Cartoons today and what we grew up on

darkman2

Hi,


Do any of you feel kids today are deprived of the toons the late 80's/ early 90's produced? I do. Here are examples:


M.A.S.K - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vSD8DliZ1w

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors (who remembers this!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87OboKpbhN0&mode=related&search=

Another bit of nostalgia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbVNZ-cghz0



There are numerous others I could post but are cartoons today really not a patch on what we grew up on? Or am I just out of touch now and pokemon will be posted on such forums with affection!? (god forbid IMO)

Irish Wolf

Aggg man - they need a few of the Communist Bloc cartoons we had in the late 70s early 80s..


May be better here.. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=253

o1s1n

For me the decline in cartoons seemed to coincide with the surge in computer animation.

You just can't beat cels. I don't care what anyone says.

Not to mention that the 80's and early nineties had a huge volume of sci fi based stuff.

Big Jayce fan here too by the way! I love that show. Still waiting for it to be released properly on DVD. Only box set at the moment is in French

Ruu_Old

The older stuff is pretty much all I watch. Mysterious Cities of Gold, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and Ulysses 31. My list could go on for ages!

o1s1n

Anyone who likes Ulysseus 31 has to have seen this, Phillip Schofield singing the theme tune. I love it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbbBqZyjkiE&mode=related&search=

Lirange

Am I one of the few that watched cartoons for the characters rather than the animation? I loved cartoons such as the Flintstones, Tom & Jerry, Dastardly & Mutley, etc mainly for amusement and laughs. There have been loads of cartoons that seem to draw people mainly on their style and animation. It seems I'm not a real "animation fan" in the purist sense. I never watched cartoons that took themselves seriously. Cartoons as drama just didn't capture my childhood imagination.

cuppa

At least we grew up on cartoons and tv shows that had a message.
Like how to add or how to be nice.(bad spelling alert for tv shows on the way)

play school,sesseme street ,mr ben ,ivor the engine,rainbow,moomins,button moon, bagpuss, champion the wonder horse , marine boy,(and all the puppet ones cpt scarlet, sumthing rescue ,and some under water one)

All had messages in them ,,,later kids stuff had kill em all and we win ,,we all went down hill form there,

Tzetze

Ah great stuff OP. I recall cities of gold and jayce and his wheeled whotsits.

Some of my own childhood faves;
Battle of the Planets and the G-Force crew. Flew around in their Phoenix flame-plane. Man, I loved this show.

Ulysses in the 31st Century They just don't make them like this anymore.

And what about those french educational science-based [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVeZyxfKt9o&mode=related&search=[/url]Once upon a time...[/url] cartoons? This was the 'life' one, but there were also 'man', 'space', and others?

Dangermouse! Crumbs!

Rabies

Ah... Ulysses 31, ahead of its time.

Much better than the crap they throw out now a days.

challengemaster

what.the.fúck.is.that.

Rabies

challengemaster wrote:

what.the.fúck.is.that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_31

challengemaster

sorry, left out the word 'shíte' from that post.

Mr. CooL ICE

darkman2 wrote:

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors (who remembers this!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87OboKpbhN0&mode=related&search=

Its embarassing to say it, but that intro brought back sooooo many memories that it kinda brought a tear to my eye . I even remember having these bicycle clip bracer things with strange clamps that i used to play with to try and replicate the bit at 0:39 in that video clip. Thank you so much darkman2!

But yes, cartoons are getting even more rubbish by the day. They are so bad and unsuccessful these days that producers seem to be turning to remakind old classics, e.g. Tom and Jerry Kids (gay doesnt even describe it), Transformers Megatron (or whatever), Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo (only time i would ever approve of animal cruelty would be to kill that bow tie-wearing animated idiot) and many more that I can't remember

branners69

I cant believe Dungeons and Dragons hasnt been mentioned yet!

To me my ultimate childhood cartoon along with M.A.S.K. and Thundercats!

I have a one year old daughter so am watching alot more kids tv then I used to and some is ok like Galactik football buts its not a patch on what we used to watch!

Nickelodeon show "Classic" programmes in the evenings like Mr Benn and the Flumps, they are pretty poor from what I remember watching! Escpecially compared to Bear in the Big Blue house!

SimpleSam06

What about that one where there was a beardy guy inside of a human, and red blood corpuscles marching around and whatnot? Edutainment of legend! That was part of a whole series of similarily animated cartoons, used to love em but I can't recall the name now. He-man and the masters of the universe was another...

