JCC End of an Era: Traditional Saturday Morning Cartoons will end this fall

On the subject of educational TV, how many of you remember watching "In the News" between the cartoons on CBS?

 

Gummi Bears were a good reason to get up on Saturdays.

 

Can't recall if they were on when I was watching CBS shows like "The Muppet Babies". By that point, that was pretty much all I watched. I did watch "Superman", but it was on before I could get up to see it. I mostly watched ABC and NBC. Well, NBC from 84-86 and then ABC from 86-91. Then it was FOX from 92-98.

 

Disney Cartoons+Saturday morning= FTW.







You're welcome.

 

Those ran on the syndicated Disney Afternoon block originally (at least in the States), and it's one of the first times a studio actually seemed to care about the animated television shows they produced for children. Before it was mostly extremely poor-quality animation {see: Scooby Doo, basically anything Hanna-Barbera) and/or glorified toy commercials (GI Joe, Transformers).

 

All the Disney shows that first started airing in the late 80's, were indeed in syndication. They aired either on FOX affiliates or on WGN Superstation. When Disney began focusing cartoons on ABC, it was with newer shows and that was after buying ABC.

 

Anyone remember some of the undisputed worst Saturday Morning Cartoons ever?

Laverne and Shirley Join the Army and that damnable Rubik's Cube monstrosity.

 

I definitely don't remember the latter. I do remember the "Donkey Kong", "Q-Bert" and "Pac-Man" series of the early 80's and the later NES inspired cartoons of the late 80's and early 90's era. In terms of worst cartoons ever, I never really watched ones that I considered bad at the time. I guess looking back, that one cartoon "Kidd Video" would probably be the worst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidd_Video

Interesting if was more in the vain of "Heavy Metal" in terms of content, but otherwise, very silly.

 

Didn't I post that one already? I love it. lol...

 

With cartoons instantly accessible any time, do today's kids even care?
Anyway I sometimes try to replicate the classic Saturday Morning Cartoon experience by watching various episodes of stuff on YouTube, complete with commercials. Revel in this:

I have to remember I didn't get to do this every Saturday because my parents stuck me in soccer and that's when the games were.

Not the Gummi Bears. It was on Saturday mornings.

 

No seriously. This was an actual thing, apparently.....

 

I remember the Fonz cartoon. Execrable. Good find.

 

I'm more shocked that you think it was bad. The Fonz time traveling made it across the pond, and was essential viewing. You're sick in the head.

 

There's also this. They couldn't find their way off the island, but the Professor could apparently build a starship out of palm fronds and coconuts.



Here's some awesomeness to wash away the crap




You're welcome.

 

Dawn Wells did double-duty voicing both Ginger and Mary-Ann on that show (because Tina Louise didn't want to have anything to do with Gilligan's Island after the show ended). It kinda settles (or makes moot) that age-old debate.

 

I remember Laverne and Shirley being on that cartoon at least once. I don't remember seeing much of it.
Sometimes vague, broad memories are better than specific ones. I can't really say what my Saturday Morning Cartoon schedule was before fall 1984 but just recall what was on, what I might have tried to watch or didn't get around to watching, changing channels from one to another, the morning sunlight coming through the windows, having toys out, the sounds of commercials and cartoon voices.

 

Now this I didn't know. Filmation really came up with a lot of weak sauce cartoons after they stopped doing DC Comics cartoons.

 

I'm admittedly not very familiar with Filmation outside of He Man and a little bit of Star Trek, but this is just patently ridiculous. And not in a good way.

 

If you've seen those cartoons of the 60's and compare it to that slop, you can tell that is the case. They were definitely more kid friendly than in their earlier works. I think "Star Trek" was their last hurrah in terms of being not so kid friendly. Course, the DC cartoons of the 60's had story editor credits from DC veterans which probably helped, whereas Trek had Roddenberry and Fontana. Hence the quality is much better on those shows versus what Filmation did on their own.

 

What DC characters did Filmation do? I thought Superfriends was Hanna-Barbera.

EDIT: Sorry, you were talking about the 60's era.

 

ST:TAS was also helped by the fact that most of the original cast returned to voice their characters. That helps a lot.

 

This sucks.

Sorry. Just had to get that out of my system. It really makes me sad, so many children will now miss out on a decades old tradition.

 

you almost had me there