For the past 45 minutes my family and I have been watching intro’s to the Saturday morning cartoons I watched when I was growing up. I think my wife was the first one to talk about the Gummi Bears and we went from there. We sang what we could remember from the theme song and then I went to YouTube to find the intro. After watching it and seeing the look on my 7 year olds face I had to play more. I felt like a little kid again watching these intro’s and it took me back. I remember waking up early as all hell with my little brother, before my sisters were born of course, and getting a box of cereal and a gallon of milk and turning on the tube to watch some cartoons. I remember we would destroy the box Honey Combs, Pacman, Captain Crunch or Smurf cereal and almost the entire gallon of milk. If we didn’t want cereal we would snag a box of honey grahams or Oreo’s and we were set for the morning. Did my parents care? Hell no! They got to sleep in and now that I’m a parent I understand that sleep is a lot better. This is especially true now because the Saturday morning cartoons blow!
I have been up a few times and watched cartoons with my boy and it’s not the same. They have revamped Sonic the Hedgehog and the bad guy who looks exactly like Dr. Robotnik is actually named Dr. Eggman. At first I was baffled and told Logan this was not Dr. Eggman, it was Robotnik and a few weeks later he schooled me on it.
“Hey dad, you remember Dr. Eggman?”
“Umm…you mean Robotnik?”
“Uh…yeah well it’s not Robotnik. You want to know why?”
“Sure buddy, tell me what you know.”
“Well, last week on the show they said that Robotnik is Eggman’s grandfather. So…”
Yep! That’s right, I got schooled by my kid. It’s all good though, at least he knows about Robotnik…umm let’s move on shall we. They also have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but they’re many many years into the future and it’s just odd. Dragon Ball Z is still cool but everything else blows! Bring back The Gummi Bears, Shirt Tales, Ducktales, Darkwing Duck, Talespin, The Wuzzles, Snorks, Muppet Babies, Heathcliff, and all the other badass cartoons that I had growing up. Bring back the early Nickelodeon which was actually Pinwheel. After morning cartoons on Saturday it was on to Pinwheel where one could watch Mr. Wizard and You Can’t Do That On Television. Then when I got a little older and Pinwheel turned into Nickelodeon we had Snick on Saturday nights where one could watch “Are You Afraid of The Dark?”
I could go on and on and on but there are way too many to mention here. If I did I would have to dip into the Disney Channel with Kids Incorporated and Good Morning Ms. Bliss, which turned into an NBC hit and renamed “Saved By The Bell”. Anyway, I just wanted to write about this since we spent so much time looking at video’s on all these cartoons. We had the golden age of Saturday morning cartoons and now our kids have crap. I believe there is a channel called Boomerang that has all the old shows but it’s not the same. If anyone can remember any other cartoons let me know! Cheers!
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Preach it man! Cartoons these days have nothing compared to the ones we had growing up! X-Men the animated series was obviously my fav along with TMNT. But some other note worthy ones were Ah! Real Monsters (which no one remembers) and The Super Mario Brothers Super Show!
Yes! I remember Real Monsters!! No one else I know remembers it either!
I LOVE this post!! Oh how I miss you, Gummi Bears and Muppet Babies! Cartoons nowadays suck…nothing like what we had back in the day.
FANTASTIC post and congratulations on being Freshly Pressed! 😀
Thanks for the kudos! Those cartoons were the best and whenever I watched the Muppet Babies I always wondered why they never showed Nanny’s face. I guess it was the same thing with Charlie Brown’s teacher and all the adults speaking in gibberish.
I don’t know any of these cartoons.. I’m not a big cartoon fan but nowadays I really miss Dexter’s Laboratory 😦 I usually get up at 4.00 am to catch the show.
Awesome Post.
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed
Hey thanks! I remember watching Dexter’s Laboratory with my siblings. I was older and had not heard of it yet and when they showed me an episode I was hooked. I think it was the whole slapstick of it all and Dexter’s voice. Thanks for the comment! 8)
This brings back that strange nostalgia feeling…
My boyfriend and I were reminiscing a bit further back over the weekend, to the days of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and Land of the Lost.
The intros are even on YouTube! Amazing what memories these all bring back…
Yes! Those were the Saturday mornings of my generation, too!
Yeah, Mikalee, I was thinking…he must be about a decade and a half younger than me. I am thinking about Land of the Lost, Bugs Bunny and Friends, HR Pufnstuf, Underdog, The Jetsons, Josie and the Pussycats, Scooby Doo, The Flintstones among others. I was agast when I got married and my (new) eleven year old daughter turned on Saturday morning TV for the first time. Where did all the good cartoons go in 20 short years (from 1973 to 1993)?! Thanks for the memories and Congrats on Freshly Pressed!
Maybe it was just growing up into adulthood, but I too saw a change for the worse in Saturday morning cartoons. It ocurred sometime around 1990 but really kicked in around 1995 and by 2000 they were pretty much complete drivel no matter how early you woke up. The same has applied to cartoons on the cable networks and any afternoon cartoon shows that were available on the regular network stations.