Mostly what we have now is pokemon and that sort of execrable shite, created by Japanese animators to sell playing cards in Japan (which aren't even sold here, as far as I know). Glorified advertisements, bargain basement crap picked up by the bean counters in RTE. Sure kids are thick they'll never know the difference! :rolleyes: There are one or two good ones recently though, I love the new batman cartoons.

Edit: And zoids kicked the arse of transformers.

Pigman II

darkman2 wrote:

Do any of you feel kids today are deprived of the toons the late 80's/ early 90's produced? I do. [/url]

Absolutely not. I grew up on shows like MASK, Transformers, HeMan and Thundercats etc. Since I was introduced to broadband I've had retrospectives on these shows and I can without reservation say that they are complete and unadulterated garbage that had absolutely no artistic merit and served no function other than to push the associated toylines.

I can't really comment on kids shows today (as I don't watch much of it) but I can say that stuff like Samurai Jack, Pokemon and Spongebob SquarePants are leagues ahead of anything I had to watch back in the day. Exceptions to that may have been shows like Ulysses31 which was an excellent effort and still holds up to viewing today.

I'd suggest to a lot of people living in nostalgia-mode to watch a dozen or show eps of whatever show is stuck in your head and you might start to see it in a whole new light (and not a positive one either).

Mitch Connor

Thundercats was awesome.

Visionairies is another completely awesome cartoon - the little rhymes they had for invoking their powers was a brilliant touch of class.

mike65

Ha, late 80s? Kids today you know nothing.

Cartoons have'nt been any good since Top cat! Official!

Mike.

aequinoctium

ahh cartoons 10 years ago rocked!

they're pretty **** now though

Exit

Pigman II wrote:

Absolutely not. I grew up on shows like MASK, Transformers, HeMan and Thundercats etc. Since I was introduced to broadband I've had retrospectives on these shows and I can without reservation say that they are complete and unadulterated garbage that had absolutely no artistic merit and served no function other than to push the associated toylines.

I can't really comment on kids shows today (as I don't watch much of it) but I can say that stuff like Samurai Jack, Pokemon and Spongebob SquarePants are leagues ahead of anything I had to watch back in the day. Exceptions to that may have been shows like Ulysses31 which was an excellent effort and still holds up to viewing today.

I'd suggest to a lot of people living in nostalgia-mode to watch a dozen or show eps of whatever show is stuck in your head and you might start to see it in a whole new light (and not a positive one either).

Exactly. I wouldn't necessarily say they were ****e, but nostalgia is definitely kicking in for a lot of people here. For a lot of kids now, when they're in their twenties they'll be saying the exact same about the shows they watch and the shows of the future. It's not quality, it's nostalgia.

We definitely had more action based cartoons in our day, but there are some still out there for kids like the comic book stuff like Teen Titans and Di-Gata Defenders (any shows I mention are based on Canadian viewing, don't know if they're available in Ireland) People think that kids shows today are just Pokemon or Teletubbies or whatever, but there are a lot of shows out there designed for adults as well as kids.

Look at the movies for example. We had straight out action type stuff like Goonies or Never Ending Story. Today, kids have Pirates of the Carribean and Shrek. Movies that have as many jokes for the adults to enjoy as for the kids. That's exactly how the cartoons are too. Spongebob and Fairly Odd Parents are two shows that I've watched that I've found really humourous (for cartoons) They are full of surreal humour and in-jokes and references that a kid wouldn't pick up on.

Having said all that, there is one thing better about our cartoon viewing than today. When we were kids, we looked forward to every Saturday morning to watch cartoons and then go out and play. Kids today have 24 hour channels devoted to cartoons, so they don't have that anticipation, and usually they just spend their time plonked in front of a television.

SimpleSam06

Pigman II wrote:

I can say that stuff like Samurai Jack, Pokemon

Er Pokemon is to sell playing cards. Just because they aren't sold in this country doesn't make it less of a blatant advert.

Pigman II

Well it's still a better produced advert. Besides, whether it's an advert or not is not the issue.

matrim

There are some decent cartoons now. As someone mentioned Samurai Jack, Spongebob, Fairly Odd Parents and some of the new batman stuff is ok.

But it does seem like there was alot more good stuff back in the day. Also I can't believe that Earthworm Jim and X-Men haven't been mentioned.

BlitzKrieg

Fosters home for imaginary friends/samurai jack/justice league unlimited more then prove that cartoons today are just as good as they were in the 80's

the only difference is for the most part the good stuff today gets cancelled after 1-2 seasons while stuff like transformers ran for years (and still does) and the crap today just never stops.

