Speaking of 80's, I watched some Inspector Gadget cartoons last night on youtube. Gadget really is a bumbling clueless person er robot er person with robotic parts.
He's both. he's basically a clumsy cyborg that's part Inspector Clousaeu (which is why they had to get rid of his moustache after the pilot) and part Maxwell Smart, hense why the eventually hired Don Adams to play him. originally Gary Owens was cast as Gadget, as was Jesse White. 3 versions of the Pilot were produced. one with Gary, another with Jesse, and one where they redubbed Gadget with Don Adams, to run as part of the TV show.
Sure enough tiny references to Get Smart crept in as the show got more developed. Like an episode featuring a Canine TV star named Fang the Wonder Dog.
I love the episodes animated by TMS. There were lots of Japanese studios that American Animation was outsourced to... but TMS had the most beautiful of the group. They did Gadget, Ducktales, galaxy High School, and in the 90's Tiny Toons and Animaniacs. They really made the cartoons look American, yet with a certain Japanese quality.
In fact, if you watch Lupin III and an episode of Gadget that they animated, you'll notice the same sort of movements. Esepcially when walking ahnd running.
DIC had some high quality shows back in the 80's. I especially loved Gadget, Heathcliff, Dennis the Menace, and the Super MArio bros Super Show.
In the 90's they made some awful crap... Double Dragon, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen (though that could have been in 2000), stuff like that. And of course, they abandoned the Japanese studios, save for Ghostbusters, the first and second seasons of Captain N, and Alf. though, Ironically they did have TMS animate a few episodes of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (irony, since TMS animated the Sonic X show). And the animation of the other studios was terrible. Super MArio 3 had some terrible animation. Check out Misadventures in Baby sitting. Almost every line is off sync.