Classics lost to the young

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kingthedevil666

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Over the past year I have witnessed on two separate occasions school-aged children that did not know what "The Jetsons" is. Once while at work I saw a mother telling her daughter what she used to watch when she was young. Another was in a museum, with a short video montage that included scenes from the Jetsons. These children were no younger than 7. Considering Jetsons is one of my favourite classic cartoons and a fairly well known one, at that, I felt very disheartened by this. All arguments about quality aside, the availability of classic animation is detestable.

What popular classic cartoons have you seen lost to today's youth?
 
Pretty much all from that era.

But I'm not complaining. Years and years from now, people will consider the cartoons of this time "classic." It's all because of nostalgia, nothing more.
 
"Back in my day, we used to watch GOOD cartoons like Spongebob and Fairly Odd Parents... not any of this new fangled new-age stuff you kids watch"

Times move on.. wonder what will be considered classic in 500 years.
 
Except some shows really have earned the status of being classic, as they have lasted beyond the decade they were introduced. Flintstones, Jetsons, Scooby Doo, Yogi Bear count in that aspect. And you can't really use the arguement that we like these shows out of nostalgia as most of us rabroadrs (from what I've gather) were born in the 80s with the shows on my list being from the 70s. Sure I grew up in the era of Transformers and Ninja Turtles, but I easily enjoyed the 60s cartoons as well.

And I would agree that Spongebob Squarepants and Fairly Oddparents would qualify as classic material. Whether the later generation get to view them is another question, considering nowadays an ended show is instantly dumped from from basic network. Disney Channel is probably the big exception to this.

And once again, Galentone you pulled the lazy generalization of nostalgia out. The thread was not bashing current cartoons, but pointing out how previous ones are no longer as common as they were a decade ago. In the 80s, you had the 60s and 70s cartoon sharing the block with the current stuff. And the 90s you had some 60s-80s cartoon with the modern toons of the 90s, whereas today, a show that's half a decade old is considered a no-no for the network.

Next time read someone's thread fully before assuming.
 
That's not exactly a big achievement, considering Hanna-Barbara was pretty much the only real company producing animation back then. Nothing against the shows personally, but their success was pretty much given to them considering how much of a lull there was over television animation in the 70s due to censors and watch-groups running the fun for everyone, plus Hanna-Barbara having a monopoly over cartoons. When you're the only major player in the game, you pretty much have it in the bag. The 80s gave way to more animation companies popping up and making series (a lot primarily based off toys or to sell toys, like G.I Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) but it pretty much was a big change for the animation industry. By the time the 90s came around, we have cartoons coming out of multiple companies and even networks dedicated to showing them all the time. Hanna-Barbara was being pushed aside quite easily, even though they still produced shows, they weren't the only thing in television anymore. So, you have to ask yourself, would those cartoons really earn the right to be "classic cartoons" with all the animated shows and competition they have these days? Compared to the little, if any, they had back then? So I must disagree that they "earned" it, they're classic because they were just about the only things out back then.

It's like Saturday mornings. Back then, they were popular because that's where kids watched cartoons, but now that animation has become so big that we have multiple channels airing it all day, they've become obsolete. By the end of the 90s, there were a ton of cartoons being made that there just wasn't enough room to air all the 50's - 80's stuff. As time goes on, it'll just get bigger more than likely. The more and more shows they make, the less the old ones will air because there simply isn't enough room in today's market. Just compare how many series were made in the 60s and 70s compared to the 90s and 00s (along with different companies), the gap will be immense.

So like I said, time goes on.. and with it, changes come.
 
I think Antiyonder has hit upon the problem: This current crop of kids has simply never seen The Jetsons. It's actually amazing that, back in my youth, we got to see more cartoons from many different eras with only 4 channels than this generation gets to see with 400 channels. :sad:

For instance, I got the Woody Woodpecker DVD set yesterday and one of my first thoughts was "There are fewer and fewer people who know the words to the Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy songs." And what can be done about it? Kids who have never even seen Woody aren't going to pick up the DVD. They'll likely never know that the characters from that era exhibited more life in one single frame than what they're watching does in an entire half-hour show. *gets off soapbox now* Some channel, somewhere, is gonna have to actually air these cartoons to expose the next generation to them. I mean, c'mon! 400 channels and nobody can find room for Bugs Bunny?! :mad:

P.S. Don't get me wrong, there's cartoons from all periods that I like (heck, I would sell my soul for one of those Jack Spicer action figures).... but not on the level of the stuff from the mid-30's thru the mid-50's. It's called the Golden Age for a reason. :)
 
That is so ironic and true.

I've had a few jaw-dropping moments like the one Dan mentioned. When the trailers for this new Underdog movie first came out, I went to the Internet Movie Database to hear what people thought about it. Most people were disgusted, but a handful of them didn't know who Underdog was. One guy said "Wait. Isn't he that kung-fu dog?" I was done after that.