Timing was key. The earlier you got up, the better your chances of watching a descent show.
Cartoon Network and a couple other “non-standard” cable channels were also provided a pretty good selection of cartoons, the farther back you go. As time has progressed, I noticed a similar drop in the quality of the cartoons and shows on those channels that were supposed to be dedicated to children or keeping the child in we adults alive.
I think much of this trend towards schlock can be attributed to our society’s trend towards instant gratification and the exponential rise and overflow of media of all sorts. Whereas people may have previously taken some time and thought in producing cartoons, now it’s all about how fast they can churn it out, and, if it has a message, it’s not necessarily what you’d want for your children.
My kids don’t watch Saturday morning cartoons because we rarely have the TV on – even a lot of the PBS children’s shows are schlock. Instead we watch a lot of videos, allowing us greater control over what our children watch. The TV stopped being a center of our family life about 5 years ago.
Life is too busy for TV, and a lot more enjoyable. I love remembering the old cartoons and shows, but really, my children aren’t missing much, and neither am I.
You are completely right when it comes to the messages and the overall media churning out nonsense. Even PBS has a few cartoons that seem to send the wrong message. One in particular is “Caillou”, and I’m sure there are people out there that enjoy the cartoon but it just strikes me wrong. There are scenes where the kid Caillou is throwing a major fit and the parents always give in and let him do whatever he wants. After a few episodes my son didn’t watch it anymore. I suppose to each their own but I remember back when I was younger I would wake up around 5:30am or so in order to catch the early morning TNT cartoon lineup. It consisted of Bugs Bunny, The Pink Panther, Popeye, and others. Those were good times! Thanks for the comment!
WOW, these are very nostalgic.. makes me wanna go back to my childhood.. 🙂 thumbs up!
Thanks! That is exactly how I felt when I was sitting with my family and watching the intro’s on YouTube. Makes me want to bust out some cereal and milk and catch up on some old cartoons. Thanks for the comment!
I totally agree! While still technically being a kid, I’ve noticed that cartoons have changed from the early 2000’s when I was really little. I’ve been shown all the cartoons that were on when my parents were kids, and they’re totally cool! They even messed up Dragon Ball Z. Um, there’s Thundercats, Fraggle Rock and a whole bunch of others, oh and The Hub channel has a whole bunch of old cartoons like Jem and Transformers. Great post!
Thanks for the comment! I sat and watched Dragon Ball Z Kai with my son and it’s definitely different. Luckily I had a friend who has the originals on DVD so I had to get them and show my son the real stuff. Thundercats are awesome and Fraggle Rock is superb! I’m not sure that I have heard of The Hub Channel but it’s something I’m going to check out.
I think more people remmebner “Real Monsters” than the “Super Mario Brothers Super show” I have been a part of several conversations centered on Real Monsters and I wasn’t even the one to bring it up. It’s always ecxiting to hear someone mention an old show (cartoon or otherwise) that I used to watch. I could be in another conversation on the other side of the room and run to join in on one that involves an old Show.
I have to agree there. I think when that cartoon came out it was at the height of the Nickelodeon cartoon explosion. They had Ren & Stimpy, which I loved, Rugrats, Rocko’s Modern Life, and Ahh Real Monsters. When the Super Mario Brothers Super Show came out I was in middle school I think and I had stayed home because I was sick and that day happened to be the premier of it. Wow…that was a long time ago. 8)
You are young! I miss Mighty dog Manfred, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and the Jetsons!
Congrats on being FP’d!
And Huckleberry Hound, the Pink Panther, and all those wonderful old cartoons! Even when they resurrect the old ones, it’s just not the same without the original voices (mostly Mel Blanc’s!).
Thanks for the FP! I don’t remember Mighty dog Manfred but I definitely watched Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, and the Jetsons. Thanks to early morning TBS and TNT cartoons I was able to watch those. I mean, anything with the Hanna-Barbara stamp is gold really. 8)
I’ve actually found myself many times looking to buy the dvds of most of these shows especially those from the after school Disney stock. I love Talespin, Duck Tales, Gargoyles, Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck. Love the article.
How’s it going and thanks for the comment! After school Disney cartoons were the best. The lineup you mentioned is the lineup I remember fondly. My siblings and I would get home from school a little after 3pm and we’d head straight for the fridge for a snack and then to the television just in time for the opening sequence of Duck Tales. I can see us all now fighting for the best spot in front of the tv. Good times!
Muppet Babies was awesome… especially when they went into Star Wars mode!
OMG I had totally forgotten about that!!
LOL! Yeh, that was always my favorite too! 🙂
You know it! My 7 year old and I were watching the intro and he freaked when he saw the clip from Star Wars. He couldn’t believe it was on there and I told him that we would have to watch it some time. Now I just have to find which episode it was…hmm…do you know?
