Inspired by this thread, which got me looking into the amusements of my 80s childhood.
What cartoons did you used to watch after school or on Saturday morning? Which ones do you remember most? Which do you only have a fuzzy memory of and aren’t sure really existed?
I have very fond memories of She-Ra and Muppet Babies. I want them back.
One show I thought I’d made up is M.A.S.K., because none of my friends knew what I was talking about. Does anyone else remember this one?
Don’t you think cartoons were so much better back then? What happened to them?
eyes username I think my favorite might be obvious. I don’t have a very good memory but aside from Looney Toons, I do remember watching Rocky and Bullwinkle a lot.
I was a child during the Golden Age of saturday morning cartoons - right when limited animation didn’t look so limited anymore and just before cable killled off the genre. We had Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Taz-Mania, Super Mario Brothers 3, Captain N - The Gamemaster, Little Shop (a cartoon version of the musical Little Shop of Horrors), Eek! The Cat, X-men (I didn’t really watch that, though), Fantastic Max, Sonic the Hedgehog (too soap operatic), The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (hilarious, that’s the one I liked) Beetlejuice, Animaniacs, Raw Toonage (Disney’s animated sketch comedy), A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (Hanna Barbara’s first self-parody), Attack of the Killer Tomatos, Batman the Animated Series, Little Rosie (Rosanne’s cartoon. Not great but fun as a curio), Earthworm Jim, Captain Planet (I know it’s cool to hate it now, but that scold of a show was intense), Back to the Future, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures (I found out about the movies later), Freakazoid!, and Hysteria!. There was alot of garbage I left out (like Denver the Last Dinosaur and Pro-Stars), and I tried not to include syndicated cartoons that played during the weekdays (though I probably made a couple of slip-ups). Anyway, like I already said, I think I was lucky enough to experience the pinnacle of Saturday morning cartoons. 80’s cartoons were too serious. We had action oriented shows like Ghostbusters and TMNT, but they never took themselves as seriously as GI Joe and He-man did. And these days, the SatAM landscape is dead thanks to cable networks like Nick and CN luring all of the good cartoon talent. I think stuff like Zim, Fairly Oddparents, and Powerpuff Girls are as good as anything in the old days, but things were so much more satisfying when they were all concentrated into a giant five-hour block.
To this day, I’m convinced I’m the only person to ever see a bizarre little cartoon called Inhumanoids. It’s probably at least partly responsible for my twisted imagination today.
Bullwinkle was probably my favorite, but I also remember liking Beany and Cecil a lot when I was very small. We’re talking the early 60’s here, of course.
Childhood: Pink Panther, Speed Racer, Herculoids, Space Ghost, and any number of Sid and Marty Krofft shows.
As an adult, I still liked Pink Panther. Once, in college, I remember tuning in to Saturday morning cartoons one horrible morning while still under the effect of the various poisons I’d dumped into my system the night before… and watching an episode of Inhumanoids.
I did not understand it. In my addled state, I remember finally deciding that it seemed to be about construction workers who’ve accidentally tunneled their way into Hell, and now they have to deal with the consequences of their actions by catching the horrible things that escaped and making them go back, somehow. I was actually kind of surprised when I tuned in the following weekend, cold sober, to see how they were doing, and discovering what the show was really about.
I also really liked BraveStarr, because it was so incredibly demented. A science fiction adventure cartoon… that was also a Western, set on the far-flung mining planet of New Texas, about a Native American sheriff and his talking cyborg horse, and the alien mutant outlaws they fight in order to protect the space miners, the space saloonkeeper, the space general store owner, the space schoolmarm… man, I loved that show. Used to laugh myself sick, every episode, but I also wondered what the producers were thinking when they okayed the thing, and whether or not the writers were trying to produce an adventure show, a comedy… or both…
I classify those under “Stuff My Kid Liked When She Was A Kid.”
Although I thought some of the stuff they did on both cartoons were rather clever. Particularly the episode of Freakazoid where, for no apparent reason, they switch (in the middle of the cartoon) from “superhero action” to “Busby Berkeley Style Epic Musical.”
I was a child of the '60s. Cartoons began on Saturday morning at 6 with Popeye and finished at noon or 1 when American Bandstand came on. I was privileged to watch the WB cartoons on TV before they got butchered by the politically correct. I got to see the Harvey cartoons - anyone remember the ones that had a song at the end where you’d follow the lyrics with a bouncing ball? Casper the Friendly Ghost, Baby Huey, Little Lulu… where the heck are they now? I saw all of these when they were new: The Flintstones, Beany & Cecil, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Underdog, Spider-Man, The Pink Panther…
I think the reason why cartoons seemed to be better then is because they were still being drawn by hand. They didn’t try to be clever, they were a level of clever unto themselves.
“Eighth Man,” “Johny Quest” (ever notice that Dr. Denton Quest and Race Banyon seemed to er, prefer the company of other men?), “Colonel Bleep” and-OG help me- “milton the Monster.”
We didn’t have cable, so I was always a little miffed about having to watch He-Man instead of the obviously more role-model-iffic She-Ra. (I seriously dug He-Man, however.) Also Thundercats, with even fewer female characters so when you wanted to play Thundercats you’d have to take turns being Cheetara.
I also liked the cartoon standbys that were still playing (but at the time jumping the shark) as I was a child - both the Smurfs and Scooby Doo acquired “baby” characters while I watched. Even then I knew that Scrappy was full of crap. (I remember being really pissed off about the Oliver North trials because they superseded my Scooby Doo for ages.)
The Care Bears movie came out when I was five or so and I still remember how much that thing scared me. It is extremely strange to me that the Care Bears seem to be back.
For myself, living in Regina as a 5 year old, I remember Battle of the Planets, otherwise known as G-Force. Damned if I can find a link to anything relating to it now, though.
Someone else must remember Zoltar, the bad guy, I hope?
I loved Animaniacs. I think I’d love it even more if I watched it today, 'cause I get more of the references.
Freakazoid was a bit too wierd for my tastes.
I remember Inhumanoids – it was part of Marvel/Sunbow’s expanded animation efforts, after they struck gold with G.I. Joe and Transformers. They (Marvel) had a rotating lineup of shows, IIRC, including Gem, Construx, and the afformentioned Inhumanoids.
Earth Force, D-Compose, the magnet creature which split into opposite poles, the trees that walked around, a-yup.
Some of those cartoons I haven’t thought of in years. I completely forgot they made a cartoon version of “Little Shop of Horrors”. Not to mention “Little Rosie”. Anyone remember “Camp Candy”, John Candy’s cartoon? I seem to remember it was pretty okay.
