I am familiar with them because I was born in the late 70s and grew up in the 80s before cable was ubiquitous and there were, even with UHF, still less than 10 channels and most of them were broadcasting old programming i.e. old Warner Bros. cartoon shorts, I Love Lucy, the Andy Griffith Show, and so on. FOX, for example, was still new and pretty much aired nothing else.
Today with every home getting hundreds of channels of new and original programming and the endless distractions of video games and the internet do children ever get the opportunity to enjoy the timeless classic cartoon shorts?
Our 13 year old daughter has certainly seen them on TV, at the movies, and on DVD. But she doesn’t love them the way we do, and prefers Rugrats and Spongebob Squarepants to them.
Well, we don’t have cable (not out of any Doper Virtue, just because we can’t afford it), so due to dearth of options, the six year has seen a few Tom and Jerry’s. She…doesn’t like them. I swear, I haven’t badmouthed them, but she’s just as disturbed by their abusive relationship as I was as a kid. She liked one of the “friends” episodes, but hates the adversarial ones.
She’s also freaked out by The Three Stooges. Loves MAS*H and Mary Tyler Moore, though.