You are so right!!!! I remember all the Saturday morning cartoons. He Man, Shera, Transformers, cops, Mask, Thunder Cats and so many more awesome cartoons. What you said about the quality of today’s cartoons you are so right. We had it good when we were kids pity the kids of today don’t get the same quality.
I remember watching He-Man and She-Ra on the USA Network back in the day. I believe it was around the time that they had their USA train segment where it was led by Mr. T and I think it was an Olympic team, Ziggy, The Smurfs, Scooby Doo, He-Man, She-Ra, and The Snorks. Man those were good times!
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So true.
AMEN!! I’m saying amen to this post. Cartoons nowadays are fun to watch and I enjoy doing so, but nothing can measure to the shows back then. And the thrill of waking up for cartoons–priceless.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about! The week sucked because school was sometimes boring but when I got out on Friday it was not only a happy time because it was the weekend, it was a happy time because Saturday Morning Cartoons were superb! It was only once a week and that’s what made it so good. Later on they added more days and there was nothing to look forward to. It took away the whole joy of waking up early on the one day a week that cartoons ruled.
No way!!! I remeber these, and I know the Duck Tales song well. I also loved the chipmunks, Inspector Gadget, Tin Tin, X Men (cartoon), Spider Man (cartoon), Hey Arnold, Arthur, (which still comes on I think), Transformers, He-Man, the Flintstones, and soooo many more. I’m not even going to lie, I loved Pokemon. Great post 😀
I love that you had Shirt Tales as the picture at the very top! I used to have all of the stuffed animals 🙂 Don’t forget Rose Petal Place, (The REAL) Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, She-Ra, He-Man, Mysterious Cities of Gold, Thundercats (Again, the REAL one), Get A Long Gang, Beverly Hills Teens, Dungeons and Dragons, Jem, Jetsons, Kissyfur, Lady Lovelylocks and Pixie Tails, Herself The Elf, Monchichis, Moondreamers, My Little Pony, My Pet Monster, Poochie, and School House Rock. There was also one called something like Wishkins or something like that. (Ok so admittedly, I am a girl). The 80’s and early 90’s were the golden age of cartoons for sure! I miss those days! I wish that my 13 year old son had been able to grow up with the same caliber of shows….instead he has SpongeBob…Blech!
Whoa, I’m old. I don’t know any of those cartoons named…I go back to Johnny Quest, Space Ghost, Hercules…and back then, Saturday morning was pretty much the only time cartoons were on!
My husband and I were talking recently about how it is better to have childhood memories about some cartoons and films without ever watching them as an adult. It is always fun to see how my son reacts to my favorite childhood movies, although most of the time he finds them b-o-o-o-o-ring.
McGyver still rocks, though! 🙂
I too used to live for Saturday morning cartoons. They were something to look forward to in the days before you could find them any day of the week thanks to cable and cartoon network. My favorite was the Loony Toons, but some of the greats were also Scooby Doo, Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan and Fat Albert. Great Post and memories!
While not a cartoon do you remember “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” on Nickelodeon? My husband and I met watching those shows. We even thenked Artie, The Strongest Man, In the World in our wedding program!
I wholeheartedly agree, and I’ve done the same – sitting at the computer watching old cartoon intros on YouTube. And although I don’t have kids, I still found myself checking out the new era of Saturday morning cartoons recently and I was sorely disappointed.
Luckily, I have TeleToon Retro, a channel with nothing but cartoons from back in the day. I frequently find myself re-watching Transformers, He-Man, She-Ra, Thundercats, Spider-Man, Inspector Gadget, etc.
Now if only they’d add Ninja Turtles to their programming, I would be the happiest overgrown child there is.
i completely agree. though it wasn’t a saturday morning cartoon, you cannot forgot to mention “fraggle rock”, jim henson was a genius. and, i’ve been watching “jem” on boomerang and realized that “hannah montana” is merely a live action version of the ’80s cartoon, with bad posture.
I watched all of these shows! I had completely forgotten about the “Wuzzles,” but I loved them as a kid!
There were so many, I don’t know where to begin. I loved C.O.P.S., Darkwing Duck, Chuck Norris: Karate Commandos, Dungeons and Dragons, The Real Ghostbusters, Voltron, and Robotech.
I totally remember Pinwheel. I can’t wait to show this to my husband later–really takes me back!
“Pinwheel Spinwheel spinning around. Look at my pinwheel and see what I found. Pinwheel Spinwheel where have you been? Hello, how are you and may I come in?”
This song trumpets my childhood….this and Today’s Special and Out of Control… along with the other cartoons listed in my previous comment. Oooh and Popples. Loved Popples 🙂
Okay, this post confirms that my mother really might have been crazy, as we weren’t allowed to watch cartoons as kids. Is that sad or what! I have this hole in my knowledge of populare culture that’s downright wrong! I only really remember the Jetsons, though I don’t know where I watched it–certainly not at home. Alas——-
Kathy
You should check out Teen Nick (if you have it) between 12 and 2 am they play all the old Nick shows from the 90’s like All That (when it was good) and Kennan and Kel
Ah, this brings me back. I remember getting up early and watching the Saturday morning cartoons with my little brother – Good memories. I can’t remember if these were on Saturday morning or not, but TMNT, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Batman and Thundercats were among our favourites!
