Favorite Saturday Morning Cartoon?

[KremlingWhatnot]

I created a poll for Saturday morning cartoons, what's your favorite, and if so vote in the poll.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm not sure how many of these actually qualify as Saturday Morning cartoons: Rocky and Bullwinkle was before my time, but I believe it was a Sunday afternoon/early evening cartoon, and I know POKEMON was a weekday series, because for a couple of years I would watch it every morning before school. Likewise, THE FLINTSTONES was a primetime series, because much like TMS, people made a big fuss about it in the beginning, citing that cartoons had no place in primetime.

That said, I'm not sure what I could actually vote for, because unfortunately, Saturday Morning was on the verge of being phased out when I was a kid. I remember for a while, Cartoon Network did a Saturday Morning block of all its Cartoon Cartoons since they devised this whole advertising stunt that Saturday is a boring day because there's nothing to do (no school, no work, etc.), and there was ABC/Disney's 1 Saturday Mornings in the early 2000s that I'd watch for MICKEY MOUSE WORKS (the less-personality precussor to HOUSE OF MOUSE). Other than that, most of these others I watched in reruns on Cartoon Network (ANIMANIACS, PINKY AND THE BRAIN, TINY TOON ADVENTURES); BOBBY'S WORLD was another one I'd watch before school as a kid (it was the only show I can remember that had closed captions by default).

 

[Drtooth]

Currently, Spongebob.

Why?

Because it's the only bloody thing on Saturday freaking mornings anymore!

 

[fuzzygobo]

What if you grew up in an age when there actually were Saturday morning cartoons?
What if someone's favorite cartoon is not on your list?

If I had to narrow it down to the most notable contenders (and expand your list) by decades I was around, here are my choices:

1960's: The Beatles. Three seasons of sing along tunes. By Season three, they were getting very psychedelic for Saturday morning. Brought to you by the same people who produced "Yellow Submarine", all the more remarkable that just a few years prior King Features produced an extremely cheap Popeye series.

1970's: Fat Albert
The Young Sentinels. Once in a while, Filmation can pull a winner out of their hat.

1980's: Ewoks- hardcore Star Wars fans hated seeing them turned into Care Bears (another Nelvana production) but this series grew on me.
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. One of Disney's proudest moments.

1990's: Raw Toonage. By now I'm a college grad and other things start taking priority in my life, this was my last connection to Saturday morning. Before long the networks will start phasing out Saturday morning toons, while focusing on weekday afternoons.
And this show begat Bonkers D. Bobcat.

Plus one more from the fledgling Fox network: Zazoo U. Could've been a contender before it got pulled. If you blinked, you missed it.

 

[Drtooth]

Plus one more from the fledgling Fox network: Zazoo U. Could've been a contender before it got pulled. If you blinked, you missed it.

I saw one of those on Youtube. It's...ahead of it's time to say the least. It felt like watching a half hour American voiced Canadian animated film. By all means, it was a great show with lots of potential, but this was the very early 90's, and networks weren't hip to the start of original animated cable programming. Ren and Stimpy and Doug just hit, meaning the Renaissance age of TV animation was just getting underway and the major broadcast networks just weren't in on the curve just yet. Sure, we had that Bakshi Mighty Mouse series, but it flew under the radar (other than that Family Organization claiming they were showing cocaine). Plus, Fox Kids was a fledgling network at the time. They didn't get footing until at least Bobby's World and Eek! The Cat. An oddball show on a new network? That's sadly not meant to be.

Speaking of cartoons that were way too ahead of their time, one of my personal favorites was always NBC's illfated "The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley." In a world of violence free super heroes, Smurfs knockoffs, and other network mandated toy commercial type shows, Ed Grimley was waaaaay too hip for the room. Especially the science brothers and Count Floyd (live action in my animation?! Only Mario could get away with that back then). A show that's just as sharp as the not for another few years "Animainacs" with some great SCTV talent. Just not something that's going to excite the mainstream, you know?

 

[mr3urious]

Speaking of cartoons that were way too ahead of their time, one of my personal favorites was always NBC's illfated "The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley." In a world of violence free super heroes, Smurfs knockoffs, and other network mandated toy commercial type shows, Ed Grimley was waaaaay too hip for the room. Especially the science brothers and Count Floyd (live action in my animation?! Only Mario could get away with that back then). A show that's just as sharp as the not for another few years "Animainacs" with some great SCTV talent. Just not something that's going to excite the mainstream, you know?

The Beetlejuice series was pretty ahead of the curve, too, with all its sly visual puns and wordplay, not to mention the ghoulish tone throughout.

