What the hell happened to the great American Saturday Morning Cartoon?

[Bubastis]

I feel like I could write a book on this.
My generation woke up in the morning excitedly to watch Spongebob Squarepants and Catdog. Find an early episode of Spongebob, and as animated comedy it still holds up. But now Catdog is long gone, and Spongebob has become a crappy show, recycling unfunny and unoriginal plots. I go to the main regular channels. What hasn't been ruined by 4Kids studios (I'm looking at you, Ninja Turtles.) is "The Batman" (Which sucks harder than Richard Simmons in a portapotty at an N*Sync concert) and that garbage on ABC which is recycled from Disney Channel (Like the emperor's new school and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody...which isn't even a cartoon..)

I miss decent cartoons
[YT]gP4u4I96DVQ[/YT]

 

[Troy_Parker]

I Like the suite life of cody...but then again as you said, it aint a cartoon

 

[Majic Walrus]

I miss those too, you should check out the channel Boomerang, it's awesome.

 

[UA-Archangel]

YTV up in Canada is still pretty good.

It's been my experience that Saturday morning cartoons tend to come in waves.

80's were great for cartoons, but the 90's sucked as I recall them.
2000-2007 were pretty good, now we're in another sucky period.

Have patience young one and go outside and play.

 

[Drakon]

I feel like I could write a book on this.
My generation woke up in the morning excitedly to watch Spongebob Squarepants and Catdog. Find an early episode of Spongebob, and as animated comedy it still holds up. But now Catdog is long gone, and Spongebob has become a crappy show, recycling unfunny and unoriginal plots. I go to the main regular channels. What hasn't been ruined by 4Kids studios (I'm looking at you, Ninja Turtles.) is "The Batman" (Which sucks harder than Richard Simmons in a portapotty at an N*Sync concert) and that garbage on ABC which is recycled from Disney Channel (Like the emperor's new school and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody...which isn't even a cartoon..)

I miss decent cartoons
[YT]gP4u4I96DVQ[/YT]

You lost credibility with Spongebob.

Turtles was good at first [hell, 75% of S1+S2 was ripped straight from the comic], but it started to get worse around Season 5, then that whole FAST FORWARD crap kinda took it back to the 80s version-not absolutely horrible, but there's easily something more watchable elsewhere [IE-THE WEATHER CHANNEL].

For my generation, it was Garfield, TMNT 80s, The REAL Ghostbusters, Ren and Stimpy, Spider-Man 90s, X-Men 90s, Toxic Crusaders, Cro, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, and Count Duckula. And even then, we missed out on some great ones.

My point is, every generation thinks their stuff is the best. And they're usually gonna be "proved" wrong by someone on the internet.

 

[Zephyr Alexian]

Saturday Morning cartoons died a while ago for me. In the 90's there were Beast Wars, X-men, Batman TAS, Spider-man TAS, and a few others. Samurai Jack was pretty good too. The only reason I even watched CN was for the Justice League series, but that finished its run years ago.

I don't watch American cartoons anymore, but from the tidbits I come across, they do seem lacking.

 

[UA-Archangel]

For the 80's

Thundercats (and its lesser known counterpart Silverhawks)
Inspector Gadget
T.M.N.T
M.A.S.K
C.O.P.S
Centurions
Ulysses
Gobots (AKA Mighty Machine Men)
Mighty Orbots
BraveStarr
Dino Riders
Dungeons & Dragons
Ducktales
Chip & Dale
Alvin & the chipmunks
Count Duckula
Ewoks
Muppet Babies
My Little Pony
Fat Albert
Denver, the Last Dinosaur
Scooby Doo
Mighty Mouse
Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1987)
Defenders of the Earth
Garfield
Popples
The Wuzzles
G.I. Joe
The Original Ghostbusters
The Real Ghostbusters
Gummi Bears
Snorks
Jem
She-Ra
Rainbow Bright
Carebears
Smurfs

 

[darkseid26]

Saturday Morning cartoons died a while ago for me. In the 90's there were Beast Wars, X-men, Batman TAS, Spider-man TAS, and a few others. Samurai Jack was pretty good too. The only reason I even watched CN was for the Justice League series, but that finished its run years ago.

I don't watch American cartoons anymore, but from the tidbits I come across, they do seem lacking.

those were the days

 

[Zephyr Alexian]

^Yeah man, those were some great shows.

Talespin was also a good one for its day.

 

[Majic Walrus]

Saturday Morning cartoons died a while ago for me. In the 90's there were Beast Wars, X-men, Batman TAS, Spider-man TAS, and a few others. Samurai Jack was pretty good too. The only reason I even watched CN was for the Justice League series, but that finished its run years ago.

I don't watch American cartoons anymore, but from the tidbits I come across, they do seem lacking.

With the exception of Beast Wars I think all of those come on Toon Disney late at night... Of course they only have 15 episodes of each series...

 

[Spidey-Bat]

They air the new cartoons on Friday nights now. Saturday mornings have jack ****.


