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Simpler Saturday
Author: TriSec    Date: 02/09/2019 11:17:17

Time for me to hang out with my friends!




I don't know about you, but no Saturday morning was complete without checking out what the Superfriends were up to. Even their silly space monkey!

Alas though, cheesy cartoons have become a thing of the past. There's no longer any major Saturday morning cartoons, except perhaps on that handful of networks dedicated to the genre.

But it's also the cartoon itself that seems to have changed. Another fine one from our youth, I'm sure...



There are certain timeless things out there - among them are Coyotes getting squashed by anvils, but I digress.

But sometime in the 90s, cartoons seemed to take a much darker turn. While I personally loved the Nickelodeon offerings back in the day...things like Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, and even Aaa! Real Monsters, despite some of the goofiness, there was still a sense of child-like wonder among these cartoons.

When Javi was little, even stranger programming like SpongeBob, Adventure Time, and The Regular Show started to become more popular. These cartoons shared some things in common - they were all loud, brash, and seemed to incorporate a lot more questionable humor about bodily functions, and especially sexual innuendo that I don't quite remember ever seeing in the Hall of Justice or the Looney Tune stage.

As Javi got older, he moved on like most of us do. He's 17 now, so of course a cartoon is a rare sight in our household these days.

But let's go back to our Saturday mornings for one more visit. Another one we all know and love...



It was only much, much later in life that I learned jazz legend Bob Dorough was the driving force behind most of these little educational shorts. I can't help but wonder if not having these on the air anymore is having an impact. I can't speak for all of us, but I'd bet that at least in the early part of our voting lives, much of our knowledge of how the government is supposed to work came from this guy.

https://media.giphy.com/media/tIJGdiUQAa5TG/giphy.gif


Maybe it's time to get some of these back on the air.


 
 

2 comments (Latest Comment: 02/11/2019 03:56:56 by livingonli)
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Comment by Will in Chicago on 02/10/2019 17:53:21
In some ways, our culture seemed a little more unified. One of the last cartoons on an on the air network to run on Saturday's was when the CW played Cartoon Network's Justice League.

Comment by livingonli on 02/11/2019 03:56:56
Don't forget for those of us who lived in the larger metro markets where the independent stations had the weekday cartoon blocks in the early morning and after school hours. It does reflect the shift of viewership to cable with all children's programming channels being able to make these shows available whenever kids want them, although they may now be getting challenged by being able to access whatever they want to watch on streaming services. The only thing may end up being how many streaming services will the content be divided by. It will be ridiculous if to get the shows the kids want to watch to you have to have Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu and extending into other such ventures like Disney + and the DC streaming service.