I agree with CalMeacham that Chuck Jones in his prime is possibly the finest, both of Warner Bros. animation and animation in general. Bob Clampett at Warners and Tex Avery at MGM are of course also great and extremely silly. I’m also a big fan of the Fleischer Studios Popeyes- starting around when Jack Mercer started doing the voice in 1935 to around 1940 or 1941, they were extremely brilliant and unlike anything else out there.
Although all these are great, I’ve got to say that the best “classic” cartoon show was Animaniacs. Now, y’all may not think Animaniacs is a “classic” show, but they originally appeared 1993 to 1995, and that’s almost 15 years ago now. Yikes!
NOTHING was funnier end to end than Animaniacs. Moose and Squirrel are pretty darn funny, too. After that, gotta go with the Roadrunner cartoons.
At one point, I seem to remember being able to watch Warner Bros. cartoons for something like two hours straight in the 60s on a Saturday morning, followed by the Pink Panther. Life was goooooood then!
As far as TV cartoons, I’m gonna agree with Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, as well as The Simpsons in their prime, some Jay Ward stuff, early SpongeBobs and Fairly Oddparents (SpongeBob’s ten this year- I think he’s become a “classic” by now), and maybe a few others I can’t think of right now.
Lately, I’ve been catching some Chuck Jones Daffy Duck and realizing he’s way funnier than Bugs, especially since many of the 'toons were pop-culture parodies. Consider that in addition to the classic Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century and Stuporduck, there were parodies of Dragnet, Sherlock Holmes, movie westerns, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Robin Hood, Boston Blackie and God knows what else.
My personal favourites remain the Three Bears, though.
Daffy is also the better actor. Bugs was a bigger star, but he always played Bugs. Daffy inhabited his various roles.
Underdog
Go Go Gophers
All those ultra-violent funny animal ones from Paramount/Famous Studios
King Leonardo
Original Johnny Quest
Sad Cat
Sidney the Mental Elephant
Hashimoto The Japanese Mouse and his family
Linus
People have already invoked Popeye, the Panther, Mighty Mouse and the Warner Bros crew, and I must add my voice to the chorus of their collective cartoon greatness as well.
Yep. All animals except for the sailorman and the mysterious adventure kids. Do you wanna make something of it?
They can be somewhat repetitive, but the first series of Tom & Jerry shorts by Hanna & Barbera with input from Tex Avery are my favorites. They’re the most gorgeous non-Disney cartoons from the era, while at the same time easily the match for the most violent Loony Tunes. Moreover, while there’s plenty of scenes of Tom getting hit with a rolling pin or blasted by a roman candle, the thin premise required the crew to come up with more and more complex Rube Goldberg-like contraptions to get the cat his comeuppance.
I also like the second group of Tom & Jerry cartoons, the Czechoslovakian set with the jarring music and exaggerated animations, but they’re an acquired taste. The final set, the ones Chuck Jones did in the '60’s, mostly leave me cold.
Also up there for me are the Flesicher Popeyes and Jones’ work for Warner Bros. as mentioned upthread.
–Cliffy
And you sympathized with Daffy, you identified with him. He always got fucked, but it was always his own greed and selfishness that did him in. There was something deeply human about Daffy.
Everyone on this board grew up hating that good looking prick/bitch that always was picked first for everything and was always successful no matter what they did. That’s Bugs Bunny.
Crusader Rabbit is another great character that hasn’t been mentioned.
I loved these! Also, Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales and Felix the Cat, especially his nephew, Poindexter. 
Chuck Jones himself put it best- “I dream I’m Bugs Bunny, but when I wake up I’m Daffy Duck.” Bugs is who we all want to be and does what we wish we could do, Daffy is who we are and what really happens to us.
Chuck Jones had some very clear ideas about the characters he drew. Bugs Bunny was almost a force of nature. Everything he did worked. He could put a mop on his head and get any guy so twitterpated he’d be tripping over his own tongue. If Bugs went looking for a fight, he’d be the biggest bully of all time. He had to be provoked or it wouldn’t be funny.
I’ve never really read anything comparable about the other cartoon studios/directors/characters, but that sense of the characters and making the stories work is a large part of why the Warner Brothers stuff was so good.
Yeah but a bully doesn’t have to be provoked, they already win. Who inherently sides with a bully?
Daffy loses, he deserves too, but he loses. I like that.
I was born in 1981 so I cannot possibly accept that Ren & Stimpy, Animaniacs, The Simpsons, or Spongebob are classic cartoons. No. Good, not classic.
My list:
- Roadrunner/Wile E. (oh what they could do without ever saying a word!)
- Bugs Bunny
- All that other stuff
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- Sylvester and Tweety. Never liked them for some reason.
Me, I can’t stand Roadrunner. Or Tom/Jerry, Sylvester/Tweety, or any of the almost wordless hunter/prey dyads that were rife in those days. I always ended up hating Roadrunner, Jerry and Tweety and wanting them to get eaten – but they always won. Plus, I just prefer wordplay to sight gags. While Bugs had Fudd and Daffy on his ass, at least they tangled with words, not just slapstick. Though the slaptstick was sublime.
If Animaniacs is classic, then so must we consider The Simpsons classic, and the latter trumps the former in every way for me. Of course that’s not entirely fair, since it’s not mainly for kids, while Animaniacs is primarily for kids (though certainly enjoyable for adults too). But I’m too old to have seen either one of those as a child. My childhood years were mostly the seventies.
So the cartoons I loved most were:
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Schoolhouse Rock. Does this count as a cartoon, since it was only tiny shorts in between other programs?
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I must admit to a fondness for Josie and the Pussycats.
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Flintstones.
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Underdog
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Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse
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All the Dr. Seuss specials
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All the Chuck Jones Rudyard Kipling specials – Rikki Tiki Tavi, The White Seal, Mowgli’s Brothers, A Cricket in Times Square and so on were all just … awesome.
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Gumby, dammit!
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Rocky & Bullwinkle
:eek::eek::eek::eek:
I remember this!!!
I remember this!!!
“If the boy moves…I strike, if the boy doesn’t move I strike”
Oh my good lord that short was amazing.
It wasn’t a short, was it? I remember it being feature or near feature length.
Sylvester and Tweety were okay but–with the exception of a few shorts–nothing special when compared with the rest of the Warner Brothers toon roster. Actually, I think Sylvester was a lot funnier in his non-Tweety cartoons where he’s trying to impress his easily-embarrassed son or he’s the mostly-silent and perpetually-terrified foil to Porky who has a blind-spot to all the weird things going on around them.
Rikki Tiki Tavi was a half hour of awesome with Orson Welles and June Foray, among others.
Good memory, Sir T-Cups! That Nagaina (sp) snake scared the bejesus out of me.
“Son of the man who killed Nag. If you move, I strike! If you do not move, I strike!”
“What price for a cobra’s egg?”
I agree completely on Jerry, and somewhat with Tweety. This is where the psychology comes in again. The Roadrunner never goes out of his way to hurt the Coyote. That was one of the rules. The worst he ever does is surprise him by going “beep, beep!” There’s sympathy for the Coyote, but everyone can see that he brings these things on himself. I didn’t hate the Roadrunner because he never really did anything wrong. Jerry was just a sadistic little shit.
And the Coyote had moments of sheer brilliance. My favorite had a wagon, a tubful of water, an outboard motor, and roller skates. The Coyote puts the motor in the tub, cranks the throttle, and the whole contraption starts moving forward. In the real world, this is completely impossible; but in the cartoon world it is some sort of weirdly inspired genius.