90s and 00s are the best. 80s and 70s are best for the nostalgia buffs and 60s for the fact that they are classic and will always be classic.
The 80's: The Transformers G.I.Joe He-Man and the Masters of the Universe She-Ra Princess of Power The Adventures of the Gummi Bears Duck Tales began in the late 80's, not the 90's Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers is boarderline I think, I can't remember if it started in 89 or 90. The Smurfs Alf The Animated Series and Alf The Live Action Series Garfield & Friends The Real Ghostbusters Bucky O'Hare Denver the Last Dinosaur Flinstone Kids The Jetsons... I think I know they were made much later than The Flinstones, but animated in such a way as to be mistaken for an older 60's era HB cartoon My Pet Monster Care Bears My Little Pony Cadilacs and Dinosaurs Pretty sure it was from the late 80's Inhumanoids Jem and the Holograms The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh The Wuzzles The Smoggies The Snorks Wasn't there also a cartoon about those Monster in My Pocket toys? Challenge of the Go-Bots Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Droids Ewoks A Pup Named Scooby-Doo The Archies Alvin and the Chipmunks I know they were technically originated much earlier however I believe most people are more aware of the 80's version, including that kick-ass feature film as opposed to the earlier incarnation with puppets and older animation cartoons like the Chipmunk Christmas special The 90's: Batman the Animated Series Superman the Animated Series Batman & Superman Animaniacs Tiny Toon Adventures Darkwing Duck Gargoyles Mighty Ducks Doug Beast Wars Transformers Extreme Ghostbusters Men in Black the Animated Series Godzilla the Animated Series Jumanji the Animated Series Aaaaah Real Monsters G.I.Joe Extreme Reboot War Planets (Known as Shadow Raiders in Canada) Powerpuff Girls Fairly Odd-Parents Danny Phantom... Or did that come out around 2000? Batman Beyond And so on and so forth, there were many cartoons in both eras, some that crossed over into the early 90's as their shows weren't over by the time the 80's ended. The point is, that depending on who you ask, the cartoons of the 80's really were a big part of growing up, in some ways they were more a part of it than the cartoons of the 90's. Because the cartoons of the 80's was what gave birth to the cartoon industry as a whole (in mainstream television) before the 1980's cartoons were not what they are now, there weren't as many of them. Besides Hanna Barbera and that Star Trek Animated series what other cartoons came out in the 60's or 70's? Not a whole lot that were very memorable, I sure can't remember much, though apparently there were cartoons in those eras that were really big. But the 80's changed the game plan, they changed all the rules, they made cartoons something of a media circus as it were. With toylines, blankets, party favors, comic books, kid's books, underwear, bed sheets, wall posters, audio cassette stories. You name it, they had it, a lot more than they do nowadays. You couldn't go anywhere in a major retail store in the 80's without seeing your favorite character somewhere. The 90's refined this process to an extent, they had some interesting series, some of which didn't even attempt to mass market with media blitzes and toylines. It was quieting down. Then came the new millennium, where cartoons really started getting some off-the-wall ideas and great production values, sadly however the toy aisles started to feel the strain of keeping up with such things. Look at the toy aisles of the 80s, notice how much variety we had, you could go anywhere and everywhere and you'd always have something new and exciting to look at. In the 90s, toylines started to die out, some of them were streamlined and others came and went so fast they couldn't establish any audiences for themselves. Who remembers Dinozaurs? What about Mobile Suit Gundam? Bandai had them around for a time and they were huge, but like all trends they started to die out. Now look at the toy aisles of the 2010s, you have Transformers, and that's pretty much the last one from the 80s still going strong. Most toy aisles these days are taken up by the latest hot ticket summer blockbuster crap. The Avengers, Terminator Salvation, Star Trek, The Dark Knight Rises. There are no toy brands for kids that are aimed squarely at kids anymore, boy's action figures have become one of three things, Marvel, DC or a tiny, tiny area designated for Military Toys like G.I.Joe. We don't have any Fearsome Fighting Teens, we don't have any Masters of the Universe, we don't even have any Thunder-Thunder-Thundercats HOOOOOO! Toys came first, Cartoons second, we as kids didn't care that they were just trying to make us go out and buy the latest hip thing/fad their number crunchers said we wanted, because the companies put actual thought into their products. Nowadays not a single company tries to make any attempts at breaking this mediocre mess we've gotten ourselves in. They have their established footholds in kid's hearts and that's that. They aren't being creative enough, they aren't challenging anything, and when they do try they never keep any fath in it long enough to master the sales pitch to the kids. Some would argue that kids prefer videogames as opposed to toys these days and their attention spans won't allow for any long term investments. To that I say BS, the NES was around in the 80s and call me crazy but I didn't put aside my toys just because I could play video games, it wasn't one or the other, it was both. The toys were just as much fun and the characters were just as endearing as the games were. (Unless you asked the Angry Videogame Nerd.) Things will change, that is always true, but just because they have to change doesn't mean we can't make them change in exciting and unexpected ways. Catoons of the 80's were made to be fun, to be funny and to be great. Cartoons nowadays are so bogged down with needing to be PC and not affend some stupid activist group or something like that, that we've lost some of what made the simple things so enjoyable back when the boom hit. It wasn't about the quality, it wasn't about the quantity, it was about being a kid. Watching your favorite programs, loving every minute of it, and playing along with your action figures while wearing your pjs of choice and eating your marshmallowy goodness breakfast cereal. Now it's become such a huge industrial machine churning out cartoon series after cartoon series that it's lost some of the humanity and soul it had when it first started out.