Anyone remember the Ghostbusters cartoon? I think it came on later in the afternoon…
Thanks for the walk done memory lane, guys!
Oh SNAP! I LOVE PINWHEEL!
I miss the Muppet Babies! Haha, I’m glad you posted this! 🙂
i loved jem, kidd video and bots master! but i think bots master was in the 90s, lol
I LOVE this post!! Oh how I miss you, Gummi Bears and Fraggle Rock!
My favorite was definitely Rescue Rangers or Hey Dude on Nickelodeon. And I still want to go on Legends of the Hidden Temple…even though I’d probably be too big to run through the set…
OMG I LOVED Hey Dude! I forgot all about that!!
Greatest post ever 🙂
My entire week revolved around Saturday morning cartoons! I can remember waking up excited and vegging out in front of the TV for hours with a smile plastered squarely on my face. Great times, thanks for the memories!
love it! gotta say, a few of my faves included The Elephant Show, Fraggle Rock, and Ducktails…or was it Ducktales. Whatever. All fabulous. In fact, I might try to search for a dvd of each.
Oh, my goodness! There’s a blast from the past! “Pinwheel, pinwheel, spinning around! Look in my pinwheel, and see what I found!”
Cartoons these days have no soul. Give me the old favorites.
Dr. Shrinko, anyone? Or Sha-zaam?
I grew up with the same Saturday morning cartoons as you did, and enjoyed much of the same sugary cereal experiences with my older brother as you (anyone remember Almond Delight?), and while I appreciate your saying that the Muppet Babies were “bad ass,” I can unequivocally say that Saturday morning cartoons for our generation sucked. There wasn’t one cartoon that wasn’t a half-hour commercial for some line of toys and other ancillary merchandise, few that weren’t produced in Korean sweatshops where single mothers painted just enough cels so the stuttered animation wouldn’t give kids seizures. Cartoons really began to suck, in fact, in 1980 when Ronald Reagan appointed Mark Fowler as head of the FCC and he deregulated television, saying it was “just another appliance, like a toaster.” The best American cartoons were, by and large, made before 1960. After that, it’s just been a long parade of crap to make kids force their parents to the toy store.
I must be your oldest reader! Though not technically a cartoon, there was Capt. Kangaroo, and Tom Terrific.
I remember! I remember! Guess we’re about the same age.
Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, Underdog, Heckle and Jeckle, Felix the Cat and Road Runner/Wiley Coyote. I am older than dirt!!! But my I was lucky, my mom would make home-made doughnuts. It was a different world, for sure.
And Winchell Mahoney Time, Wonderama, Soupy Sales, Sandy Becker…. No wonder I don’t have the patience for most of what is on these days. With few exceptions, they just don’t make ’em like they used to!
I remember the cartoons too but I grew up on Mr. Magoo, Yogi Bear, and the Jetsons. Then I watched Sky King and Roy Rogers. Way back in the day! Congrats on the Freshly Pressed!
I think the rest of my day will be dedicated to YouTube and watching all of these shows, I know it’s not a cartoon, but I remember Fragle Rock 🙂 My favorite!!!
Glad to know I’m not the only adult who enjoys watching cartoons — at least you have children, you can blame it on that! I always took great comfort in cartoons as a kid — even the episodes I’d seen at least twice before.
I enjoyed any cartoon that didn’t have superheroes (I wasn’t big into that genre; nothing against He-Man, Voltron, and those guys). Of all the cartoons that I watched as a kid on Saturday mornings, the ones that I think can still make me laugh, today are “Garfield & Friends” and “The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show”. I have to confess to owning both on DVD so I can get my cartoon fix — with or without cereal — any day of the week!
Cap’n Crunch and Lucky Charms were my choice of fix! I love Saturday mornings, but as a bonus, our metromedia station played tons of Warner Brothers cartoons every day after school — yep, cereal for dinner! Good post, even though I go back to a different decade. Sounds like you did the 80s cartoons, where I did the 70s. But they were all superior to today! Thanks for the fun post.
Er, that should be loved, not love, Saturday mornings. Although I still do, but for different reasons now….
I guess I’m in the older generation of your readers – I grew up with Mighty Mouse, the Jetsons, the Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost…and after the cartoons, we watched either westerns (Audie Murphy! John Wayne!) or the Saturday Monster Movie Matinee, with such classics as The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Blob. Such a classic education – such depth of thought! such practical value! But they sure were fun. Can’t stand to watch the current batch of cartoons. Great post, and congrats on being Fresh Pressed.
I can totally agree with the sentiment expressed here. As a child of the 70s/80s I remember waking up early to bask in the glory that was Saturday Morning Cartoons.
