I know we have a few generations of folks here so I’m interested to know which cartoons stuck with you the most or made your childhood better in general.
@Kyeh There weren’t as many Disney cartoons on TV when I was a kid. Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers came along a bit later but I didn’t see hardly anything with Mickey in them growing up unless it was a movie. I did love Hanna Barbera and Warner Bros classics though.
@ExtraMedium I liked Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies too. We didn’t have a TV when I was little - my parents thought I’d read more that way, which was true. So I saw cartoons at movie theaters or friends’ houses until I was 12 and they finally relented. By then I wasn’t as interested in them.
@Kyeh FYI.
After watching your clip on YT, it presented me with this, which is somewhere between an update and a stolen idea, with a lot of new scenarios, but IN COLOR:
@ExtraMedium@phendrick@rtjhnstn
Now THOSE are masterpieces of animation! So weird and inventive, and pretty scary too for a small kid!
I know a lot of the early animators were extremely well-trained artists.
I just can’t stand the lame look of most cartoon nowadays.
@ExtraMedium@Kyeh
I loved duck tales and rescue rangers. A while ago I saw duck tales on tv and was so mad it was the new ones the old ones were the shit.
The retro Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for sure. Not the new ones at all. I also watched Rugrats regularly on Nickelodeon as well as Hey Arnold. Dabbled with Sponge Bob, but tired very quickly with Bikini Bottom. I would also watch reruns of The Flintstones and a handful of others I don’t recall in my rapidly approaching old age.
Warner stuff from the Termite Terrace era, particularly Roadrunner. Those pretty much set the level of the bar for quality of animation, with the result that when the first Japanese Anime showed up (such as Speed Racer), the ludicrously awful 4 and 6 and even 8-frame animation it used was just Not Good Enough. Ditto for the not-all-animated Clutch Cargo series, and the other one which shared all of its production “qualities”.
I guess I’ll give away how old I am (as if nobody had already noticed):
Earliest cartoons on TV I remember seeing were the Mighty Mouse (I’m singing “I’ve Come to Save the Day” right now), Heckle and Jeckle, and Woody Woodpecker cartoons. I must have seen these on Saturday mornings because we didn’t have a TV till later and I would go over to a friend’s house. I think these had been in movies before being released to TV. Also in movie theaters I saw a lot of Road Runner cartoons (poor, hapless coyote – don’t be an ablist!)
My hands-down favorites were seen shortly thereafter on OUR TV set (yay!), Rocky and Bullwinkle, also including Boris and Natasha, Dudley Do-Right, and Mr. Peabody and Sherman. At one time, after getting old enough to get all the jokes, I had a great DVD collection of R&B, but lost that in a fire. Maybe I should get another copy of that, now that I think about it. Timeless humor, IIRC.
@phendrick I enjoyed all those too. I was also a big fan of Top Cat, Beany and Cecil, Felix the Cat, Huckleberry Hound and Popeye. Also Mr. Magoo and Underdog, The Jetsons and Flintstones, to name a few.
@chaos13@heartny I watched all in that list, but none came too close to being my favorites. Of those, best liked Jetsons, Flintstones, and Magoo I guess because they gave me a different and interesting perspective on things. Least favorite of those to me was B&C, just never got into it.
Our Saturday routine (younger sis and I) was a bowl of dry cereal (Trix, Captain Crunch, Froot Loops, Sugar Pops, etc whichever one was in the house that week.) sitting in front of the TV watching the Flintstones, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Tennessee Tuxedo, Tooter Turtle, Fractured Fairy Tales, Aesop and Son, Yogi Bear, Marvin the Martian, Bugs Bunny, the Jetsons, Deputy Dawg and a host of others.
I watched all of the above mentioned, but it was the Warner Brothers stuff that I remember most enjoying, and later, everything Rocky & Bullwinkle. The HB universe (Flinstones, etc) seemed pretty boring to me, although I had a pre-pubescent thing for Betty Rubble.
