Saturday Morning Cartoons

Like most kids in the 80s, Saturday morning cartoons were an integral part of our weekly social routine. The commercials between these shows (and sometimes the shows themselves) drove the trends in toys as well as what we would be playing out in the neighborhood. Many days were spent playing GI Joe and Transformers not only with action figures, but ourselves.

The bumpers (intros and outros that occured between the shows and commercials) were a pretty good indicator of the style and tastes of the era. Video games were big in the early 80’s, so the bumpers “reflected that”:http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/1875/. When the bumpers changed, it indicated that the new television season has started. These days, most networks keep a lop-sided flow of new episodes sputtering forward throughout the year. When I was growing up, the season began in the early fall and finished up right around spring. This conveniently left the re-runs for the summer, when we didn’t want to be inside, anyway.

Last weekend, I _really_ wanted to watch Saturday morning cartoons. The catch is… there aren’t any! The networks have replaced Saturday morning cartoons with sports updates, the occasional “educational” program (wild kingdom for 2-year-olds), and live action “adolescent/tweenager” dramas (think “Saved by the Bell, but even more sappy). It broke my heart to know that kids without cable will never know the joys of looking forward to each season of cartoons. Where can they find classics like Looney Toons?

I’m not really sure when this happened. Nonetheless, I am sad about this. There are a few resources out there on the internet for my fellow retro-addicts and I:

* “Retro Junk: Commercials, Cartoons, and Movies”:http://www.retrojunk.com/
* “X-Entertainment: Everything that Gen-Xers love, whether they admit it or not”:http://www.retrojunk.com/
* “Retro Crush: More retro goodness and good times”:http://www.retrocrush.com

Enjoy!

4 comments March 13th, 2007 by duane