What happened to Saturday morning cartoons? Do you remember getting up on Saturday, I mean early on Saturday, and plopping in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal or, for me, a peanut butter & jelly sandwich? And no, they're not just for lunch. The Smurfs, the Snorks (a lesser show, but worth mentioning), The Gummy Bears, even He-Man, which I thought was a great show up until the last minute, when He-Man would nearly snap his neck by throwing his head back to laugh at some inane joke. My favorites were the Superfriends, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and The Real Ghostbusters, in that order. The ones that have held up over he years, now that I can watch them again on Netflix and YouTube, are The Real Ghostbusters, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and Superfriends, in that order, with Superfriends only serving for laughs and nostalgia's sake.
So where are my kids' Saturday morning cartoons? Sure there are cartoons on Cartoon Network on Saturday morning, but there are cartoons on Cartoon Network every minute of every day. It's freaking Cartoon Network! What's special about that? It seems like even four or five years ago, there was a special line-up of shows on the CW and UPN that had that same old flash and hype to it, when Pokemon and YuGiOh were the top dogs. Now there's nothing. No reason to get up early with the kids on Saturday (not that I'm complaining about that part), no common shows to share with my son. What happened to their childhood?
I think the advent of cable, and especially the On Demand paradigm, has robbed our children of a tradition that is at least as old as the modern television network, according to Wikipedia*. Maybe that plus the - shall we say, less than active - lifestyle of this generation of kids, who would never think of getting up early on a Saturday. Either way, I miss the Saturday line-up, for my kids, and kind of for myself. I miss even the stupid ones, like the Muppet Babies and the Game Master. I miss the September kick-off on a Friday night in September, usually the same week school started, that introduced all of the new shows, and made them seem so spectacular that it took us a month to realize how lame they were. (Punky Brewster, anyone?) Most of all, I miss the fact that there was something for us that was not ten years too mature for us, that didn't have to be hidden from our parents or debated in the town halls. Except for that one principal who told all of us that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were demonic and took all of their story books out of the library.
* That info might not still be on Wikipedia, since it's been a few days since I posted it, and I'm not sure if enough people voted it through.
I understand what you mean I haven't watched Saturday morning cartoons in a while. Since I had to get up yesterday to take the ACT I decided to watch a cartoon (since I don't have cable and the CW was the only thing I could watch). When I turned on the t.v. and flipped to the channel I had no clue about what I was watching. Then I started to reminisce about the good old days when Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh was all people talked about. Now a days the CW still plays Yu-Gi-Oh along with Sonic X however they did take away TMNT but I don't expect the show to be off the air for to long. I think kids would enjoy the cartoons that they use to play when I was younger when I the CW4kids use to be kids WB it use to be funny and everyone enjoyed it.
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