I would watch Clutch Cargo just because I could not believe anyone would produce “animation” that lame.
Much later in life, on a trip to the Canadian Rockies, I was very excited at seeing an actual “Moose and Squirrel” together. When I get a rare letter in the mail, I still say to myself, “Fan mail from some flounder?”
@stolicat Clutch Cargo was baaaad, but at least the writing wasn’t as abysmal as Space Angel or Captain Fathom. The latter was so awful (even by 1965 standards) that relatively few stations ever picked it up. A total of 13 hours of it were produced, and have not so much faded into history as capsized at launch to lay scrapped in the ooze. An attempt to release all three of the Cambria Synchro-Vox cartoon series to DVD apparently never got past the first trio of episodes. No surprise there; Cambria (the production studio) pretty much owned the slime under the bottom of the animation quality barrel. Even the worst Anime was less cheesy. (Apologies to fermented dairy products for the comparison.)
It’s like asking to choose you’re favorite child.
All of the old ones mentioned, and I love Pinky and the Brain. Lots of great jokes that could mean innocence…or not.
@Tadlem43 Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?
I think so Brain, but if Jimmy cracks corn and he doesn’t care, why is he singing a song about it?
For me it was all about Rocky & Bullwinkle (and their associates), then anything super-hero…Justice League, Spiderman & Friends, Blue Falcon & Dinomutt, throw in Captain Caveman and of course Scooby Doo…Finished every Saturday morning with the crème de la crème, the Looney Toons!!
Johnny Quest (the original, not the puerile remake)
I remember liking Skyhawk but I don’t remember episodes.
Thundarr the Barbarian
The Pirates of Dark Water
The Herculoids
Fantastic Voyage
Swat Kats
The Pink Panther had its moments and the Mancini theme was always wonderful.
Roadrunner was the bomb!
Warner Brothers (Bugs, Daffy, Porky) were like the low sugar breakfast cereal; Cheerios. They were funny but meh with some exceptional episodes. We did get to watch Speedy Gonzalez and other shows now censored by the identity nazis.
Shows like the Super Friends were just too… sappy.
A more recent show that surprised me was Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go.
And can’t forget the DCAU, Batman TAS, Superman, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, and some of the followup movies were awesome, as long as Kevin Conroy was voicing Batman.
We lost a season of Saturday Morning Cartoons due to the watergate hearings being carried on all three network channels. Bastards. Couldn’t leave us kids even ONE channel to watch even though they were all broadcasting the exact same thing.
Can’t believe I forgot the animated Star Trek! It was wonderful, and the stories were written up for book publication by Alan Dean Foster who did a great job turning the episodes into well written novellas.
@Tripod2 And I completely forgot Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack… granted those were not childhood cartoons but then neither were many of the ones I listed above…
we had 3 channels on tv when I was quite young. I watched VHS tapes. I liked Little Audrey, Popeye, and older Looney Tunes. My aunt would send me some recordings from the disney channel and I would watch recorded “Dumbo’s Circus” shows.
As I got older, my dad caved and we got more channels. I remember Gummi Bears, smurfs, and Ewoks (although had no clue what Star Wars was).
Funnily I had Care Bears, My Little Ponies, and Lady Lovely Locks toys but I don’t recall actually watching their shows, just having the toys.
we had 3 channels on tv when I was quite young. I watched VHS tapes.
Back in the day, we had 3 channels in St Louis, NBC, ABC & CBS. PBS came around when I was a teen, as did VHS tapes (though it was a few years before we could afford to buy a VCR…)
@chienfou oh technology was definitely around when I was a kid… my dad just didn’t want to pay for it
And to be fair… i was the same once I became an adult. I have never paid for cable and we have very limited streaming services. I didn’t even have a tv in my living room until last year… i kept the tv in the basement at the old house.