Tabnabs

Just to throw a few more into the mix:

Ghostbusters
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=2xfwz2TRGss

BraveStarr
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=_oBkWd_WHYs

Robotech
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=XuWlcZRuiVI

The quality of animation is much poorer but the story lines of much better quality.

Huggles

What about Jamie?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_FQKHQDYk

I ADORED THIS: Gummi Bears!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loUNoy0Qub0

He Man

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=U9bUtpUbKRQ

thelordofcheese

Pigman II wrote:

Well it's still a better produced advert. Besides, whether it's an advert or not is not the issue.

Wait. pokémon?
The cheapest nastiest cartoon of recent times, with more stock footage than the original battlestar galatica and devotes 90% of it's episode time to the "blue background with lines to indicate movement" trick is supposidly better produced than 80's cartoons?

Look, i think you do have a point that alot of catroons from back then havn't aged well, but don't be sayin' crazy things.

Pigman II

Seriously tho. I'm not a fan of the show but that pokemon had something about it. There's a kind of perverse humour to it that takes some kind of mental effort to produce. He-man and the like were just "Start with this, then do this, then this, and finally this. Now repeat exactly x130". Admittedly the Pokemon format is very repetitive too but there was certainly more variation on the joke than the 80's stuff I mentioned. The 80's stuff is just done pit-pat ep after ep after ep as tho no one even remembered what happened just a week ago (perhaps they didn't?).

ixoy

A lot won't have aged well, and this is coming from someone using a M.A.S.K. avatar. Exception to the rules do come about - Robotech for example but most definitely "Ulysses 31" which I managed to still get a lot out of on re-watch as I was able to identify better the myths they drew on. Other ones told a longer story and helped up in that narrative sense - "Mysterious Cities of Gold" and, to a lesser extent, "Dogtantion and the Three Muskahounds" (which had a superb theme tune).

Most, however, are rubbish and were used to push a toy line to kids. Re-watching them is painful and should not be attempted...

Isn't this thread more suited to All Things Retro?

Samurai Jack kicks ass.

Slutmonkey57b

Definately a nostalgia fest here.

If anyone's telling me that Thunder****s is better than Samurai Jack, you're deaf, blind and stupid. The first great cartoons were Batman TAS and Ren & Stimpy. Everything before was soulless **** (yes I include the interminable Ulyssys 31 with its shoot-me-please annoying kid and robot characters and oh-****-please-move-it-along plot.) and after, we got Dexter's Laboratory, Space Invader Zim, Earthworm Jim, Johnny Bravo, Fairly Odd Parents, god even the horrendous Spongebob is better than ThunderWankers.

Strange that people hate Pokemon - if anything, it's the most 80's retro cartoon out there - the plot is non-existant and serves only to introduce new toys or reinforce the need to buy the old ones by bombarding the viewer visual and audio hooks, the concept is soulless corporate whoredom, the characters are the most annoying precocious child ****heads you could ever meet, and the animation is crap. It's irredeemable tripe - just like Thundercats.

Take the holy grail, Transformers. Everyone loves transformers, right? Imagine it was made today, what would you say about it? 40-foot transforming war robots that can't seem to manage to shoot another 40-foot robot standing stock still 100 yards away from them? ****ing stupid, right? Wesley Crusher kid characters that only serve as deux-ex-machina plot tools and sources of irritation? alt.wesley.die.die.die, anyone? Huge laser battles going on over and over in the same desert canyon without ever being picked up by any spy satellites, or being drawn to the attention of any humans other than the stupid ****ing kids? A massive civil war that rages over an alien planet, practically destroying all the participants, that gets transplanted to a new planet, and yet every time there's a battle, one side suddenly runs away, and the other side lets them.

Farcical tripe.

Extreme-LoopZ

Captain Planet! he's our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero!:D
Lol I'm such a nerd:p
But seriously, best cartoon ever

There are so many I couldn't list them all and I've forgotten some until I saw them mentioned above, but here are some of my favourites:

Transformers
M.A.S.K.- I still have the Volcano monster truck
Starcom
He Man
Marshal Bravestar
Voltron
The Visionaries
The Racoons
Jayce and the wheeled warriors
Ulysses 31
Dogtanian-3 musketeers with dogs
Theres loads more, just cant list them all:D
Some of todays cartoons like Samurai Jack are awesome. I would recommend The Venture Brothers to everyone, its awesome.

thelordofcheese

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Definately a nostalgia fest here.

