Every generation has their own cartoon.
Boomers: Looney Tunes.
Gen Xers: Simpsons.
Millennials: Spongebob.
What is the cartoon for Zoomers? Maybe Adventure Time?
Then who had Ren & Stimpy?
Looks like it might still be Spongebob?
But I suspect that the audience is too fragmented and the options too many for any one series to be iconic. Very important ones would probably include (derived independently of that list) Steven Universe, My Little Pony, and Rick and Morty.
Rick and Morty? Archer?
IMHO, those two shows are clearly targeted at Gen-Xers.
Some of us older boomers go back even farther to Betty Boop, B&W Popeye and even cartoons with no speaking, just music (I seem to recall mice were involved in most of these)
For my students, it’s Rick and Morty, followed by Spongebob.
I have two students (18 year olds) with Spongebob tattoos.
Yeah, but most of those old timey cartoons were made eons before I was even born. So would those be “boomer” cartoons? If I try to remember cartoon shows that were closer to my age at the time I watched them, I think of Crusader Rabbit or Tom Terrific or Mighty Mouse. I was probably closer to my teens, but Rocky and Bullwinkle was pretty iconic for my peers and I.
Aren’t Boomers now Zoomers? 
I hear Paw Patrol is all the rage. :dubious:
For young adults I’d say it’s Yu-Gi-Oh! They’ve been marinaded, battered and deep fried in it. It was licensed real cheap so it became ubiquitous for almost two decades.
The Millenial cartoon is probably South Park or Pokemon, no?
Spongebob always struck me as a Generation Z thing. It started just after those two, but it seems like it was mostly watched by people born in the 2000s?
Nitpick: The first Looney Tunes cartoons were produced in 1930. They were as much the Greatest Generation’s property as the Boomers.
The cartoons Boomers could plausibly claim ownership of are the limited animation Hanna Barbera TV shows like Flintstones, Jetsons, etc.
I guess that’s more proof we Boomers ruined everything.
Pfft. Yeah. “Groovy”.
To be fair, while we Gen-Xers like to claim cool shows like the Simpsons, what we *actually *grew up on was 30-minute toy commercials like *Transformers *and G.I. Joe.
Yeah, when the Simpsons came out, the oldest Gen X were in their mid-20s, and the youngest were about to hit our teens.
I’ve seen one sociologist who split Gen-X into 2 waves, “Atari Wave” and “Nintendo Wave”. Speaking as an Atari Wave Gen-Xer, I was already in college by the time the toy commercial shows were on. Instead, I grew up on the dregs of Filmation and Hanna-Barbera’s death throes, the shit Boomerang won’t touch despite having the rights. Crap like “Hong Kong Phooey” and all the kids-and-a-talking-critter-in-a-vehicle-solving-mysteries shows that just duplicated the Scooby-Doo formula - Funky Phantom “let’s make an real ghost part of the team” - Jabberjaw “talking shark instead of talking dog” - Speed Buggy - “ah fuck it, can’t think of an animal, just make the car talk and call it a day” and all the animated spinoffs of current prime time hits (“The Brady Kids”, “New Adventures of Gilligans Island”, “Emergency +4”).
It’s amazing anyone my age likes animation, especially as Disney Feature Animation was at its absolute nadir in the 1970s.
Based on my kids (born in 1999 and 2002) and their classmates, I’d say the big shows in the 00s were Pokemon, Spongebob, Ben 10, and the various Butch Hartman
“screaming morons = funny” shows on Nick. For the current decade, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, and Regular Show. And although it bombed in its original run in 2003, around 2010-2012, reruns of “Invader Zim” started developing a cult following with the middle school and older set.
I’m old enough to remember the first cartoons actually made for TV, like Crusader Rabbit, Tom Terrific, and Col. Bleep. Those even more ancient cartoons were made as shorts for movies, in the 1920s and 1930s but there was such need for content for kids in the 1950s that they played Farmer Gray and others incessantly on Saturday mornings, so they became as much ours as they were our parents’.
The next iteration was all the Jay Ward productions, such as Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Dooright, and George of the Jungle.
Are we talking what cartoons they like watching as kids? My 7yo is all about My Little Pony:FiM and Teen Titans Go.
The other shows I mentioned were earlier, but had even more limited animation, mostly just stills with narration. Hanna Barbera’'s TV cartoons started in 1957 with Ruff and Ready followed by Huckleberry Hound, Pixie and Dixie, and Yogi Bear. (A nitpick: The Flintstones and The Jetsons weren’t kids shows, but were shown in prime time for adults.) But all the Jay Ward shows are of about the same vintage, and were much better.
You’re thinking of Neil Howe and William Strauss.
I’m an Xer, and I would consider The Simpsons the defining cartoon of my generation, but, yes, when we watched everyday cartoons, it was more like Transformers or He-Man for me in my younger days. Once I got to high school, it was Simpsons the rest of the way through (I was a freshman when the Simpsons debuted, though I remember the Tracy Ullman shorts, as well.) That cartoon became “water cooler” talk at school the way none of the other did.