Probably because Batman was released 89 or because no one else cares about Star Wars or time traveling cars.
Tn9: Thing is, all of those were out there. There was a lot of cartoon stuff in the 80s. Saturday morning was still going on all the big networks, with the classic 40s-50s-60s-70s stuff alongside the then-current productions, and at the same time, during the week, we had the newer-style licensed cartoons like GoBots and Transformers. There were several major US studios producing this, and at the same time, the Japanese anime shows were being brought over. There was a lot of stuff being put out there, a lot of competition for the kids' attention, and all of it was on the networks. It was both accessible to anybody who had a TV, even an old black & white set with a coat hanger screwed to the back, and also the only thing to watch, so everybody watched it. Cartoons can be very good now, but they're more dispersed across the cultural landscape. Satmorn was a shared 'ritual', that's why it developed a 'cult'.
My memories of the 80s was pure, unadulterated fun. Everything this day and age is all "things must be edgy, dark and more believable". And I appreciate that side of things, but it's nice to remember back the fun of the 80s, for me. Everything in the 80s seemed more imaginative, creative, and original too. Today is, let's remake everything from before, except now it will be more "edgy, dark and more believable". At least, that's how I feel about it, I'm sure others will disagree.
See, there it is! That's exactly the 'ritual' I was talking about...an activity shared by unrelated people. I did the same thing, so did plenty of others, though our cereal was usually Cheerios or corn flakes. This resulted in a sense of community between unrelated people...when you talk about Saturday morning cartoon time, I know exactly what you mean. And those ads! But I look back at them now, and something else strikes me...the names. You had so many toy companies, competing for the market. The traditional toymakers, that had started out as producers, like Fisher-Price, Coleco, Ideal, Tyco, Tonka, they were still independent and still trying hard. A lot of them did their own engineering, and manufactured at least some of their toys, as well as importing. I worked with a guy who had been at Marx during its last few years. R&D was big there, and not just concepts that they sent out for somebody to engineer and manufacture. They had batteries of cap guns hooked to cylinders, firing away until something broke. When it did, they fixed the product and tried to break it again. This fellow told me that many of the toys you see at the dollar store are copies and knockoffs of old Marx toys, with no real design work put into them since Marx worked out the details. The fact that these copypaste capguns work at all is a tribute to Marx's thoroughness. When a company engineers and manufactures its own stuff, it builds up design skills that don't arise if all it does is send out concept designs. You get a sense of what works, what is practical. All these companies were out there, alongside the newer wave of more completely import-based toymakers like Hasbro and Kenner...and there were more of these, too, and more companies over in Japan or Taiwan with toys they could import. This sort of thing was newer, too, and perhaps buyers weren't quite sure what would sell and what wouldn't, which allowed us to have awesome semi-failures like GoDaiKin. Can you imagine walking into JC Penney and finding Soul of Chogokin toys for sale to kids? All these suppliers and all this competition led to a lot more variety.
I don't quite agree. Tune into CN, Disney, or Nick at any random time and I'm positive you're more than likely to find a zany, wacky, fun show than you will some edgy one. The shows you want are still around. You just have to, you know, watch them.
Yep I found a bajillion great shows on tv right such as Transformers: Prime, My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic, Adventure Time, Regular Show, Phineas and Ferb, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Young Justice hell IMO even the Amazing World of Gumball is great. Honestly aside from Johnny Test and Loeb ruining Marvel The 2010's are actually really rad stuff.