That said, if you’re a cartoon lover there’s never been a better time to be alive. Between Cartoon Network and Boomerang on cable, Netflix and YouTube online you can watch pretty much every cartoon you ever wanted (and many you never hoped) to see again.
Congrats on being “Freshly Pressed”!
Man, I hate it when I finish a post and see something in the same vein posted on freshly pressed the same day. loved the post and check out domestic6pack Tuesday. It is a different perspective on this subject and you may get a kick out of it. keep pounding keys!
Ok here are a few I loved from the “70’s: Fog Horn Leghorn, all the Looney Tune Cartoons, The Pink Panther, Tom & Jerry, The Super Heroes.. now this is the stuff cartoons are made of. My kids and I watch them on Youtube..Thank god for Youtube!
Indeed! My daughter found a cable network (Boomerang by Cartoon Network) that occasionally shows those wonderful old cartoons.
justice league !
pink panther !
sorry no muppet baby love here
Another oldster – Johnny Quest, Pink Panther, the live action HR PufNStuf, Kids from Caper (not a cartoon).
I have found a few shows now for my kids that I like – Dinosaur Train, The Fresh Beat Band, Yo Gaba Gaba…but that Saturday morning bit is missing…
And HR PufNStuf, rewatched as an adult is…a confirmation of the name of the show. That must have been some strong sh…..
: )
Oh my goodness, I miss all those shows! I was born in 1990, so for me it was Saturday morning and I think Wednesday nights that were the big cartoon times with all the WB shows (Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Pinky and The Brain, Freakazoid).
I haven’t really watched some of the newer versions of the shows like you mentioned (Dr. Robotnik’s grandson, really?) but I have watched the new Garfield show on Cartoon Network. Once you get over the initial shock of the CGI Garfield, at least they kept the same kind of humor, etc. I still prefer grabbing the original cartoons as they are starting to come out on DVD.
Hello all! Thank you very much for the comments and I plan on replying to everyone! I am still stoked at the fact that I was selected to be “Freshly Pressed”. Keep reading folks, I have more to come. Thanks! ps. I’m going to check out everyone’s blog as well. cheers!
I recently did the same thing looking up all the theme songs to the old cartoons. 🙂
Thankz for making me feel young again. LOLs! Well, now, what is inside my head is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. I usually watched Power Rangers on a Friday evening then TMNT on a Saturday morning. It was my weekend routine. ^_^
Power Rangers got so screwed up. I don’t know how kids watch it.
The Bugs Bunny, Road Runner Show was my Saturday morning staple.
Also, if you want to school your kids back about Dr. Robotnik, here’s a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Ivo_Robotnik
Originally, Dr. Robotnik & Dr. Eggman were the same person. One was his name, and the other his alias. (Also, if memory serves, one was his name in the US release of the games, and the other his name in the Japanese release, but I could be wrong on that.) But whatever the new show says, the original evil doctor of the Sonic universe used both monikers.
Ha! That’s awesome right there! I thought Robotnik had the same thing going on as MegaMan in America and his alias RockMan in Japan. I was reading this out loud so that my son could hear it and he just shook his head. He couldn’t believe it and I told him that they are always changing cartoons like they do with comics and movies. Thanks for the comment!
Haha blast from the past!
I’m never worried about revealing my age, but wonder if you can guess what era I grew up watching these Saturday morning cartoons/shows: The Jackson Five, The Monkeys, Scoobydoo, The Archies, Mr. Magoo, Dick Tracy, Casper The Friendly Ghost…
Congrats on the fp
And Top Cat, too! I’m guessing we grew up in the same era! lol
Thanks for taking 20 years off of my life, if at least just for a few minutes while I read you blog. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Oh, and congrats on being Freshly Pressed.
Mr. Bricks
I miss Muppet Babies more than you can possibly imagine.
this is so true, i miss my saturday morning fix of cartoons too!
I miss good cartoons! I remember being a kid and watching them nearly every weekend. There is nothing worth watching on the cartoon channels anymore… even TMNT have been re-done to make them more… something. I’m not quite sure what it was they were going for. It’s not the same kind of innocent fun it used to be. And now… I think I’m going to have to go find some old episodes of She-Ra to watch to quell the nostalgia.
My favorite old-time TV cartoon goes way back before the ’80s, an era I just barely missed. I remember my parents introducing me to “Rocky and Bullwinkle” Moose Mania on Nick at Night when I was about 4 and not appreciating anything about it except Fractured Fairy Tales. By age 12, I owned several of the tapes and thought it was hillarious! What other cartoon grows with you over time like that? Back then of course, writers had to be extra creative to entertain several generations at once. I fear it might be lost on the Pixar generation though because the animation wasn’t top notch. It’s an early TV cartoon after all.
Love your post! I could chronicle my entire life based on the kind of cartoons I’ve watched, including and up to the latest Disney and Pixar movies. But seriously, not only is there a huge gap between what I watched as a child and what my kids are watching now, but there is still a tremendous gap between what my eldest, now 13, used to watch on TV and what my younger, aged 8, has available now. It’s horribly disappointing to see such an apparent downward spiral in only a few years.
