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saturday mornings dont mean anything anymore. its sad, this used to be the best part of the whole week for a kid. especially in the 80s with so much variety, there was a lot of anticipation. i think s/mornings died out towards the end of the 90s. kids nowadays dont even care about cartoons, most have never even seen a real cartoon, just that mass produced manga-looking computer crap. sometimes i think thats a big part of our screwed-up society, kids dont want to be kids anymore.  i guess its more profitable to put old cartoons on dvd sets and charge an arm and a leg instead of showing them on tv.

Saturday morning cartoons have sucked since the late 80's, as far as I can tell.

You can still see The Herculoids and Thundarr and other good stuff via Youtube, but the stuff on air is crap.... edited Warner bros cartoons, lots of stuff I don't even recognize.

In the 80's, even the bad cartoons were enjoyable and watchable (ie, Mr T cartoons) on a certain level.  And you had stuff like Buck Rogers thrown in amidst the other shows.

I used to get up at 6:30 or 7, every saturday, and make hot chocolate, and watch straight on through until about noon... the good stuff started to flicker out into sports coverage (boooring!) about 11:30 or so.

That sound familiar to anyone else here?

Saterday mornings were a holiday. The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show,Spiderman,Johnny Quest-and I agree with Zap-the old Warner Bros. carttons have been edited for PC standerds.

Todays Saterday!
 Cartoon time! YAY!!!! Break out the Quisp and Quake!  :smile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1bHvs2zrN4

How many of the stars do you recognize?

Classic!-
Billy boyboyboy-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCMkyukmTLg
You'll never see this on TV again....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLYzzH0IF_Y

When Captain America throws his mighty sheild----!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64VZv8zueP0
 

Yes-the animation is p**s poor.And the quality of this video is as well.But not as bad as trying to pull it in on rabbit ears in the sixties!

I agree that Saturday morning cartoons used to be a cool ritual.  But now kids can watch cartoons any hour of the day, any day of the week on The Cartoon Network, Nickolodeon, Disney Channel, etc.  I bet if you'd offered me that deal when I was 7 or 8, I would have taken it in a millisecond.   

That's a good point Rev, I know I would have jumped at the chance to watch all that stuff any time of the day. I guess part of the nostalgia for Saturday Morning cartoons is the ritual itself, looking forward to it after a week of school planning out which shows to watch on which channels. Sometimes this was difficult if you had brothers and sisters. I seem to remember also in the early '80s USA had the Cartoon Express which was around six hours of cartoons.

I'd say they lasted til the mid 90s, at least in my area...  I grew up from the late 80s to that period watching Saturday Morning cartoons.  I watched a lot of misc. crap, about an hour of Looney Tunes, Tiny Toons, reruns of Animaniacs and other WB shows, and a number of other bits.  I do seem to recall by the mid 90s there were very few NEW shows being shown on Saturday Mornings anymore though.

Yes indeed...what happened to them and why the f--k are they all anime like now for the ones we actually have on?

Saturdays during the 80s was the sh*t for television.  I recall watching Gummy Bears, Wuzzles, Snorks and most importantly Looney Toons.  I always caught Looney Tunes with my father and laughing together with him at the zany antics brings back so many awesome memories of those days.  


I think I was up at 6 or 7 and before the annimated fun, I would watch a local guy named Captain Bob who used to draw pictures of ocean wildlife.  Then after the cartoon-fest, I'd catch some lame Kung Fu flicks.  All seeds planted for who I am now.  

I agree for the most part but it was the waiting for Saturday that made it so cool.  Almost like your reward for making it through the week at school.  

Hell, I remember in the 80s they had a big preview show for all the new cartoons that were coming out the Friday before. 

Saturday mornings...

Lets see, I remember Bucky O Hare, Batman TAS, The Real Ghostbusters, Animaniacs, Chip 'n' Dale, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Street Sharks (channel 4 used to have loads)...lots of others, mainly repeats of 80's cartoons..

What happened ?


I like Recess, Kim Possible, Fairly Odd Parents and Johnny Bravo so not all modern stuff is rubbish.

Saved by the Bell killed the Saturday morning cartoon. Once the networks discovered a poorly produced live-action show could out-profit a poorly produced animated show, the cartoon's days were numbered. Soon Saturday morning, and television in general, was awash in bad live action shows; a process that is still ongoing today every day of the week.

But I agree with the Rev., cable television has made the single day of cartoon's unnecessary.

