Ah, that's a series I loved! Much less educational, too. ;)

Well, let's agree to disagree then. :-) First of all, most tv shows for children revolve around the idea of good guys with no black spot on their resumes versus bad guys that are so evil you'd think Satan himself was hiring them or something -at least the vast majority of those I watched when I was a kid worked this way. At any rate, I didn't see him as a show-off from what I recall - on the contrary from what I recall, he was rather humble (I don't recall any attitude of superiority in him, but my memory might be faulty as well-haven't found time yet to rewatch these on youtube) and naive with the good sense of the word (he had this childlike amazement with stuff). As for its simplicity, well, many children shows thrive off of that and the Once upon a time shows are no exception as their purpose was pretty much to explain history/biology/space in simple terms, and the simple characters were probably a tradeoff in order to fit more educational content -that is the way I saw and see it, the real protagonists aren't these 2 -the girl and the boy- but everybody else who played a part in the educational content (like the red-blood cells in the human body variation).
In conclusion, it isn't that your child self was jealous (why would it be jealous against a tv show anyways?) but that you were precocious ethically or something and preferred Grey vs Gray instead of white vs black -I personally prefer Black vs (Light) Grey nowadays, as I know nobody is flawless, but still need someone to root for and someone to be against in the fiction I consume (and indeed many movies nowadays have this approach of not-perfect heroes and bad-bad guys).
Sorry for my chattiness, but that was a great insight for me on how other people perceive the same entertainment.

The "Once Upon a Time..." series is also what came to mind when I read the OP just now. Great stuff, should re-watch some time again. Used to watch BraveStarr as a kid?

never missed an episode, that and Silverhawks were my go to shows!

Bravestar was amazing. I was waking up at 6 am on sundays to watch this.

That's some dedication right there. But why on earth was it on this early in the morning?

On a Sunday?! ...oook.

Yeah, for a long time, TV stations tended to schedule their children's programming very early on weekends. That's where the concept of Saturday-morning cartoons comes from.