@chienfou@mbersiam We hardly ever watch TV, either broadcast or streaming, but in part that’s not entirely by choice. I live in a broadcast dead zone; the signals from the massive antenna farm to the southwest of the city are all blocked by nearby tall buildings, so unless I want to erect a really tall mast outside, that’s out. We both object to subsidizing programming we find abhorrent, so cable is out; I haven’t subscribed since before flat panel TVs existed. Netflix went on the shitlist when they ignored the complaints about a certain “comedian”. Too much of what remains is dreck. Basically, we keep up with a few things on YouTube at this point, and ignore pretty much all of the rest.
@chienfou@werehatrack i stopped tolerating netflix when they distributed child porn under the guise of “art.” Offensive comedians came well after that.
I remember watching a lot of cartoons. But I think the first riveting one was Dungeons and Dragons. Not just because we had the game, but because it so very much broke from the traditional, the rehashes, and the attempts to capitalize on fluff culture.
I look back on it now with some amazement. If it were produced now? The christofascists would melt down.
@2many2no For the Howdy Doody Show, many of the characters had clever (and fun) names. I loved saying the name of the American Indian character Princess Summerfall Winterspring. (I no doubt knew the names of the four seasons better than others my age who didn’t see the show!). Most people probably don’t remember that after the actress portraying her died in a car wreck, the character reverted to being a marionette.
At the time, as a child, my family often visited relatives in the Buffalo, NY, area and the show was popular there (due to the star Buffalo Bob Smith), so that was where I was introduced to it.
Reruns are available through YouTube.
For the Howdy Doody Show, many of the characters had clever (and fun) names. I loved saying the name of the American Indian character Princess Summerfall Winterspring.
Hmm, I wonder if James Taylor was a fan of the show. Did she have a sidekick named Allyougot Todoiscall?
@2many2no@phendrick@chienfou
And a great recent show in a similar vein was Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Such a shame that Paul Reubens got caught engaging in conduct that made parents uncomfortable.
I grew up watching the classic Looney Tunes from the 1950s. I can still sing the opening song (Overture, curb the lights…). Then, of course, there was Rocky and Bullwinkle, which I seem to recall being on Sunday mornings.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the oddball ones like Top Cat, Underdog, and Super Chicken. They usually had the last slots in the Saturday lineup, so I don’t think many people watched them.
I watched everything that could possibly be considered a cartoon so I didn’t have go get dressed and do something productive. I could usually make it to 12:00 or even 1:00.
I’ve always really loved the Silly Symphony cartoons, and yes, they were retro even when I was a kid.
/youtube Silly Symphony - The Skeleton Dance
@Kyeh There weren’t as many Disney cartoons on TV when I was a kid. Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers came along a bit later but I didn’t see hardly anything with Mickey in them growing up unless it was a movie. I did love Hanna Barbera and Warner Bros classics though.
@ExtraMedium I liked Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies too. We didn’t have a TV when I was little - my parents thought I’d read more that way, which was true. So I saw cartoons at movie theaters or friends’ houses until I was 12 and they finally relented. By then I wasn’t as interested in them.
@Kyeh FYI.
After watching your clip on YT, it presented me with this, which is somewhere between an update and a stolen idea, with a lot of new scenarios, but IN COLOR:
@Kyeh @phendrick Here’s some great stuff in that same vein with Cab Calloway singing in the middle.
@Kyeh
@ExtraMedium @phendrick @rtjhnstn
Now THOSE are masterpieces of animation! So weird and inventive, and pretty scary too for a small kid!
I know a lot of the early animators were extremely well-trained artists.
I just can’t stand the lame look of most cartoon nowadays.
@ExtraMedium @Kyeh @phendrick @rtjhnstn
The black and white skeleton skulls look like the prototype for stormtrooper helmets.
@ExtraMedium @Kyeh
I loved duck tales and rescue rangers. A while ago I saw duck tales on tv and was so mad it was the new ones the old ones were the shit.
The retro Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for sure. Not the new ones at all. I also watched Rugrats regularly on Nickelodeon as well as Hey Arnold. Dabbled with Sponge Bob, but tired very quickly with Bikini Bottom. I would also watch reruns of The Flintstones and a handful of others I don’t recall in my rapidly approaching old age.