I don't agree with the hatred towards present day cartoons or anime. Children's entertainment is across the board generally poor, we just generally get to pick and choose our memories to remember the good stuff and forget the crap. I mean, I love Camp Candy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Candy) as much as the next person, but I never want to go back and see it again.

Saturday mornings were a good time for me.  I saw Cardcaptors, Recess, Pokemon, Batman Begins, Animainaics, Static Shock, Jackie Chan: Adventures, Men in Black: The Series, and Extreme Ghostbusters.  Good times, good times...

Oh, man.

I forgot about that, and you're right it is rubbish.

Yet I'm strangley nostalgic for the theme tune...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06YLubnWHGA&feature=related

The opening credits have all been disabled ! :hatred:

Not all Saturday Cartoons, but I grew up with these:

Mighty Orbots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLcJXR7twoQ

M.A.S.K.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0BzBFWt8V8

Pole Position:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj55mHD2Pes

Galaxy Rangers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMpsAmWbSJg

Thunderbirds 2086:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zowhg6l9RUc

Blackstar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmlSNvOQnkE

Mighty Orbots was a good one I remember, Pac-Man I liked too. One show I do not recall the name of had two super cars a blue and a red one with computer personalities ala KIT. They could change into hovercrafts. For me though the penultimate Saturday Morning cartoon experience was Dungeons & Dragons.

I wouldn't have traded it, honestly.  QUALITY over QUANTITY.  The new cartoons suck.  Have you seen the new Scooby Doo?  The new Batman? The new Ninja Turtles?  Not as good as their '70s-late '80s counterparts.  At all.  It's a shame, really.

For me, personally, I'd wake up at like, 7:00, watch all the cartoons until about 11:00, then there'd be WWF Superstars on USA Network from 11-1.  Good time.

*shudders*

I saw that yesterday...

No wonder kids today are morons !
It doesn't even have a good theme tune.  :hatred:

Man, it was poor...

I might add the good Batman is from the 90s.  It is indeed way, way better than The Batman.  However, there are a TON of really, REALLY bad cartoons from the 70s and 80s.  It might be worth a look to watch one of the 80s cartoon intro video compilations on youtube for some examples.  

I'll also add I think that there is a bit of rose-tinted glasses going on here.  I have a lot of fine memories of some 80s and 90s cartoons, but a lot of them are really not too good..  Like, say, the 90s X-Men and Spiderman.  Aside from some good voice acting in both, they're really kind of bad.  Lots of sloppy animation and errors, some kind of bad writing, etc.  

On another note, one thing that really separates cartoons from different eras is the voice acting.  In the 1980s, it got very good in a number of cases.  Into the mid 90s there were some very good ones (Batman and Gargoyles, for example) but by the late 90s and early 2000s it got REALLY terrible...  And now, from the snippets I've seen of some newer shows, it seems to have improved quite a bit.  For example, as horrendous as the animation style is, the new Transformers has quite solid voice work - at least, the ep I saw did.  I'm betting the influx of anime dubs has something to do with that.

Here's an oldie from my childhood-

Ruff and Ready-! (that scene below don't look right!  :buggedout:)

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

I wish I could give you karma  :lookingup:  :bouncegiggle:

Thank you! For my next act,I'll juggle rabid weasels- :twirl:

The show with the two cars was Pole Position.  The intro in in my first post.

Saturday morning cartoons, Ahh yes my favorites. I remember them well.

Early 80's ...

Superfriends, Pac-Man, Richie Rich, Scooby and Scrappy Doo, Gobots, Smurfs, Shirt Tales, Mr. T, Get Along Gang, Snorks, Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling!, Dungeons and Dragons, The Littles.

Tis true.  In fact, I prefer the early/mid '90s Batman: The Animated Series cartoon.  I was born in '84, so I prefer a lot of the cartoons from around '88-'94, but my initial comparison was that of the initial Scooby-Doo to say, Scooby Doo, Where R U?, the modern one.  Any time they take a classic toon from the '50s-'70s and modernize it, it relatively fails.  Flintstone Kids...not that good.  Tom and Jerry Kids...not as fun.  Any incarnation of Scooby Doo after, say, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo (which starred Vincent Price, by the way) isn't that good a show. 