Personally, my favorite growing up was Batman: The Animated Series. It’s so sad that these days 98% of cartoons assume kids are idiots/morally deviant (I blame spongebob).
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed – my boys watched a lot of the same cartoons you watched…I could even remember a lot of the intros
Sadly, when I come across the cartoons I liked in childhood, I normally think “Why did I like this crap?” There are few
exceptions.
I am just a little bit “too old” for the cartoons you recall here, but since my cousins were a bit younger than me, I kept being exposed to them and frankly, I wasn’t ashamed to have fun with them. Then my sisters’ kids kept me in when I was college age, then I took a job in a toy store for 7 years, so I would watch as a backhanded reconnaissance although by then there were few children in my life besides the customers in the store.
That means I don’t find cartoons or animation art as a whole to be better or worse in any particular era. I -do- lament that we no longer have that specific time when cartoons should be watched, but there is no reason why we can’t do that consciously with on-demand and DVDs….
Best wishes
I also miss REAL Sunday paper comic strips. When I was a kid they were fun and lighthearted. Now when I read them all I can think is – “Am I reading a political cartoon or is this not aimed at children…at all?”
Everything has to do with politics, current events, etc. They’re supposed to be fun comics, not something to promote a certain political agenda or preach about what’s going on in the world – that’s for the rest of the paper to do.
Aww, you young children are so adorable! 😉 “Golden Age” of cartoons? I’ll give you the Golden Age of cartoons. *I* grew up with the REAL Big Boys of cartoons, my friend. We had Mighty Mouse (Heeeeeere I am to save the daaaayyyy!). We had MICKEY! Mouse. Daffy Duck. Bugs Bunny. OMG, Sylvester and Tweety Bird! What about the Pink Panther? What about the FLINTSTONES? We had the REAL Batman. We don’t need no steeenkeeng “Animated Series”… Someone needs to do a cartoon smackdown. That I’d pay to see!
Ahh, nostalgia indeed.
Thank you so much for this blog. It made my night. I think it’s great that you’re lamenting cartoons I have never even heard of, but knew, even as I was cringing whenever the Spongebob jingle announced that horrifically annoying laugh, that my kids would be wistfully sharing it with their kids one day. They still don’t believe me, but hopefully we’ll have another ten or 15 years to find out…
:)I miss those days!! I remember as a kid of the 80’s waking up super early before the sun came up to watch the cartoons! I loved watching M.A.S.K, The Gummi Bears, Wuzzles, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Noozles, The Mysterious Cities of Gold….my list is super long. Remember when the Disney and Bugs Bunny cartoons were uncensored too?
I liked how every channel had something good on until maybe 12 or 1 PM. When I see the stuff that’s on today I can’t help but cringe when I pass them. Thank goodness for the remastered DVD’s sets that are out now….but the Inspector Gadget DVD set is so hard to find.
I grew up in the days of Recess, Hey Arnold, and Kim Possible. Those weren’t bad either, though admittedly, I think that was about the era cartoons started slipping.
I always loved the Saturday morning cartoons and loved watching Looney Toons and other cartoons like that. Congrats on being Freshly Pressed!
When I wear my You Can’t Do That On Television tshirt most people just look at me like I have two heads. When I say Salute Your Shorts or Roundhouse, they think I’m speaking in jibberish. It’s so nice to have someone else remember the good times (and not think I’m a total loon)!
My kids are 5 and 6, and they both know the Rugrats and what a VHS is. Makin’ Mama Proud!
I not only like this post, I LOVE it!
Am definitely a child of the 80s and I had totally forgotten about the Wuzzles! Thanks for the reminder. I’ve done this a couple times myself too… sat and just youtubed a tons of old cartoon intro’s.
There were other staples like the Thunder Cats and Jem (for the girls :)) and the Popples and I used to love Good Morning Mickey and Donald Duck Presents 🙂
Oh Saturday morning cartoons… I miss them too! lol
I keep seeing cartoons that I loved already mentioned. I scrolled quickly, so I’m not sure if someone already said Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. Kids don’t know what they’re missing these days!
Well said, well said! Good Morning Ms. Bliss and Saved By the Bell, I haven’t heard that in a longgggggggg time! Congrats on the Fresh Pressed.
Young soul, i like your thinking way, like a child, cute
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I love to watch Boomerang. I was a little late for the best shows like “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” and “The Looney Tunes” or “Tom & Jerry.” I mean, look at Tom and Jerry. There are practically no jokes, just good old cartoony animation and slapstick comedy. Spongebob is basically the only cartoon I watch, and even now there is too much grown up humor and subtle adult comedy. But a good old cartoon like The Flinstones or The Jetsons can keep me watching for hours.
What a great post! I remember running home from school to watch Heathcliff and Reading Rainbow. My 10 year old son loves to watch Tom & Jerry and old vintage Mickey Mouse cartoons (I got him into those to balance out the modern day cartoons he also watches). Much to my surprise, he loves cartoons from the 80’s!
