Here is a story I wrote called "Death of the Saturday Morning Cartoon: An Interactive Requiem"
Saturday morning television on the major networks is now predominantly filled with two things, local news…and international news. For most kids, watching news ranks right up there with doing chores or going to the dentist. Things were not always this way. There was a golden age in the late 70s where as a kid you could count on two things, that ”Star Wars” would always be cool and Saturday morning would always have cartoons. In the 70’s and 80’s, Saturday morning was prime time television for kids. Everything on ABC, NBC and CBS was geared to kids with the marketing intensity of a “Super bowl” event. The commercials were obsessed with three things: breakfast cereals, sweets and toys.
As Canadians, we were subject to American products that were not available here at that time. To this day I can’t shake the “Apple Jacks” theme from my head.
“A is for Apple, J is for Jacks, Cinnamon toasted Apple Jacks”
And who could forget the commercial where the little asian girl, the waiter dude, the baseball runt and native American all tell you how great Hershey's is.
”Hershey’s is, the great American, great American, chocolate bar.”
The worst tease to an eight year old boy had to be the “Kenner Star Wars” toy commercials. In every commercial your favourite Star Wars toys were turned into high budget props in a thirty second action film. “The Millennium Falcon’s” gun turret roared with impossible to reproduce sound effects and the “Land Speeder” raced in a straight line at just under “six parsecs” across sidewalks and garden rails. Once home, it veered off to the left after ten inches of “sub parsec” speed, before dying at the side of the road like a Ford.
Millennium Falcon Commercial
Land Speeder Commercial
Still, these commercials captivated our imaginations and were really the only reason to tag along with Mom when she went shopping at K-Mart or Woodward’s. After all, shopping was pretty fun when there was the promise of the toy section and its many aisles of glorious action figures dangled like a carrot.
Saturday Morning cartoons were easily the most important calendar event of the week for my little brother and me. We would wake up at 5:55AM, dragging our blankets with us to the living room downstairs. My brother would turn on the T.V. and change the channel to ABC in preparation for “Superfriends” which started at 6AM.
Superfriends Intro
My Dad was a bodybuilder and that meant our fridge and cupboards were filled with foods that were “Complex Carbs”, “High in Protein” and “Low Sodium”. This meant that while we were watching Tony the Tiger tell us how “Greeeaaat” his flakes were, we were eating oatmeal with a smidge of honey. Fortunately, we were enterprising enough to create loopholes for ourselves. The meal of choice on Saturday mornings was buttered whole wheat toast, dripping with oodles of syrupy honey.
Tony the Tiger Commercial
Cozy in our blankets, we would sprawl on the floor of the living room, gorging on several helpings of toast and honey while we watched our favourite cartoons. Next up after “Super Friends” was “Scooby’s All Stars Laff a Lympics”. “Scooby’s All Stars Laff a Lympics” was a 90 minute show hosted by the other pink panther, “Snagglepuss”. The show started with an episode of “The Scooby Doo Show” which was the third “Scooby Doo” series after the original one and the meet the movie stars series. It featured the intro with Scooby water skiing with a shark nipping at his heels. After that was “The Blue Falcon and Dynomutt”. The show ended with an episode of “Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels”.”
Laff a Lympics Intro
Scooby Doo Show Intro
Dynomutt Dog Wonder Intro
Captain Caveman Intro
After this the watching became a tad less predictable. Our selection was “Plastic Man” or “Fantastic Four”, depending on which one was a re-run (this was before the introduction of “Baby Plas” who ruined “Plastic Man” forever in ’81). If they were both new, we generally went with “Plastic Man”. Still, there were other alternatives…
Plastic Man Intro
Fantastic Four Intro
There is no doubt in my mind that the reason the “Metric System” has taken so long to gain a foothold here in Canada is that Canadian’s primarily watch American television. There are a few exceptions, notably, “Hockey Night in Canada”, “The Grey Cup” and “Trailer Park Boys”. The majority of Canadian television has historically been filled with shows like “The Littlest Hobo”, “Beachcombers”, “Corner Gas” and “Anne of Green Gables”. These are shows that are so terrible and yawn inducing that they drive you to want to gouge and prod yourself repeatedly with plastic utensils.