If anyone's telling me that Thunder****s is better than Samurai Jack, you're deaf, blind and stupid. The first great cartoons were Batman TAS and Ren & Stimpy. Everything before was soulless **** (yes I include the interminable Ulyssys 31 with its shoot-me-please annoying kid and robot characters and oh-****-please-move-it-along plot.) and after, we got Dexter's Laboratory, Space Invader Zim, Earthworm Jim, Johnny Bravo, Fairly Odd Parents, god even the horrendous Spongebob is better than ThunderWankers.

Strange that people hate Pokemon - if anything, it's the most 80's retro cartoon out there - the plot is non-existant and serves only to introduce new toys or reinforce the need to buy the old ones by bombarding the viewer visual and audio hooks, the concept is soulless corporate whoredom, the characters are the most annoying precocious child ****heads you could ever meet, and the animation is crap. It's irredeemable tripe - just like Thundercats.

Take the holy grail, Transformers. Everyone loves transformers, right? Imagine it was made today, what would you say about it? 40-foot transforming war robots that can't seem to manage to shoot another 40-foot robot standing stock still 100 yards away from them? ****ing stupid, right? Wesley Crusher kid characters that only serve as deux-ex-machina plot tools and sources of irritation? alt.wesley.die.die.die, anyone? Huge laser battles going on over and over in the same desert canyon without ever being picked up by any spy satellites, or being drawn to the attention of any humans other than the stupid ****ing kids? A massive civil war that rages over an alien planet, practically destroying all the participants, that gets transplanted to a new planet, and yet every time there's a battle, one side suddenly runs away, and the other side lets them.

Farcical tripe.

Ahh, so this must be what it's like to have no concept of joy in your soul.

It's a cartoon, for children. Y'know, kids. Not you. KIDS.

Don't waste your time trying to apply any kind of crushing "logic" to it. Does it matter, really, that nobody noticed the giant robots beating the bejesus out of eachother? They did, we enjoyed it, end of story.
I mean when we are talking about giant robots that transform into smaller vehicles on a whim the mystery of why the whole of the NORAD happened to be taking a collective coffee break every time they got into a scrap doesn't really matter.

Reku

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

If anyone's telling me that Thunder****s is better than Samurai Jack, you're deaf, blind and stupid.

Sorry, but Samurai Jack was just complete pants to me.

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

The first great cartoons were Batman TAS and Ren & Stimpy.

Ren & Stimpy was nothing more than a less offensive and less amusing version of Beavis and Butthead IMO (though I think less of the "Heheheh" filler might have improved B&B), what a waste of drawing...

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Everything before was soulless **** (yes I include the interminable Ulyssys 31 with its shoot-me-please annoying kid and robot characters and oh-****-please-move-it-along plot.) and after, we got Dexter's Laboratory, Space Invader Zim, Earthworm Jim, Johnny Bravo, Fairly Odd Parents, god even the horrendous Spongebob is better than ThunderWankers.

That you even consider Johnny Bravo to be on the same level as Invader Zim or Fairly Odd Parents disgusts me, that programme would barely amuse a 5 year old IMO. Invader Zim was written more with the older teen-young adult audiance in mind (hence why it got cancelled, not a broad enough appeal) and Fairly Odd Parents is just great fun for all ages.

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Strange that people hate Pokemon - if anything, it's the most 80's retro cartoon out there -

Only if you define 80's retro as being anime, while some of the 80's cartoons were anime the majority were not.

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Take the holy grail, Transformers. Everyone loves transformers, right? Imagine it was made today, what would you say about it? 40-foot transforming war robots that can't seem to manage to shoot another 40-foot robot standing stock still 100 yards away from them? ****ing stupid, right? Wesley Crusher kid characters that only serve as deux-ex-machina plot tools and sources of irritation? alt.wesley.die.die.die, anyone? Huge laser battles going on over and over in the same desert canyon without ever being picked up by any spy satellites, or being drawn to the attention of any humans other than the stupid ****ing kids? A massive civil war that rages over an alien planet, practically destroying all the participants, that gets transplanted to a new planet, and yet every time there's a battle, one side suddenly runs away, and the other side lets them.

Farcical tripe.

Odd when you consider the more recent Battletech wasn't all that different and Transformers has had both a newer series and been made into a non-animation film, guess most people just disagree with your views.


When the likes of Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, Digimon, etc... are the bulk of what's available to kids these days I find it amazing that they spend less time away from the set than we did as kids, they're ok to a point before you feel: "ok, this has been done to death already leave the horse corpse alone".

_Kaiser_

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Definately a nostalgia fest here.

