Cartoons today vs. the ones we grew up with

In short, I think all kids' programming today sucks. Now, I know every generation says that theirs was the best, but let's face it, WE can back up that argument, the next generation can't.

I grew up in the 90s, and we had the classic cartoons, Flintstones, Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Looney Toons, the original Mickey Mouse cartoons on the Disney Channel, and then we had the more modern stuff for our time, Ducktales, Goof Troop, Garfield & Friends, the Charlie Brown cartoons, Tiny Toons, The Real Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Addams Family, Beetlejuice, we had all the greats, and today all that's left on the regular channels is MAYBE a half hour or hour of the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, not much to compensate for all that we had.

And, despite the thread's title, it's not just limited to cartoons. Saturday night, Nickelodeon became Snick and they would show Kenan and Kel, funny as hell, Cousin Skeeter, I liked it, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, STILL a great one today, and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. I loved Shelby Woo as a kid, she was a teenaged girl who worked with the police, and she solved REAL crimes that involved danger: arson, kidnapping, robbery, criminal assault, sabotage, gambling, hit and run, etc. Now you tell me WHAT kids' show today is going to have the balls to have ANY of that going on today? Today, from what I can gather, a mystery for a kid's show would be something like 'I can't find my shoe...someone stole it! *20 minutes later* oh it was in the freezer the whole time'. They would NEVER get into something that could actually involve risk of life and limb of a child.

And does anybody here remember that show from PBS in the 90s, Wishbone? With the little talking dog who played the heroes in classic literature? I loved that show too, I'd catch it every day, and it got a lot of kids interested in reading classic stories like Tom Sawyer, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Red Badge of Courage, The Purloined Letter, The Count of Monte Cristo, Scandal in Bohemia, The Hound of the Baskervilles, etc. Again, WHAT show today is going to make that interesting for a kid?

And that series spawned several book series...there was the series that ran like the show: something going on in Wishbone's life would be similar to what was going on in a classical story.

Then there was another series that told it all from the classic story's point of view, with Wishbone offering tidbits of information in between.

Then there was the mystery series that there was something weird going on in Oakdale, somebody went missing, the possibility of aliens, etc., and through it all somebody would mention the name of an exisiting mystery novel that had something similar going on in it. And again, I have to ask, WHAT kids show today is going to have the balls to try any of that? Today they don't encourage kids to read, or learn, or think, just sit down in front of the TV all day.

And something else I think about, the older cartoons had the guts to say 'kill' or 'murder' or 'die', it wasn't taboo. The Flintstones, Fred thought his next door neighbor was the infamous wife KILLER. In Garfield in the Rough, there is a KILLER panther running around and Garfield says 'they're going to come here, and then they're going to eat me, and then I'm going to die, and that'll really hurt my bowling average'. In kids' shows today, they don't say 'he KILLS them' or 'she KILLED them', no...instead they say 'he GETS them' or 'she GOT them'. And when trying to say somebody died, the best they can come up with is 'gone', or change it from dead to 'in a hospital in Canada'.


It's really stupid how kids' shows today treat the audience members with (no pun intended) kid gloves, that if they say anything or have anything with any actual substance or meaning, it will overload their tiny little brains.

Anybody else got something to add?

I grew up in the '60's so I watched Flintstones, Jetsons, Yogi Bear, etc. before they were repeats. My favorite cartoons back then were the ones from Warner Bros. i.e. Looney Tunes & Merry Melodies with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. I'd bet Osama bin Laden's balls that what I watched was 1,000 times more sophisticated then what's out there now. That's because many of them were produced to show in movie theaters to adults. I also loved Rocky & Bullwinkle, Speed Racer, George of the Jungle/Tom Slick/Super Chicken, Astro Boy and 8th Man to name a few. I still love animation. Even though it's past it's prime I'm still devoted to The Simpsons. I'm a fan of Family Guy and the Cleveland spin off. I hope Archer (on FX) comes back soon too.

alan smithee wrote:I'd bet Osama bin Laden's balls that what I watched was 1,000 times more sophisticated then what's out there now.

That's certainly true for even as recently as the 90s, with Tiny Toon Adventures...I got the DVD shortly after it came out, and I was going over the episodes again and surprised at all the stuff I missed before, them using words like spelunking, petard, sacroiliac, etc., in everyday conversation, you wouldn't catch them doing that in today's cartoons, no sir.

One of my favorites was when they did a parody of Abbott & Costello with a tall thin alley cat and a short fat one after Tweety Bird (before he was Tweety). At one point the short fat one has been talked into trying to reach Tweety on a shaky ladder or pair of stilts, I can't remember which, and as he's swaying precariously way up in the air "Babbit" is shouting up to him, "Give me the bird! Give me the bird!" and "Catstello" stops in mid-sway and says to the audience, "If the Hays office would only let me, I'd give him the bird, all right!"

This is a great discussion topic!
I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and lately I've wondered if my disdain for today's television cartoons is a result of me getting old, or the objective stupidity of the programming.
I'm a big kid at heart and still love animation. I love disney and pixar movies, etc... but the last TV cartoon I remember being truly clever and entertaining was Animaniacs. After that they started coming our with rbbish like Ed, Ed, and Eddie, Rugrats, and the sort.
Has anyone here seen Drawn together? Now that show cracks my sh!t up!
Well, at least we have a few interesting cartoons to feed our inner, more sophisticated child.