I like to regale my DVR-wielding children with tales of the primitive television of my childhood. We limit their TV to the weekends, mostly, so they still experience a thrill at getting to watch TV on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But they have such a wide variety available to them, that 30 years from now I wonder if their generation will have enough shows in common to experience the kind of shared nostalgia you see in this thread.
I used to get the TV insert out of the newspaper on Friday night and plan out my Saturday morning. **Superfriends **was my favorite, and I remember The Smurfs, Looney Tunes, He-Man, Land of the Lost, The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Fat Albert, and Scooby-doo.
Lost in Space came on on Sunday mornings. I’ve seen the first half-hour of every episode, because at 9:30 we had to leave for church. I don’t know what possessed me to watch it every week knowing that I would never see the ending.
I also remember how excited I was when we got a 4th channel, Fox, because it would continue to show programming when the president was giving a speech on the other 3 channels.
That reminds me of when the networks used to have a special cartoon preview show to advertise their Saturday morning lineup, usually in late August or early September. They’d have a live action framing starring one of their sitcom stars that basically linked together clips from all the shows, old and new, that they’d be running on Saturday mornings.
I preferred the earlier SuperFriends (the episodes with Wendy and Marvin—whatever happened to them??), though I don’t know whether it was because they were better or I was younger.
I have reach the conclusion that for good or ill, our kids will never have the shared nostalgia that past generations did. Between 300 channels, On Demand viewing and DVDs, kids have far less overlap than those of us that grew up with less than 10 channels and not even a VCR. Music was also less fragmented in the 60s and 70s and didn’t really break up until the 80s. My kids watch an enjoy Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, Animaniacs, Bewitch and I dream of Jeanie along with shows on Animal Planet and Discovery Kids and the New Doctor Who. They watch a lot of kids and family DVDs. I doubt that when they are in their 30s and 40s that they will find they same heavy overlap of viewing that we do now.
Okay, I like Shazam, Isis, and Land of the Lost. There was also a show called Jason of Star Command that was set in the same universe as Space Academy. And I liked Ark II.
Does anyone remember a cartoon that was sort of like a Swiss Family Robinson type thing, but the family was in some kind of strange dinosaur type land? IIRC, they had two pet dinosaur/dragon creatures. One looked sort of like a triceratops and shot hot rocks out of his horn and the other was possibly a dragon or similar flying lizard. They may also have had two pet creatures that looked like Schmoo/Barbapapa.
Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, 1.5 hours worth. With full cartoon violence intact.
Scooby Doo, Where are You?
Laff-a-Lympics
Thundarr the Barbarian
Dungeons and Dragons
Gummi Bears
Superfriends
So if all that started at 7:00 AM, it would last till about noon. Of course I don’t get up at 7:00 AM these days.
It’s been making me crazy for years not knowing what that show was!
ETA: I must’ve have seen the later versions created in 1981 because I remember more advanced animation.
Oh, and another huge favourite of both me and my sister was the Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle animated series. We used to swing around on the vines of weeping willows in the park back then. We were both really into the “barbarian” genre too, like Thundarr.
So no love for all that weird trippy cocaine-fueled 80’s stuff? Am I the only person in the world who watched Kid Video? What the hell was that all about?
There was another one somewhat like this “Valley of the Dinosaurs.” A family was river rafting and sucked down a whirlpool into the valley. They spent their time trying to escape and educating the primitive cavemen on the ways of civilized white men.
What was the very first “cartoon” on your viewing schedule. My Saturday ritual started with the station test pattern (remember those) at 6:30am then station identification, WICU TV12 begins its broadcast day on a frequency of so many megahertz and so many watts. Then the national anthem both USA and Canada, after that at 6:45am Davey and Goliath. Bliss until Soul Train.
My Youthful Saturdays revolved around The Superfriends, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show, The Pink Panther, The Double Deckers (I’m glad somebody else remembers that), H.R. Puffnstuff, Sigmund and the Seamonster and the Brady Kids (remember Ping and Pong, the AstroPandas?).
Ark II… that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time…
I’m sure if I watched it today it’d be cheesier than Wisconsin but I remember liking it and thinking it was a really intelligent series. I loved the jetpack also. I remember an episode about abandoned children (about 3 of them) the Ark picked up who had developed telepathy.
Ah Space Academy- why can I remember the name “Commander Gampu” and that he was played by Jonathan Harris or that his companion was Loki played by Meeno Peluce who is the brother of Soleil Moon Frye and their other brother played Resolve Wheeler in my favorite miniseries, The Awakening Land, which starred Elizabeth Montgomery who played opposite Jonathan Harris in a BEWITCHED episode in which… anyway, but I can’t remember where I left my car keys or the name of the professor who talks to me every night about her daughter in Ohio? I remember we had to do a report on “Your Ideal School” for some class when I was a kid and I based mine on Space Academy. What I thought was cheesy even at the time though were the stars being so obviously Christmas tree light bulbs and in straight lines (I could have made a more believable galaxy on a lite-bright).
I’m glad there is some more love for Jason but 