Littlest Hobo Intro
Beachcombers Inro
This brings me to the other alternatives to “Plastic Man” and “Fantastic Four”. They were available on the Canadian channel CKVU 13 but were so terribly bad that they were probably written into the Geneva Convention as forms of torture. These cartoon abominations were “The Mighty Hercules” and “Rocket Robin Hood”. Is it any wonder Canadian kids tended to watch American cartoons with crap like this? These “Canadian Made” cartoons were god awful, yet when forced to watch they were the equivalent of driving by a car wreck. They re-cycled the same four illustrations for “combat” and “power ups” and would spend the first five minutes after EVERY commercial explaining what had happened BEFORE the commercial. This meant that as a viewer you were treated to exactly 5 minutes of original content in a 30 minute cartoon. It is therefore no surprise that most of us grew up heavily influenced by American culture.
The Mighty Hercules Intro
Rocket Robin Hood Intro
After “Plastic Man” or “The Fantastic Four” we were treated to what was probably my favourite show in the summer of 1980, “Thundar the Barbarian”. “Thundar the Barbarian” was a post-apocalyptic cartoon that borrowed heavily from “Star Wars” but at eight years old you weren’t always looking for original content. It was a cartoon that seamlessly blended Science Fiction and Fantasy. To a kid, it was like merging “Conan the Barbarian” with “Star Wars”.
Thundar the Barbarian Intro
Our fourth hour of viewing was the “Scooby and Scrappy Doo” hour. It was a classic “Scooby Doo Where are You?” cartoon followed by “Scooby and Scrappy Doo” the character that would single-handedly ruin “Scooby Doo” for over a decade. I still suffer the nostalgic taint of groan inducing lines like:
"Lemme at 'em! I'll splat 'em!" "Lemme at 'em! I'll splat 'em!"
“Ta tadada Puppy Power!”
Scrappy Doo Intro
Our fifth hour of viewing was where things tended to get dicey. If it was spring or summer weather outside, Dad might wake up and kick our little asses outside. The tell-tale sign that the jig was up was the familiar stomping of “Quadzilla”. Dad would walk past the bathroom and towards the door that led to the downstairs living room. The language was Dutch but the meaning was Universal.
“How many times have I told you two that you shouldn’t be cooped up all day when it’s sunny outside,” he would say.
“But Papa, can we pleeeeeaaaase just watch one more show?” we would answer in desperation.
“It’s almost noon and you’ve spent half the day inside already, now go outside!” was his scripted reply.
And just like that the magic would be over and we would be forced outside into the sunlight to go bike riding or explore the creeks and trails in the surrounding forests. Such malevolence.
During the rainy season of winter and its surrounding months we were given some reprieve.
In the ‘80s the quality of the Saturday morning offering began to suffer. The introductions of cartoons like “Laverne and Shirley”, “The Smurfs”, “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Mr. T” would begin to take over while gems like “Dungeons and Dragons” and “Richey Rich” were few and far between. Soon the Saturday morning cartoon crowd would begin to view cartoons at after school hours. Cartoons like “Robotech”, “Gi Joe”, “The Transformers” and “G-Force Battle of the Planets” all began to pull away the core Saturday morning crowd.
Mork and Mindy Laverne and Shirley Hour Intro
Mr. T Intro
Robotech Intro
The Transformers Intro
At first, the networks began to introduce news programming during the first half of Saturday morning. But by the time the early ‘90s rolled around the death knell that had begun in the late ‘80s was in full ring. My daughter would never know the joy of waking up on a Saturday morning to watch hour after hour of quality cartoons. She inherited the Cartoon Network and Teletoon which aside from some adult content late at night are rife with the kind of crap cartoons that would make “The Mighty Hercules” and “Rocket Robin Hood” look brilliant in comparison.
And so, let us remember for a moment, that nostalgic time when commercials promised toy greatness and many dental trips. A time when cartoons were served up hour after glorius hour on Saturday mornings to an army of entranced rugrats and anklebiters.
R.I.P
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Topic: 80s Cartoons (Read 10609 times)
