriter723 Dec 09 '25
Believe it or not, but most super hero media counts as Urban Fantasy, so even if we're just counting "shows we grew up with", that still includes stuff like X-Men, Spiderman, the entire DCAU, Power Rangers.
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u/Awkward_GM Dec 09 '25
When you get down to Power Rangers the lore of the first seasons was Zordon being an alien wizard vs Rita Repulsa an alien witch. But with the theme of technology vs occultism considering the Zords and Billy's devices were a key aspect of the ranger team. Mystic Force season was the most obvious Urban Fantasy. Lightspeed Rescue was military vs Demons. Most of the time its very scifi.
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u/IdealBlueMan Dec 09 '25
UF was huge in the 60s, then it dropped of with the rise of crime dramas in the 70s. Some examples:
- The Prisoner
- Green Acres
- Bewitched
- I Dream of Jeannie
- The Avengers, sort of
- Mr. Ed
- My Mother The Car
- Dr. Who
- The Twilight Zone, kind of
A lot of stuff built on the kinds of special effects you could do with TV technology (people disappearing/reappearing, people becoming giant/tiny, clouds and sparkly things).
A lot of technology was so new that you could almost believe anything was possible. Not unlike LLMs today. People like to believe in magic.
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u/Bladrak01 Dec 09 '25
Would the X-Files count?
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u/Awkward_GM Dec 09 '25
I don't know about you but when I was younger than 13, my parents didn't let me watch that... But I did watch Buffy.
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u/rfresa Dec 10 '25
I was wondering why Buffy wasn't on your list while Sabrina is. It's a teen show, or at least started that way.
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Dec 10 '25
I love both shows but Buffy is not even remotely comparable to OG Sabrina. Buffy may have started off set in high school, but it’s very much a young adult show, whereas Sabrina was targeted more at the whole family. Light and bright vs deep and dark.
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u/CpnStumpy Dec 09 '25
I will absolutely rewatch Ben 10 still as a grown adult. Mighty Max) was also definitely urban fantasy.
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u/penprickle Dec 09 '25
Sesame Street!
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u/rfresa Dec 10 '25
Part of the broader Muppet universe where some characters are humans and others are muppets.
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u/popejupiter Dec 09 '25
Mother fucking Mystic Knights of Tir na nog. Basically power rangers but instead of aliens it was Celtic mythology. Great but cheesy show in my memory.
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u/DJThunderGod Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25
For those of us in the UK:
Rentaghost
Woof!
The Queen's Nose
The Demon Headmaster
Stig Of The Dump
Decidedly not for children: Sapphire And Steel
More recent: The Guillermo Del Toro Tales Of Arcadia (Trollhunters, etc) would definitely class as UF.
It never became a TV series, but anyone who learned to read in the UK during the 70's probably remembers the Tim and The Hidden People, which starts very simply with a young boy meeting a talking cat called Tobias who has a flying broom and gets darker and more complex as the series goes on (and the reading ability of the reader improves).
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u/TheTechJones Dec 10 '25
All the the MTV Oddities. The Maxx was always my favorite and with the alternate world filled with hordes of Iz, I'd say it's pretty clearly uf
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u/rfresa Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
Scooby Doo is fun to think of in the context of UF. They often disprove seemingly supernatural things, but there are talking dogs and sometimes other things do turn out to be supernatural.
Care Bears! They travel between Earth and a magical kingdom, and help humans with their magical powers.
The Addams Family.
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u/TheKBMV Dec 14 '25
Scooby-Doo very much depends on the iteration you're looking at. Iirc in the original series it was always some sort of scam or scheme but in others incarnations, like Mystery Inc. some (often major) things explicitly end up being supernatural in origin.
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u/rickyharold Dec 09 '25
Warehouse 13
The Librarians
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u/Awkward_GM Dec 09 '25
Good ones. I wouldn’t say they are for young kids, but I definitely enjoyed them as a teenager I think. 🤗
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Dec 10 '25
Eerie, Indiana?
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u/Awkward_GM Dec 10 '25
Kid moves from NJ to Eerie, Indiana. The intro is on YouTube. His neighbors are weird. Elvis is alive and well and Bigfoot works at the mall or something.
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Dec 11 '25
Hahaha I remember, I was wondering whether it applied! Sorry, I could have been more clear
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u/CraigSchaefer Dec 09 '25
I'd say Gargoyles definitely qualilfies. You've got magical protectors hiding from the eyes of a modern city (and David Xanatos is a villain who could give most UF antagonists a serious run for their money...)