I have to be honest here...when they re-launched TMNT back in around 2003 or so, it was actually a decent show.  The creators of the comic were very involved in storylines and it was a much darker show than the original.  But after about three years, the toy company put pressure on them to change things, as they wanted to come out with specific toys to make more money.  So they had to completely scrap the story they were involved in and send the turtles a hundred or so years to the future, and make it more 'kid friendly' as to improve sales.  Toy sales went up but ratings started to sink.  So they sent them 'back to the sewers' so to speak, but show quality is still suffering while toys are up.  So now it seems they pretty much change the stories each season to help the toy sales.

You guys wake up at 6:30am to 7:00am boy that was late in my house when I was just a toddler my big sister use to wake me up at 5:00am and it stuck that way. Oh how I miss my favorites Super 7/ The Freedom Force, Shazam, Isis, The Krofft Shows, Jason Of Star Command, Drak Pack, and the other shows of the 70's. The Mighty Orbots, The Hulk, Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, Goldie Gold And Action Jack, Droids, Mr. T, Turbo Teen, Kid Video, Space Ace, and others shows of the 80's.

Your half right Mofo about SBTB mess up Saturday Morning but other stuff before that mess it up Menudo, Mary Lou Retton, NKOTB, Mc Hammer, and Action For Children Television and Parents Television Council.

Menudo. Haha I remember that ...

Your right though, how is Menudo a good saturday morning show? OH WHAT A WORLD!  :twirl:

SOS saturday morning cartoons- SOS saturday morning cartoons- SOS!!!

We can't claim Saved By The Bell started the downfall of Saturday Morning cartoons. We had live action shows before that series was ever conceived. Let's not forget the shows of Sid and Marty Krofft like Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, H.R. Puffnstuff, Dr. Shrinker, Electra-Woman and Dyna-Girl, and such. While SBTB was horrible, it was not the killing blow. Granted those of us whow atched them like to remember them fondly but they were just as bad as SBTB as far as scripts and had even crappier appearance. The thing is most of them were more fun and had more imagination than SBTB however. However most of them did not last beyond a single season.
I have to agree with RC in that it was the availability of cartoons 24/7 that lead to the Saturday Morning cartoon event demise but even that had help. With advances in animation styles, computers, video games, political correctness, and countless other crap, stuff that made cartoons fun for us died.
Try watching a classic Looney Tunes or Road Runner cartoon today. Watch one you remember well from when you were a kid and count the number of times something was cut out. That is what political correctness and these people who claim they are trying to save our children caused. Gone are the days when you would see the coyote hit the bottom of the canyon and holding up a funny sign or Daffy Duck getting his beak shot around to the back of his head by Elmer Fudd.
Speaking of cartoons I watched when I was a kid, here's a list of several of my favorites I remember watching as a kid: Superfriends (pre-Wonder Twins), Batman, Tarzan, Star Trek The Animated Series, Scooby Doo, The Bullwinkle Show, Go Go Gophers, and my all time favorite Underdog.

OMG, Dr. Shrinker ... I looked it up on youtube, wow what a surprise! I remember that! late 70's right? wow ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqPQlja0VSI

I just had to hear that music again! Blast from the past. Thanks meQal.

Around the same time I was watching Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu4r7sAe9XM

turbo teen
tranzor z
m.a.s.k.
dino riders
bigfoot
dinosaucers
denver the last dinosaur
he-man
she-ra  (this doesnt make me less of a man)
ghostbusters
photon
captain power
thundercats
silverhawks
gravedale high
beetlegeuse
the real ghostbusters
captain n
super mario brothers 3
american gladiators
super force
tmnt
samurai pizza cats
mighty max
batman (90s)
eek the cat/terrible thunder lizards
project g.e.e.k.e.r.
beakmans world
angry beavers
the tick
freakazoid
road rovers
earthworm jim
xmen
xo squad
-there are so many that  I cant remember at the moment. what about that show that granpa munster used to host. he would show horror moves and do skits kinda like elvira. those damn rubber bats that he would flop around him used to drive me crazy.

I don't remember him hosting cartoons. "Super Scary Saturday"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiRio4ISFoU

What annoys me these days is that the shows for preschool kids actually get worse on Saturday. On weekday mornings, the kid and I can turn on BBC Kids and watch Thomas the Tank Engine, Balamory, Binka the Cat, Postman Pat and a bunch of other really decent shows for kids. Saturday morning, none of that is on, because BBC Kids has programming for the older kids who are home from school. If we want to watch anything for preschoolers, we have to settle for North American channels, where we see a lot of Dora and that kind of programming. Ro likes it just as well, but I'd be tearing my hair out if I had any.

The educators got ahold of it and groups like ACT and others mess it up