Warner stuff from the Termite Terrace era, particularly Roadrunner. Those pretty much set the level of the bar for quality of animation, with the result that when the first Japanese Anime showed up (such as Speed Racer), the ludicrously awful 4 and 6 and even 8-frame animation it used was just Not Good Enough. Ditto for the not-all-animated Clutch Cargo series, and the other one which shared all of its production “qualities”.
I guess I’ll give away how old I am (as if nobody had already noticed):
Earliest cartoons on TV I remember seeing were the Mighty Mouse (I’m singing “I’ve Come to Save the Day” right now), Heckle and Jeckle, and Woody Woodpecker cartoons. I must have seen these on Saturday mornings because we didn’t have a TV till later and I would go over to a friend’s house. I think these had been in movies before being released to TV. Also in movie theaters I saw a lot of Road Runner cartoons (poor, hapless coyote – don’t be an ablist!)
My hands-down favorites were seen shortly thereafter on OUR TV set (yay!), Rocky and Bullwinkle, also including Boris and Natasha, Dudley Do-Right, and Mr. Peabody and Sherman. At one time, after getting old enough to get all the jokes, I had a great DVD collection of R&B, but lost that in a fire. Maybe I should get another copy of that, now that I think about it. Timeless humor, IIRC.
@phendrick I enjoyed all those too. I was also a big fan of Top Cat, Beany and Cecil, Felix the Cat, Huckleberry Hound and Popeye. Also Mr. Magoo and Underdog, The Jetsons and Flintstones, to name a few.
@phendrick
“Here I come, to save the day!”
@phendrick Heard something about “Mighty Mouse” being tied up in legal issues as one reason you don’t see him any more.
@phendrick @werehatrack
Here I Come
@phendrick Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat…
@walarney Looks like that has been settled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Mouse#Later_years
@rpstrong Yup!! I picture Andy Kaufman doing that every time I hear something about Mighty Mouse.
@heartny @phendrick YES. I’m coming Beanie boy! Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent. I dont find many people who know about that.
@chaos13 @heartny I watched all in that list, but none came too close to being my favorites. Of those, best liked Jetsons, Flintstones, and Magoo I guess because they gave me a different and interesting perspective on things. Least favorite of those to me was B&C, just never got into it.
Our Saturday routine (younger sis and I) was a bowl of dry cereal (Trix, Captain Crunch, Froot Loops, Sugar Pops, etc whichever one was in the house that week.) sitting in front of the TV watching the Flintstones, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Tennessee Tuxedo, Tooter Turtle, Fractured Fairy Tales, Aesop and Son, Yogi Bear, Marvin the Martian, Bugs Bunny, the Jetsons, Deputy Dawg and a host of others.
I watched all of the above mentioned, but it was the Warner Brothers stuff that I remember most enjoying, and later, everything Rocky & Bullwinkle. The HB universe (Flinstones, etc) seemed pretty boring to me, although I had a pre-pubescent thing for Betty Rubble.
I would watch Clutch Cargo just because I could not believe anyone would produce “animation” that lame.
Much later in life, on a trip to the Canadian Rockies, I was very excited at seeing an actual “Moose and Squirrel” together. When I get a rare letter in the mail, I still say to myself, “Fan mail from some flounder?”
@stolicat Clutch Cargo was baaaad, but at least the writing wasn’t as abysmal as Space Angel or Captain Fathom. The latter was so awful (even by 1965 standards) that relatively few stations ever picked it up. A total of 13 hours of it were produced, and have not so much faded into history as capsized at launch to lay scrapped in the ooze. An attempt to release all three of the Cambria Synchro-Vox cartoon series to DVD apparently never got past the first trio of episodes. No surprise there; Cambria (the production studio) pretty much owned the slime under the bottom of the animation quality barrel. Even the worst Anime was less cheesy. (Apologies to fermented dairy products for the comparison.)
