Best cartoon era for kids

I grew up in the same era as Silverstar, and while I loved the cartoons at the time, I'm not so wrapped up in nostalgic bliss that I can't see them as the trash that they are. I had massive love for Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends when I was young, but watching a re-run on Toon Disney was one of those, "I liked THIS?!?" moments. I'm pretty sure most of us watched He-Man at the time specifically to point and laugh at it the next day at school, since we recognized it as crap from the start, and none of us were ever fooled by the consequenceless violence of G.I. Joe and Thundercats or the idiotic moral lessons tacked on to make them "educational." To quote a wiser mind than mine: Nostalgia doesn't want us to remember this simple fact: SUCK IS ETERNAL, and a whole lot of those 80's cartoons really sucked.

At this point, I'd probably say that the best era of cartoons for kids is still the Golden Age of animation, way back in the 30's and early 40's, since most of those toons were "all-ages" in the best sense of the word. As a result, I don't think the kids ever felt that they were being condescended to, and the cartoons themselves were wonderful. We're still watching them, enjoying them, and learning from them, which really should say something. The 90's had some great cartoons, but that was also the era when they started getting harder to find, and many of them were awful from a technical standpoint -- stiff and cheap and without that tiny bit of charm Filmation managed to work in there. The early part of this decade had some pretty good ones, too, but it's just too close to tell whether they'll hold up over time.

-- Ed
 
I grew up in the 90's where some of the classics like Looney Toons and HB shows like Yogi, Huck, The Filtstones, Top Cat, Scooby-Doo etc. were shown in syndication. I think the 90's was the best because it had more variety. Most old cartoons follow the same formula and some were carbon copies of each other. In most 90's cartoons you weren't only entertained but along the way you learn some stuff as well. That's the way I see it at least. :D
 
Was the 90's really considered the time of the cartoon renaissance among insiders? I just made it up when I said that before.

On the extras of the season 1 and 2 Ren and Stimpy show DVD is a John K. interview, John K. comments on that. Love him or hate him, and I know a lot of people around here hate him or at least hate his work but that is irrlevent to his conversation, but I thought he made a valid point and I agree with him.

He commented on how cartoons in the 80's were mostly driven from toy merchandise and how to incorpate them to make money off toys, and said when Nicktoons began they wanted to do cartoonest driven cartoons. He said sarcasticly "Cartoonest driven cartoons, what a concept." Or something similar.

I think the cartoons in the 80's with a few exceptions, was aimed at one age group or one gender. Not many cartoons in that time made effort, lets make a show that kids of all ages and maybe even some adults, that both boys and girls will like. They were focused on one specific demographic, not saying it is a terrible thing, it worked out for them.

The 90's went back to the golden age method let's make a show that almost everybody could enjoy.
 
I am half way there. I consider myself both a child of the 80's and 90's child. I consider the 90's the best era in my life time, but think todays era has the edge over the 80's.
 
Definitely the 90s, with the advent of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.

The 60s come in at a close second. I've seen a few of them on Boomerang and some of them are quite entertaining.

The 70s were too bland, the 80s seemed more intent to sell you stuff, and the majority of today's cartoons are either too educational, too stupid or too focused on card game tie-ins.
 
Maybe I am stereotyping on just programs I familar with. But that vast majority of the card game tie-ins shows you are referring to (Caotic is one exception) that are based on toy and video games that we see now a days are from Japan. The programming from Japan it is like the 80's cartoons that came from North America.

As far as cartoon for kids, Japan is living in the 80's, no offense. And some of them are excellent BTW, mostly better than the 80's toy merchandise shows that we made. Digimon is a brillant show, despite its corporite tie ins.

One pet peeve I have about the cartoons in the 80's, (I don't want to pick on the era too much, but it needs to be said) is those educational messages at the end of the episodes. After the episode is over, they would have a one minute episode in which the characters break the 4th wall and give an educational message. I thought that was condisenty and talking down to the audiance. You can incorporate those messages within episodes without breaking from the storyline and moving smoothing along. Since I brought it up already, Digimon had a lot of educational messages, and they never needed to break the 4th wall to deliver them, and the story moved smoothly. Pokemon was also the same way as well, though sometimes the narriator would spell it out for you when Ash learned a lesson.

You don't have to be so bladent to teach a lesson. I don't mind merchandise driven cartoons if they are good. If it is a good show, I don't care where it came from, but those educational messages I disliked, it talked down to the audiance. And the number one rule of preforming, don't talk down to the audiance.
 
I enjoy all eras actually. The 60s had classic HB stuff like flintstones, space ghost, jetsons, mightor, etc as well as the last gasps of theatrical cartoons,and of course rocky and bullwinke, the 70s had a lot of formularic stuff, but also shows that were able to rise above the formula (wait till your father gets home, the barkleys, and even certain superfriends eps for example). The 80s was merchandise driven but also had several excellent comedy cartoons (real ghostbusters, heathcliff, new adventures of mighty mouse, garfield and friends) and the action cartoons did have lots of excitement and catchy theme songs, and occasionally good to excellent writing and animation. The 90s were the return of creator-driven shows (simpsons, doug, rugrats, ren and stimpy, beavis and butthead, 2 stupid dogs, etc) and WBs golden age, as well as the decade that anime started taking a foothold in the US. And the 2000s has given us adult swim (for every assy mcghee, they still have stuff like venture bros and boondocks, two of the greatest adult toons ever) and some toon revivals (he-man, transformers animated) that are superior to their older counterparts, and the greatest DCAU show (IMO) Justice League/JLU, not to mention great comedy cartoons like chowder and johnny test. I like to look at the good of the industry as opposed to focusing on the bad.
 
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