A new comic has been posted, as promised, just in time for Saturday morning.

Cubicle101 - 6/14/08

That got me to thinkin', whatever happened to the good 'ole Saturday morning cartoons? When I was growing up we had Looney Toons, Voltron, Tom & Jerry, Transformers, and the like. I look at Saturday morning cartoons now days and just have to scratch my head.

It's more than obvious the Japanese culture of animated entertainment has overtaken the vast majority of the target audience, kids. I guess we have Transformers and Star Wars to thank for that, as it seems that every single kids show or cartoon out these days has a toy line. Often it's not the cartoon that inspires the toy line, but rather the other way around. Take Poke'mon for instance. What started as a run away hit card game for kids turned into an animated TV series and even a frikkin' movie.

Now I know that most young children are easily distracted by brightly colored, shiny, moving objects (just like us full grown men) but where are the thought provoking cartoons of our generation? It seems like the culture of our children has been focused on "watch the show, buy the toy, and watch the show while playing with the toy" rather than the older cartoons that required a bit of thinking on the viewers part to understand the humor of a situation, or the plot of the story.

All this is completely opinionated of course, just my two cents. However, I plan to archive as many of those old cartoons as I can so that, God forbid, I should ever have children they can start out with the cartoon greats I enjoyed as a kid, before wading into the world of toy marketing via the boob tube.

Quote: Originally Posted by 0v3rki11 A new comic has been posted, as promised, just in time for Saturday morning. Cubicle101 - 6/14/08 That got me to thinkin', whatever happened to the good 'ole Saturday morning cartoons? When I was growing up we had Looney Toons, Voltron, Tom & Jerry, Transformers, and the like. I look at Saturday morning cartoons now days and just have to scratch my head.

I blame three forces.

1) Parents groups. If you try to do anything remotely controversial, they have a stroke. I recall how it was considered noteworthy in the mid-90s when they shot a character in Gargoyles, and she stayed wounded for weeks. We don't even reach that level of complexity about violence anymore. WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE STOP THINKING OF THE CHILDREN?!

2) Educational-intent regulations. To make sure they get the symbol, they seem to go for "Let's club you over the head with a message" style programming. There is a particular circle of hell reserved for the guys who came up with Liberty's Kids.

3) Short season runs. If you're only producing 13 episodes a season, you have to favour things that can be rerun ad-nauseum to fill 52 weeks. That discourages things like ongoing plot elements-- if the 13 episodes only make sense shown in a single order, then they'll do bad in reruns.

It's no wonder kids today love anime. While some is admittedly junk, there's plenty of choices which feature things like "200+ episodes that follow a cohesive plot and direction". And fanservice.

It is simple 0v3rki11. Being in the comic buisiness yourself, I am suprised you did not hear about it. Wiley Coyote sued ACME for selling him defective and dangerous stuff, retired to an exotic island. Then they took away Elmer Fudd's gun, and he became a vegetarian. Off course Elmer ate all the carrots, and Bugs starved to death. And sadly, Tweety, Daffy, and the Roadrunner all died from lead poisoning or DDT.

And Saturday morning cartoons now suck.

E