It’s like asking to choose you’re favorite child.
All of the old ones mentioned, and I love Pinky and the Brain. Lots of great jokes that could mean innocence…or not.
@Tadlem43 Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?
I think so Brain, but if Jimmy cracks corn and he doesn’t care, why is he singing a song about it?
Remember the retro merry melodies ones with Betty Boop?
Hands down…Roadrunner & Wile E. Coyote Still have the glasses from BK
For me it was all about Rocky & Bullwinkle (and their associates), then anything super-hero…Justice League, Spiderman & Friends, Blue Falcon & Dinomutt, throw in Captain Caveman and of course Scooby Doo…Finished every Saturday morning with the crème de la crème, the Looney Toons!!
Popeye
Johnny Quest (the original, not the puerile remake)
I remember liking Skyhawk but I don’t remember episodes.
Thundarr the Barbarian
The Pirates of Dark Water
The Herculoids
Fantastic Voyage
Swat Kats
The Pink Panther had its moments and the Mancini theme was always wonderful.
Roadrunner was the bomb!
Warner Brothers (Bugs, Daffy, Porky) were like the low sugar breakfast cereal; Cheerios. They were funny but meh with some exceptional episodes. We did get to watch Speedy Gonzalez and other shows now censored by the identity nazis.
Shows like the Super Friends were just too… sappy.
A more recent show that surprised me was Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go.
And can’t forget the DCAU, Batman TAS, Superman, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, and some of the followup movies were awesome, as long as Kevin Conroy was voicing Batman.
We lost a season of Saturday Morning Cartoons due to the watergate hearings being carried on all three network channels. Bastards. Couldn’t leave us kids even ONE channel to watch even though they were all broadcasting the exact same thing.
OWLS! TOWELS! JOWLS! AWESOME!
Can’t believe I forgot the animated Star Trek! It was wonderful, and the stories were written up for book publication by Alan Dean Foster who did a great job turning the episodes into well written novellas.
@duodec The animated Star Trek and Johnny Quest were two of my very favorites!
@Tripod2 And I completely forgot Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack… granted those were not childhood cartoons but then neither were many of the ones I listed above…
we had 3 channels on tv when I was quite young. I watched VHS tapes. I liked Little Audrey, Popeye, and older Looney Tunes. My aunt would send me some recordings from the disney channel and I would watch recorded “Dumbo’s Circus” shows.
As I got older, my dad caved and we got more channels. I remember Gummi Bears, smurfs, and Ewoks (although had no clue what Star Wars was).
Funnily I had Care Bears, My Little Ponies, and Lady Lovely Locks toys but I don’t recall actually watching their shows, just having the toys.
@mbersiam
Back in the day, we had 3 channels in St Louis, NBC, ABC & CBS. PBS came around when I was a teen, as did VHS tapes (though it was a few years before we could afford to buy a VCR…)
@chienfou oh technology was definitely around when I was a kid… my dad just didn’t want to pay for it
And to be fair… i was the same once I became an adult. I have never paid for cable and we have very limited streaming services. I didn’t even have a tv in my living room until last year… i kept the tv in the basement at the old house.
@mbersiam
good for you! Balancing your wants and needs is an important life skill.
@chienfou @mbersiam We hardly ever watch TV, either broadcast or streaming, but in part that’s not entirely by choice. I live in a broadcast dead zone; the signals from the massive antenna farm to the southwest of the city are all blocked by nearby tall buildings, so unless I want to erect a really tall mast outside, that’s out. We both object to subsidizing programming we find abhorrent, so cable is out; I haven’t subscribed since before flat panel TVs existed. Netflix went on the shitlist when they ignored the complaints about a certain “comedian”. Too much of what remains is dreck. Basically, we keep up with a few things on YouTube at this point, and ignore pretty much all of the rest.
@chienfou @werehatrack i stopped tolerating netflix when they distributed child porn under the guise of “art.” Offensive comedians came well after that.