I was born at 1992 and kinda have the glory of the saturday and sunday morning cartoon! And now when I see cartoon these days, they’re all crap. Maybe the ‘glory’ depends on the generations, maybe….
Your post really took me back. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine with a 5 year old son… So true. Quality has dwindled but perhaps that’s just the bias of the previous generation 🙂
I wouldn’t neccassarily say that all of today’s cartoons are bad. I mean, yes, most of them are HORRIBLE, but others are good. Like Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure, etc. (Yes, you’ve made a point, not many good ones out there.) Sailor Moon is a classic…
Wow! I was just wanting the opening theme for Xena, too!
That Wuzzle’s show is not one that I’ve heard of, but I have seen a new show that has a similar premise, but it’s all that poopy flash animation.
OMG, I love this post so much! You so took me back to my saturday morning cartoons as well! That was when cartoons were great! Remember Teddy Ruskbin (not sure on the spelling), the original Scooby Doo, James Bond Jr., Sailor Moon, Garfield and Friends?? OH and loved Darkwing Duck!! Ok, I could go on and on. Thanks again for the reminder of those days 🙂
Tom & Jerry, Flintstones, Captain Planet, Dexter’s laboratory and Power-Puff Girls were my favorites. I never get to see any of them now, except for The Tom & Jerry Show.I pity my kid brother who watches cartoons like Shinchan, Pokemon, Digimon and god-knows-what-mo(ron)s!!! All of them are irritating and irksome.
I used to love another Cartoon Show which i eagerly used to watch, but i am unable to recall it’s name! The characters were some brown squirrels. Oh! what was it? Anyways no use, they have all gone..:(
N one ever knows what I am talking about when I metion Pinwheel. My sisters and I used to play Gotcha Last!
He-man was one of my favs and My little ponies.
He-Man, Thundercats, Transformers, Ghostbusters, The Raccoons, TMHT, Cities Of Gold, Inspector Gadget, Popeye
I’m a kid of the 90s and I remember the good old Saturday morning cartoons and tv programmes back when they were brilliant. It takes me back reading this post. Nowadays most old cartoons are being revamped (like Thundercats) or make it completely 3D (like the Astro Boy/Smurfs movie and Bananas in Pyjamas, which was originally people in costumes). It destroys the great way these programmes were and still are to people of our generation and above. My boyfriend (who was born in the 80s) and I always discuss this sort of stuff since we’re both very much still kids at heart when it comes to cartoons, and it saddens us to see such great things being destroyed. It just doesn’t make sense as to why they can’t bring back the old cartoons, but just re-master them. I know most you can get on dvd now, but sometimes it can be really hard to even find them (right now I would really like to find Moomins, The Racoons or Family Ness).
The only problem of tv networks of today is that they think because there is such an expansion of technology, kids of now would prefer watching a cartoon in 3D animation rather than in the original, and that as anime is now growing more popular (I’m a very big fan of old animes such as Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura), they think of doing cartoons now in that particular art style, which never goes well with it. And as well as this, half of the cartoons/tv shows of now don’t make sense whatsoever. The only thing that takes me back on today’s tv is watching the repeats of this programme called Fun House, which was aired in the 90s, on one of the digital channels.
I can say a whole lot more about this, but my reply would be way too long. But it’s great to see people still think the same way as I do, and I very much enjoyed reading your post on this topic.
Let’s see… I grew up during the 90s and I think that cartoons now a days suck. Here are a few of my favourites
Pokemon (with the original 8 badges)
Sailor Moon (in the early days)
Digimon (first couple seasons)
Dexter’s Lab
Animaniacs
The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show
Pinky and the Brain
Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers
Ohhh there are so many that I can’t even remember 😦
Sometimes i wish i can go back to my childhood without worries. Still i watch cartoons sometimes to forget some of my problems. Modern cartoons is still entertaining but nothing beats my childhood cartoons.
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I didn’t grow up in the US but my Saturday morning cartoons included the following: Thundercats, TMNT, Jem and the Holograms, My Little Pony, Carebears, Punky Brewster, Scooby Doo, The Jetsons, The Flintstones and Dennis the Menaceand something called Honey Honey and that cartoon with glasses wearing girl whose family lived on a bus and had a pet monkey.
Ahh, the memories…I have conversations about what everyone watched when they were growing up at least twice a year! I remember most of the ones you’ve mentioned plus Mask, Captain Planet and Trap Door.