If anyone's telling me that Thunder****s is better than Samurai Jack, you're deaf, blind and stupid. The first great cartoons were Batman TAS and Ren & Stimpy. Everything before was soulless **** (yes I include the interminable Ulyssys 31 with its shoot-me-please annoying kid and robot characters and oh-****-please-move-it-along plot.) and after, we got Dexter's Laboratory, Space Invader Zim, Earthworm Jim, Johnny Bravo, Fairly Odd Parents, god even the horrendous Spongebob is better than ThunderWankers.

Strange that people hate Pokemon - if anything, it's the most 80's retro cartoon out there - the plot is non-existant and serves only to introduce new toys or reinforce the need to buy the old ones by bombarding the viewer visual and audio hooks, the concept is soulless corporate whoredom, the characters are the most annoying precocious child ****heads you could ever meet, and the animation is crap. It's irredeemable tripe - just like Thundercats.

Take the holy grail, Transformers. Everyone loves transformers, right? Imagine it was made today, what would you say about it? 40-foot transforming war robots that can't seem to manage to shoot another 40-foot robot standing stock still 100 yards away from them? ****ing stupid, right? Wesley Crusher kid characters that only serve as deux-ex-machina plot tools and sources of irritation? alt.wesley.die.die.die, anyone? Huge laser battles going on over and over in the same desert canyon without ever being picked up by any spy satellites, or being drawn to the attention of any humans other than the stupid ****ing kids? A massive civil war that rages over an alien planet, practically destroying all the participants, that gets transplanted to a new planet, and yet every time there's a battle, one side suddenly runs away, and the other side lets them.

Farcical tripe.

The only thing you said in this that I agree with is that yes, the 90's Batman cartoon was great.

Ren And Stimpy and the word great in the same sentence??? :eek:

Miss Fluff

Duplicate

Miss Fluff

I lived and breathed Penelope Pitstop as a little un':)

http://www.hotink.com/wacky/pitstop/

Reku

Lets just hope that you don't also have a "Vibrator" button on your dashboard so, very different meaning these days....:p

smackbunnybaby

i used to love this cartoon....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakus_and_the_Sun_Beneath_the_Sea


the theme tune is great - its on you tube somehwere, i just cant get to it at the moment.
a very bleak cartoon, but did have a plot to it.
its knocking around somwhere if you look hard enough :-)

and then what about this crazy cartoon!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groovie_Goolies

fish fingers

loved sport billy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huJlDsfXf5U

Reku

smackbunnybaby wrote:

i used to love this cartoon....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakus_and_the_Sun_Beneath_the_Sea


the theme tune is great - its on you tube somehwere, i just cant get to it at the moment.
a very bleak cartoon, but did have a plot to it.
its knocking around somwhere if you look hard enough :-)

Had completely forgotten that one, yeah, loved the themesong and was a great series IMO.
Bic and Bac were funny too.

A_Fitz

Dogtanian and the Three Muskahounds was the ****! Brilliant cartoon from the 80's I think.

Used to like the cartoon version of the muppets - Junior Muppets or something? A bit naff, I know!

Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry were good too.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

A_Fitz wrote:

Dogtanian and the Three Muskahounds was the ****! Brilliant cartoon from the 80's I think.

you seen it recently? I thought the same as you a year or so ago when I saw three dvds for sale in a golden discs. Granted I watched the first disk for an hour and a half or so, but it was just awful.
Really and truly, if you have fond memories of this show it's because you were seven.

Pigman II

I think Dogtanian is a show that holds up.

Its tone is quite sarcastic and it's amazingly violent for a kids show. I guess they could get away with it because all the characters were anthromorphised animals but not an episode goes by where someone gets koshed over the head in a way that would leave you wincing if you saw it on the street.

A_Fitz

Hmmmmm.......maybe so. I'll have to get the DVDs and check it out. I always remeber being vexed about missing it, or that RTE would only show it now n' again, or not following on with the next season of it etc.

Can remember some evil characters alright.....a dog that was a cardinal or something?? Guess they wanted to keep it as true to live as possible

Reku

Mordeth wrote:

you seen it recently? I thought the same as you a year or so ago when I saw three dvds for sale in a golden discs. Granted I watched the first disk for an hour and a half or so, but it was just awful.
Really and truly, if you have fond memories of this show it's because you were seven.

*nose starts blinking red*:D
Hmm... I'll have to get the DVDs and see if I can dispute this... certainly did think this was great, even when in my early teens it was on again on another channel (believe I originally saw it on TCC). Some annoying voices sure, but fun overall.

Nailz

I remember watching this when I was 12 in 1998.
Ohh-man, go Johnny! Hey-Hah-Huh!