I miss them. I remember waking up early to watch Fox Kids and Kids WB. Now both are gone.

 

[UA-Archangel]

One possible reason for the lack of cartoons is possibly the growth of video games.

 

[Captain Planet!]

Catdog sucked. Animaniacs and Freakazoid were where it was at.

 

[PemLam]

Oh the days of Johnny Quest and Superfriends


...minus the incestuous Wonder Twins and that rodent Gleek.

 

[Payle Gray]

it breaks my heart that the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show no longer comes on saturday mornings.
but I grew up when there were basically 3 channels to watch cartoons on saturday morning. now there are what, 4 or 5 cable channels devoted to just cartoons? which is nice, but when you look at what the cartoons are it's pretty sad.
Boomerrang is ok, but it's a waste of the WB and MGM cartoon library if you ask me.

UA-Archangel has the best list so far.

 

[Banshee]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LokxUx_kpR8

 

[michephantom]

I woke up at 5:00 am to watch cartoons on saturdays, because they were great!
Bump in the Night!
Sonic the hedgehog!
X-Men!
Spiderman!
Reboot (the best)!
And the weekday shows were awesome. My life was changed because of batman:TAS and Animaniacs. Animaniacs were good because they made references to old movies or actors (Jerry Lewis). I haven't watched saturday morning cartoons for awhile. What, are they all anime-big-hair-card-playing-energy-ball-shooting-knockoffs? The reinvention of looney toons was the worst. They were like skinny spandex-wearing superheroes, or something. Gimme a break!

 

[JayCaz]

It's the same in the UK, the quality of the shows/cartoons on a Saturday morning has gone down the crapper compared to when I was a kid. Even my lesser favoured Saturday morning cartoons from that time (Gummybears springs to mind) p*ss all over what's on offer nowadays.

 

[Drizzle]

Saturday morning cartoons have been dead since 2001.

 

[BlackLantern]

It's time for a business lesson...it costs money to produce animation, networks now are concentrating on their primetime lineups that cost a lot more money to produce then they used to....it's easier to just either rent the saturday morning space out or throw on some half ass morning news thing....Hell NBC has Ryder Cup coverage on this morning....and channels like Nicktoons, Cartoon Network and the like have similar programming on all the time anyway...Saturday morning is no longer special...Deal with it

 

[Poetic Chaos]

The only thing left is the new Spider-Man show though it's on par with most of what we had in the 90's at least. Wolverine and the X-Men should be something to watch in the future.

 

[Logan's Runt]

You lost credibility with Spongebob.


For my generation, it was Garfield, TMNT 80s, The REAL Ghostbusters, Ren and Stimpy, Spider-Man 90s, X-Men 90s, Toxic Crusaders, Cro, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, and Count Duckula. And even then, we missed out on some great ones.

My point is, every generation thinks their stuff is the best. And they're usually gonna be "proved" wrong by someone on the internet.

:heart: Don't forget DarkWing Duck! I miss all those cartoons. Good thing I have all the eps of XMen TAS.

 

[AndThePickles]

I feel like I could write a book on this.
My generation woke up in the morning excitedly to watch Spongebob Squarepants and Catdog. Find an early episode of Spongebob, and as animated comedy it still holds up. But now Catdog is long gone, and Spongebob has become a crappy show, recycling unfunny and unoriginal plots. I go to the main regular channels. What hasn't been ruined by 4Kids studios (I'm looking at you, Ninja Turtles.) is "The Batman" (Which sucks harder than Richard Simmons in a portapotty at an N*Sync concert) and that garbage on ABC which is recycled from Disney Channel (Like the emperor's new school and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody...which isn't even a cartoon..)

I miss decent cartoons

I feel sad for you, your generation missed all the REALLY good cartoons.

I was thinking the same thing when I woke up early this morning, though. I ended up putting on a station that had on a movie

 

[The Spawn]

After 9/11 they stopped over at FOX I think....

 

[jaguarr]

Oh the days of Johnny Quest and Superfriends


...minus the incestuous Wonder Twins and that rodent Gleek.

Like me, you're old enough to remember true classics like "Thundarr The Barbarian", "The Herculoids", "The Shazam & Isis Power Hour", the original "Loony Tunes", "Superfriends", "Voltron", "Tom & Jerry", "Rocky & Bullwinkle", the original "Inspector Gadget", "Banana Splits", "HR Puffenstuff", "Sigmund & The Sea Monsters", "Land Of The Lost", the original "Johnny Quest", "Fat Albert", "Hong Kong Phooey", "Godzilla Power Hour", "Jabberjaw", "Plastic-Man", "Wheelie & The Chopper Bunch", "Speed Buggy", "Inch High Private Eye", "Superfriends", "Woody Woodpecker", "Danger Mouse", "The Jetsons", the various incarnations of "Superman"/"Batman"/"Spider-Man" (I have the late 60's "Spider-Man" series boxset and they're a blast to watch, even now)...cartoons were definitely a bit simpler and less bizarre in that day and age.

jag