I remember watching a lot of cartoons. But I think the first riveting one was Dungeons and Dragons. Not just because we had the game, but because it so very much broke from the traditional, the rehashes, and the attempts to capitalize on fluff culture.
I look back on it now with some amazement. If it were produced now? The christofascists would melt down.
When we were little kids, the after school cartoon came on at 8 bells (4 PM for ye landlubbers)… Popeye.
Really though, puppets ruled.
We had Howdy Doody,
Lamb Chop,
and Kukla, Fran & Ollie.
Once we were old enough to appreciate the satire and sarcasm, it was all about Roger Ramjet.
@2many2no
and of course, Mr Moose, Mr Bunny Rabbit and Captain Kangaroo.
@2many2no
and Romper Room and Bozo the Clown.
@2many2no For the Howdy Doody Show, many of the characters had clever (and fun) names. I loved saying the name of the American Indian character Princess Summerfall Winterspring. (I no doubt knew the names of the four seasons better than others my age who didn’t see the show!). Most people probably don’t remember that after the actress portraying her died in a car wreck, the character reverted to being a marionette.
At the time, as a child, my family often visited relatives in the Buffalo, NY, area and the show was popular there (due to the star Buffalo Bob Smith), so that was where I was introduced to it.
Reruns are available through YouTube.
Anyone interested in early movie animation techniques (or just has nostalgia for the Howdy Doody show)
may enjoy an interesting aside to this – the drama that went on over the attempt to make a film series out of the show. See https://www.cartoonbrew.com/brewtv/howdydoody-22435.html. The discussion linked to there is a dead link, but can be found at https://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/lost-upa-cartoon-howdy-doody-and-his-magic-hat-18607.html
(Despite dead links all over the place,) The film itself can be found at
Keep in mind this production is about 70 years old, so cut it some slack…
@2many2no @chienfou Bob Keeshan got his start on the Howdy Doody show as the mute clown Clarabell.
@2many2no @phendrick
Hmm, I wonder if James Taylor was a fan of the show. Did she have a sidekick named Allyougot Todoiscall?
@2many2no @macromeh @phendrick
Carole King wrote that song…
@2many2no @phendrick @chienfou
And a great recent show in a similar vein was Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Such a shame that Paul Reubens got caught engaging in conduct that made parents uncomfortable.
@2many2no @Kyeh @phendrick
Yeah, I was actually aware of that, but it felt like James Taylor would be more recognizable for the reference…
@2many2no @chienfou @Kyeh @phendrick
)
My favorite sketch from Peewee’s Playhouse (featuring Laurence Fishburn and clearly meant for the older kids
@2many2no @chienfou @phendrick @macromeh That’s great.
LF looks so young and cute!
@2many2no @chienfou @Kyeh @macromeh I had never thought of him as “cute”.
@2many2no @chienfou @Kyeh @phendrick Maybe it’s the “big boots”
@macromeh COWBOY CURTIS! Let us all take a moment to remember that Peewee was a punk.
@GetClosure @macromeh LOVE it!
/giphy inspector-gadget
Nobody’s mentioned Wacky Races or Klondike Kat yet. “Savoir-Faire eez everywhere”.
Speed racer and Flinstones.
@cichlid Speed racer FTW!
And if you never saw Dexter’s Laboratory, there was a wonderful tribute/parody episode:
I grew up watching the classic Looney Tunes from the 1950s. I can still sing the opening song (Overture, curb the lights…). Then, of course, there was Rocky and Bullwinkle, which I seem to recall being on Sunday mornings.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the oddball ones like Top Cat, Underdog, and Super Chicken. They usually had the last slots in the Saturday lineup, so I don’t think many people watched them.
I watched everything that could possibly be considered a cartoon so I didn’t have go get dressed and do something productive. I could usually make it to 12:00 or even 1:00.
Ren and Stimpy, Rocko’s modern life, and The Maxx MTV Oddities. You know - quality television.