Another time, my younger cousin (who was about 9 or 10 at the time) revealed that she had never seen nor heard of Bambi. When I mentioned the character, she thought I was referring to a relative of Gumby.

On the Big Cartoon Database, people are constantly asking members to identify cartoons that I thought everybody knew. A couple of people have come on there not knowing anything about Tiny Toons or Static Shock. Come on, those weren't even that long ago.

Perhaps it's a result of our own excess and neglect, perhaps it's environmental, or maybe this generation is just plain dumb. :shrug:
 
That's just the way things are. There are a lot of cartoons that I LOVED that kids of this generation will never see and won't be able to appreciate.

Just ask any kid of this generation what a Gummi Bear or a Snorkle is and wait for the blank stare. Or better yet, ask them what Pole Position is and get just a NASCAR answer if any.

There are a lot of great shows that I want to share with my kids but sadly, I won't be able to unless they're released to DVD. The cycle will inevitabley repeat itself.
 
The other day I over heard my two step-cousins who are 11 and 12 and one of them was like, "well at least I knew who Popeye was". Apparently the one did not know of Popeye until just recently.
 
I totally agree with your points. It's jsut how things are. I used to watch the Flintstones on a local network everyday I could at around noon when I was a kid. It was one of the few cartoons that actually aired on weekdays and I loved it...but now they bore me to tears!

And you know...maybe this phenmomenon is amplified by the fact that we're animation fans? Ya know we probably know more animated serie than any body else from our respective generations does.
 
Well, for example, before Toon Disney gone topsy turvy and stopped showing classics in the early 2000s, My son and daughters were always watching certain Disney classic in the late 1990s, and they were always asking me, "What's the Gummi Bears?" Before I could answer, she says "Now I get it, there the Care Bears in disguise!" She was a avid fan of the Care Bears at the time. When I was watching Cartoon Network faithfully in 1993 with my son, he'd ask me who's Yogi Bear or Dastardly & Muttley, I told him, when you're older. Now, they're grown-ups. Now that they don't like their generation of cartoons, I gave them some tapes on what they remembered when they left this year for college. :crying: Man, do time fly! But still, we have to move on. At least there's Boomerang and DVDs of Looney Tunes, and stuff slowly being released by Warner (CN classics, Hanna Barbera), unlike some companies.
 
I was born early-90's, but I'm partly an 80's-kid, because a lot of the stuff I was introduced to was from the 80's. So, I find stuff from the 80's classic.

Nostalgia.
 
You know,I've never really thought about it,but kids today are missing out on alot of great shows....I'm a child of the '80's myself(born in '79),so I grew up watching lots of series that aren't well known today....While I haven't seen them in years,I always liked the Hanna-Barbera stuff (like Yogi Bear,Huckleberry Hound,Snagglepuss,Pixie and Dixie,The Jetsons)....The Fintstones,too,but that's better known,if only because of Pebbles cereal....
I also liked Jem and the Holgrams and She-Ra (I keep hoping that one or the other will be revived,like some of the other '80's properties)...
Nowadays,I don't tend to watch "kid's" shows outside of anime....most of the ones I've seen either don't hold my interest,or there's too much "gross-out" or "toilet" humor.....
 
What's ironic about the situation though is that there were a lot more titles on the air when cartoons were limited to morning and afternoon airings, yet now with more slots available you have less titles currently on the air.
 
I was born in '86, so I'm vaguely familiar with the very late 80's/early 90's stuff.

But boy howdy, watching 'The Tex Avery Show' on Cartoon Network used to be a family ritual for us every night it was on. I even watched Looney Tunes all the time and even 'Flintstones' if I was feeling masochistic enough.

I think it's a shame kids these days aren't really attuned to any of the classics. I do think that some shows these days DO have the potential to stand up to the test of time (Spongebob and Ed, Ed and Eddy mostly, but I really only like the early episodes), but given the quality of 'em... i doubt a majority will even be fondly remembered like Looney Tunes or the Jetsons is.
 
Well unlike the Looney Toons or the Jetson's today's cartoons got FAR more competition vying to be imprinted in kid's memories forever. I'm sure in the future we'll see kids now grown to our ages missing a much wider variety of shows than we do.
 
It works both ways. I grew up on The Jetsons, etc. but barely know anything about Voltron, Transformers, etc. The cartoons that were current after my childhood but before I became interested in animation as an adult (most of the '80's shows) are foreign to me.
 
I did specifically say "all arguments about quality aside". I'm not talking about nostalgia. I'm not saying cartoons from one age are better than another (because, frankly, all ages have their good and bads). I'm not asking you what you consider classic.

I'm specifically asking when you folks have experienced an event where an old (which in this current era seems to mean over five years unless you happen to be really popular) and fairly well-known cartoon is now unheard of by the general populace of children. I see a total of three posts that actually answer that question.
 
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