Zack Ramadan – ThunderCat of the Day
Ho! Zack here, though many folks in the fandom might know me as thezaxfactor from my years as a moderator and staff writer at ThunderCats.org. When I learned that Peter was assembling the stories of fans, nay, aficionados alongside those of writers and crew members, I felt a strong pang of impostor syndrome. What novel revelation could I possibly contribute? But in reading the posts of other ThunderCats of the Day, and speaking to friends who have been featured, I’ve come to realize that the common threads in our stories are what weave us together. So here’s my story; may you see bits of yourself in it the way I’ve seen myself in the stories of Nick, Celesta, Ryan, David, Egmond and others.
ThunderCats has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It deeply affected me as a young person, helping to shape my moral compass, ground me during tougher times, and (not least of all) expand my budding vocabulary—hereditary, reconnoiter, pusillanimous! I learned how to use a VCR at age 4 and by 1991 had dutifully recorded about 60 episodes on tape.
In the early ’90s, syndication eventually stopped, and I remember scouring the TV guide for years, hoping for a new Saturday morning broadcast. But I also came to know every episode I’d recorded by heart, because those four tapes were like a larder in winter, and a safe source of escape as my family moved repeatedly and I struggled to make friends. In my youthful imagination, Lion-O, Panthro, Cheetara and Tygra were friends enough who, being refugees on a world that didn’t always accept them, could understand why I felt different from other kids.
Official VHS releases, with their beautiful box art, also became something of an obsession. Well into my teens I would beeline to the children’s section in any video store, praying for a volume I’d never seen. To this day I have a recurring dream that takes place in a vast video emporium, where some undiscovered treasure awaits me on a dusty shelf! And I wasn’t the only obsessed kid. In 2018 I acquired a set of all 12 F.H.E. home video volumes from a collector named Jesse Howard, who had bought them with lawn-mowing money as a teenager in 1989.
Ryan Hunter and I joke that the early ’90s were “the dark times”—a stagnant period without reruns or internet-connected fandom, when the episodes we had on tape were our only sustenance. In the age of streaming and social media, it’s hard to imagine that kind of scarcity, but repeated viewings of a subset of episodes only served to purify our connection to the characters we revered and the stories we internalized. The desire to share that connection with other people was inevitable
In Kindergarten, I wrote an extended version of “Mumm-Rana’s Belt,” complete with illustrations and—much to my teacher’s amazement—properly formatted dialogue.
In fourth grade, I gave a presentation on the Snowmen of Hook Mountain choose-your-own-adventure book, designing a big poster and doing my best to impart the full ThunderCats mythos to a room of squirming nine-year-olds—a fruitless evangelism.
Of the kids who remembered ThunderCats, all had long since lost interest. People would pass things down to me—a lunchbox from my cousin, some action figures from a classmate, a puzzle from a friend of my mom—all thoughtful and appreciated, but none scratching my itch for community. So when none of my peers shared my enthusiasm, I exercised my creative muscles in private, writing mediocre fiction, making stop motion animations with my toys, 
crafting languages and writing systems and a Grand Unified Theory of Thunderian mythology.
I was determined to not let go. I was also wrestling with my own identity at the time, so the familiar comfort of the world of ThunderCats proved a useful refuge.
And then the Internet changed everything. Logging on in 1997, I found an already vibrant fandom online—quirky, personal websites the likes of which don’t exist anymore—and immediately joined the conversation. Finally there were people I could talk to about this thing that no one my age seemed to care about!I discovered eBay, and gradually expanded my collection of vintage toys and other memorabilia. I got a hold of all the episodes I’d never seen and spent every evening for a few months devouring them (and then hopping onto fan message boards to share my thoughts).
Acquiring copies of some of Leonard Starr’s scripts from James Gauthier gave me new insight into the work of writing for animation and sparked an early love of screenwriting and dramaturgy.
Inspired by Tygra, 5-year-old me had wanted to be an architect; but now 14-year-old me wanted to be a writer. I still love nothing more than reading the screenplay of an episode of ThunderCats, seeing the writer’s imagination on the page (and occasionally Peter’s notes in the margins!) and looking for details that didn’t make it onto the screen.As I got older and more established in the online community, I found myself moderating forums and writing episode reviews, first for ThunderCatsFans.org and later for ThunderCats.org. I also collaborated alongside Angie Hill and Celesta Johnston as a consultant for the trivia game bonus feature on Warner Bros.’ Season Two Volume Two DVD set.
It was just a few conference calls with a producer, but I remember those discussions so fondly, mostly because I was finally speaking with fellow fans I’d only ever interacted with online.
It was also around this time that I started collecting animation cels. My first cel was from the episode “Leah” from Season Four, and—I still can’t quite believe this—it came from the collection of Dennis J. Woodyard, secondary character designer from those later seasons and writer of two standout Season Four episodes.
Dennis’s detailed blog of pre-production artwork, combined with the scripts I’d been collecting, opened my eyes to the number of behind-the-scenes folks who made ThunderCats what it was and, to a small extent, the variety of career possibilities in the world of film and television. So I pursued a degree in filmmaking, and I continue to work in the world of storytelling—theater for young audiences, specifically—doing everything from camerawork and animation to copywriting and curriculum development. I know for a fact that the inner child that fuels my work today is directly connected to my enduring love of ThunderCats, and I’m glad I was self-aware enough to follow the path it set me on.
The online ThunderCats community has waxed, waned and migrated over the years as websites have come and gone. And when ThunderCats.org went down in 2023, I worried I would lose my connection to the community altogether. But then I started listening to Ryan and David’s ThunderCats Reviews podcast, and I immediately felt something I’d never felt before—real kinship! Here were fans not just dissecting the stories and characters, but discussing the personal significance ThunderCats had in their lives; not debating the value of serious sword-and-sorcery versus Overgardian sci-fi silliness, but embracing all of it; not just talking but loving out loud. I reached out to Ryan immediately, and we struck up a friendship. He even gave me the courage to attend my first convention 
where I got to meet Larry Kenney and Peter Newman (and his wife, “Mrs. Tygra,” who was a delight!).
I’ve been making periodic guest appearances on the podcast ever since, even flying across the country to help produce last year’s Holiday Special—an hour-long love letter to both ThunderCats and the podcast’s constellation of listeners. Suddenly, the community I only experienced at a digital distance for decades is feeling more tightly knit than ever.
It isn’t lost on me that, just as it took me time to find the community I needed, the ThunderCats once found themselves adrift, searching for a home. 
And while they may have built their community on a rather grand scale, uniting the isolated peoples of a whole planet, they did it through nothing more than altruism and cooperation. 41 years in, as our community continues to grow in size and vibrancy, I hope we can take a lesson from that altruistic spirit and keep engaging each other with the same humanity the characters we love have always exemplified. A lesson in humanity from cat people? Yes, ho!