So funny that you posted this! My husband and i were doing the exact same thing the other night. Do you remember the Disney show “Dinosaurs”? “Not the baby! Not the baby!” OMG I felt like a kid when we sat and watched intros for an hour, I am going on a quest to purchase every season of every show that I loved as a kid (after I hit the lotto, that is)…
Thanks for the post, brightened up my morning. 🙂
I was a big fan of The Littles! Seems like there were a lot of off the wall cartoons too, like the WWF Superstars, or something like that. And these weren’t cartoons, but we also watched the Kroft collection of shows. They were slightly before my time, but they were replayed on saturdays. Things like Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Seamonsters, H.R. Puffenstuff, and the Bugaloos. Yep, I remember getting up before it was even light on saturday mornings and sitting there on the floor right in front of the set, because there was no remote so I had to be close to change the channel, and chowing down on cereal. I’m still addicted to cereal, but you’re right, cartoons suck these days.
old cartnoon network is where its at.
This is something that I bring up now and then in various discussions and articles. The big problem is that the networks got tired of fighting parents groups and the FCC and gave up Saturday mornings, most channels to younger kids distributors and Fox altogether. There is very little out there for kids and almost nothing the family can watch together, which bothers me to no end.
By the way, some of the cartoons y’all mentioned (Thundercats and MASK, for example) came not from Saturday mornings but syndication, weekdays to be exact. (Some syndicated cartoons aired on either Saturday or Sunday, depending on the channel.) That was killed off when Fox and the WB (now CW) aired an afterschool lineup, and shoved syndicated cartoons out of existence. (Then the local channels decided that another court or talk show would get them more money, so the heck with the kids.)
You can find the occasional show that is well done, but it gets buried by the quantity of underwhelming stuff thrown together to babysit or “educate” kids rather than entertain them. It’s really a shame.
My kids have spent the morning watching old Pink panther episodes on Netflix and I think that rocks. 🙂 Great Blog.
I watch a lot of TV and remember all the above fondly. To add:
BTW, Pinwheel was awesome!
– Darkwing Duck (“Let’s get dangerous!” He’s the vegetarian vampire duck)
– Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers (with Montey and Gadget)
– Danger Mouse
– The Mysterious Cities of Gold
There’s definitely more, but just thought I’d name a few.
Excellent post, it brings a tear to my eye and wrenching in my heart to know that I no longer partake in the essential Saturday morning cartoon and cereal fest. Thank you for the flashback.
Gummi Bears and DuckTales used to play on Tv in India too. I loved Duck Tales. It was one of my favorite shows.
oooh… 😥 i’ve missed them all too.. especially x-men..
X-Men the animated series? Heck yeah! I loved that cartoon! I remember getting home from school and turning to Fox to check out Xmen but it disappeared for a while there. All I remember was the episode with Bishop and it was a two part episode and then nothing. I didn’t even know it had a few seasons after that. I thought they just cancelled it. Good show though!
Nice. Growing up, I’m personally like Dinosaucers and He-Man
Alright folks, I’ve gone through and answered as many quotes as I could. *phew* Next up will be to check out everyone’s blog. Thanks again for reading and please continue to read up on Jabber Log. If you dug the cartoons check out http://wp.me/p1vFMP-72 for some Nintendo action.
Also can someone help with something? I cannot remember the name of the crystal bars that the Doozers in Fraggle Rock used to make their buildings. I remember that every Fraggle ate them but what did they call them? Please help!!!!!!!!!
Doozer Sticks. They were made in part by Fraggle’s other favorite food, radishes.
WHAT!? That was it? Man…and here I thought it had a different name. I thought it was something special. lol! Doozer Sticks huh? Well awesome then, I can sleep better now knowing the name. Thanks for the help and I did not know they were made from radishes. Good work!
YEAH, I KNOW WANT YOU MEAN I LOVE WATCHING CARTOON.
BUT THE LOONLY TUNES THAT CAME ON THE Wb. AND THE BRAIN
WAS THE GOOD TO.
I loved Duck Tales, and definitely forgot it existed until I read this. Ah! I’m not even that old – 23 – and I loved watching those. As if they are off the air. I guess you could always download episodes or watch them on youtube… everything looks different today. It’s more robotic, and technical. Lame.
wuzzles?? Never heard of them? Am I really old?:) Thanks so much for sharing with us
This was a really good post, loved reading it! I, too, really miss getting up really early on a Saturday watching all the good shows.. I’m not that old and I guess we had some different cartoons in Norway, but the point is the same; now a days they just send crap, or Winnie the Pooh 3D :S
My kids and I have commented on how the cartoons are not the same anymore. I grew up on Looney Toones, Pink Panther, Scooby Doo, and the likes. I am still growing up with Spongebob. I miss these old classics.
Hey do you like “Bob The Builder”?
Ah the memories! I watched all those cartoons. They’re just not the same anymore. I posted a while back about how although some of the old stuff was a little violent they’re still more entertaining and less weird than some of the stuff I see today. Give me back the old Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry!
Great Job, I just want to put one that apparently was forgotten – DINOSAUCERS :DDDDDD I just get goosebumps when I mention it’s name! “They used to be 4 ordinary teenagers…” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjhJSD8RU4k
Can anyone remember PHUNKY PHANTOM? these three teens and a dog are cught ina storm take shelter in this old house when they reset the hands on the old grandfather clock a revoltionary war ghost and his cat appear
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