I agree with your list for the most part. I would add Sherman and Mr. Peabody to Rocky and Bullwinkle as you did George, supe and Tom. I would also add Duddly DoRight to your “good” list. I would add Yogi Bear to your cheesy-but-fun list.
I also thought Tom Terriffic was pretty terriffic, and Gerald McBoingBoing rang a gong for me. I also liked the early Mr. MaGoo but couldn’t see the later ones - they were pretty lame.
Crusader Rabbit and his buddy Raggs were fun too way ahead of their time.
Had little use for Scooby-Doo at the time but have become tolerant of them as I aged.
I may have caught the tail end of the Saturday morning cartoon phenomena, but whenever I think of Saturday morning cartoons, I always think of Garfield and Friends. That show was 100 times funnier than the comic strip ever was.
Most of the ones that have really endured are the movie shorts that were later broadcast on Saturday mornings like bugs Warner Bros. or Tom and Jerry.
Others that I watched, but haven’t seen lately to see how they’ve aged include Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Droopy and Felix the Cat.
We recently had some horrible '70s Magoo home from the library on DVD, there was a talking, nearsighted dog and a completely different nephew voiced by Casey Kasem. Awful!
I’d like the new Huckleberry Hound DVD, but I’m not sure if it will live up to my memories. Hmm Hmm Hmmmmm Hm…Hmm Hmm Hmmmmm Hm…
Well, limited it to Saturday morning cartoons cuts down a lot of options. I’m taking this to mean that we can only list shows that were aired on Saturday morning and produced part of a networks’ block of programming.
That would leave out…
Cartoons that aired in Prime Time (Flintsontes, Jetsons)
Old theatrical shorts repackaged for Saturday morning (Looney Tunes)
Shows produced and licensed for syndication (G.i. Joe)
Foreign Imports. (Robotech)
Not leaving a whole lot left. My prime years for sitting in front of the tube for hours on end watching cartoons was 1976-1982 and they were the frickin’ nadir of kidvid.
I’ve also found that a lot of shows I had fond memories of were pretty awful after revisiting them years later. And even if one episode of a show was pretty decent, watching multiple episodes would make my eyes bleed due to the mind-numbing repetition (of both plots and footage).
And after Jay Ward got out of the Saturday morning cartoon racket to make more money doing Cap’n Crunch commercials, the reins of Saturday morning were left in the hands of Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, and Ruby-Spears, often in a ract ot the bottom to see who could produce shows more cheaply.
Having said all that, I then forgot to list any shows…
Rocky & Bullwinkle: More clever than laugh out loud funny. I didn’t care too much for them when I was younger. A lot of R&B were multi-episode plots and I always seemed to tune in in the middle.
George of the Jungle
Jonny Quest
Fantastic Four (the late 60s series, not the late 70s one with Herbie the Robot)
Thundarr the Barbarian (designed and developed by Jack Kirby)
Dungeons & Dragons (started meh, but the 2nd season was where it shone)
The Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (one of the few so-called comedies that could elicit laughter)
I agree with everyone on Rocky and Bullwinkle (great show) and almost everyone on Scooby Doo (crappy show). Another favourite from the 60’s is Roger Ramjet. And for a couple years in the 90’s, the best show on TV was Eek the Cat.
No it wasn’t ya fogey! First of all, Smurfs was syndicated, not SAT AM (played afterschool on Paramount 20 in my market). Second, the Golden Age of SAT AM happened AFTER the Smurfs. I know you boomers and early gen-xers may be fond of your childhood memories, but a cold, hard rule of animation is that nothing worthwhile was produced in the 60’s and 70’s. That goes for film too, but it’s especially true for television. Now to hit you guys in the head with the obvious by running off a few (post-Smurfs)titles:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (syndicated, yes, but it also had a national SAT AM slot)
Ghostbusters (see above)
Super Mario Bros. 3
Taz-Mania
Sonic SAT AM (I didn’t like it, but it had it’s fans, and great production values)
Captain N (not universally acclaimed, but I liked the subject matter)
Earthworm Jim
Freakazoid
Eek/Thunderlizards/(and later)Klutter
Pepper Ann
Superman TAS
Tick
Yes, it’s easy for me to praise these shows since they pefectly coincided with MY childhood, but I was just lucky. Objectively, I’m sure it’ll be a while before anyone forgets any of those.
As mentioned befrore, most of these weren’t “Saturday morning” cartoons – the Warner Bothers stuff started as theatrical cartoons, and even the Bugs Bunny Show started as prime-time compilations. The Flintstones were prime time when they started out, and so were Rocky and Bullwinkle, and even Huckleberry Hound. All of these got recycled to Saturday Morning much later on.
Of those that really did start on Saturday mornings, I can’t think of any from the 1960s or 1970s that really stood up well (with the possible exception of Star Trek, the Animated Series). Most sturday morning fare was cheaply drawn and cheaply written stuff – Dino Boy, the Fantastics, Whacky Racers, The Beagles, The Fantastic Four , Spider Man, the Superf Friends, Fantastic Voyage, Journey to the Center of the Earth, the Barkeleys, etc.
More recently, as noted, Reboot was on saturday mornings.
Also, my vote for the best, The Tick, a true classic.
Ducktales wasn’t SAT AM. It was syndicated, playing weekday afternoons in most markets. Same for Tiny Toon Adventures. And before anyone mentions Batman TAS, that, too, began in syndication.