 

[Drtooth]

Beetlejuice as a cartoon was very popular compared to the other two. It's hilarious in hindsight that, well...

When The Real Ghostbusters moved from syndication to ABC, ABC toned the show the heck down. Meanwhile, ABC kept the Beetlejuice cartoon gruesome, yet once it moved to Fox, it became pretty censored to the point where the writers revolted with an episode about BS&P ruining the show. Which of course one of the original Real Ghostbusters writers did to their series with the "Janine, you Changed" episode.

Weird how that works out.

There are a lot of cartoons that feel weirdly out of their time period. Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures being the obvious. But for the slightly less obvious, I really think that one of the most underrated cartoons was 1979's Plastic Man. Now, by comparison, it's no The Tick or Freakazoid, but for that era it was a breath of fresh air. Remember, this was back when the SuperFriends finally had permission to actually use their own villains instead of well meaning scientists, and they finally found out that any teenage sidekick who wasn't Robin was a freaking bad idea. And Batman had his slightly less enjoyable Filmation cartoon (though it did have Adam West and Burt Ward). This was the "superheroes can't punch anyone" era, of course, and Plastic Man was actually creative about it. And with writers like Mark Evanier, it ensured some actual cartoon humor. And even when they had some PC pushed onto the show (the network wanted diversity, unfortunately at the cost of Woozy Winks), the show runners managed to make it a little tongue in cheek by having a bad luck Hawaiian guy who talked like Lou Costello. And, progressively, Plastic Man had to report to a snarky female chief. Now, I haven't seen many of the other cartoons from this series. The DVD's only have the Plastic Man cartoons, and not even the Plastic Family episodes. But I have seen Mighty Man and Yukk, and that was pretty decent.

 

[Xerus]

Saturday Mornings were the biggest joys in my life. Here are my 10 most favorites by the order of the times they first aired.

My very first favorite was a live action show called Uncle Croc's Block, where Charles Nelson Reilly played a grumpy kids show host who showed his own style of cartoons. MUSH, Fraidy Cat, and Wacky & Packy.

There was Laff-A-Lympics, where Hanna-Barbera all stars got together to play sports. I used to watch Yogi and his friends on weekday syndication and it was a treat to see them all together with other memorable characters in this amazing series.

Yogi's Space Race was pretty cool. Yogi and some old and new favorites racing around in spaceships trying to dodge space villains.

The Smurfs had neat original stories and memorable characters.

Then came those years when they turned 80's video games into cartoon shows like Saturday Supercade.

Muppet Babies had lots of sophisticated humor for 80's Saturday Mornings.

The Wuzzles were a neat concept. Everyone and everything were two creatures mixed into one.

Captain N, the Game Master was like a video game version of Alice in Wonderland with neat designs and mild humor.

Yeah, Zazoo U was great too. Too bad I only caught a few shows before it quickly vanished from TV.

My most favorite Saturday Morning show was Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. An action show with lots of fourth wall breaking humor. Which was pretty rare during that time.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

This:

Or this:

 

[Drtooth]

Had no idea where to put this, but if there's one Saturday morning cartoon that was just before my time that I had to wait for Youtube to discover, it was Saturday Supercade. The now infamous block of video game based cartoons by Ruby Spears that came out of the success of the Pac-Man cartoon at the time. Which isn't bad, by the way. A little stupid, but not unwatchable.

Anyway, all hopes of it being on DVD were lost when too many license holders held up the series. Until now... except... well... It's just the Q*Bert segment and only to cash in off of the horrible Pixels movie, and only available on-line.

Now, when it comes to Supercade, the shows are pretty much the hit or miss type. I really think that, while flawed, the Donkey Kong series is actually pretty fun. Not so much for the sequel series "Scrappy-Doo Kong farts around in Unsold Cartoon Pilotland." And I haven't seen Pitfall Harry or Space Ace enough to comment (or at all), but the rest of the shows go straight into "concept wasn't strong enough to make a show, so let's just dump the characters in absurd situations" Valley. So Frogger somehow turns into a series about them being reporters and somehow Frogger's Plastic-Man for some reason. And then there's the "the only thing released on DVD" Q*Bert. The series where they're in retro-50's land that somehow takes place in the 80's.

Which we get this "gem"

No surprise, the DVD press release says they can't get all the episodes on there because of circumstances beyond their control. Obviously, song rights.

But UGH! That Q*Bert dressed up as Boy George. Yeah, I remember that great 1950's troubadour, Boy George.