Dated Cartoons

I hate to say it, considering your avatar, but TMNT, definitely. It's way too "radical" for any time but the late 80s/early 90s.
 
Despite their best-laid plans, it's impossible to future-proof a cartoon or any other piece of entertainment, because it's impossible to predict the future. For example, any cartoon that mentioned Pluto was a planet is now dated.

And all those 'toons too afraid to show the current president so they used a generic one? Now they all don't work! None of those are black!

Given that, my attitude is they might as well write whatever they think is funny, whether they know it will date the cartoon or not. Nine times out of ten the cartoon becomes dated ANYWAY.
 
Cartoons and any other form of art and entertainment will always be dated in some shape or form. However, there's some cartoons that are SO dated that it's nearly un-watchable. Some cartoons are such a product of its time that audiences today can't really relate. Just look at those racist cartoons from World War II. At first it's amusing. It's your favorite cartoon characters being racist. Then...it's depressing. Only a 1940s audience can stomach this stuff.
 
There was a scene in an episode of Freakazoid! where Princess Diana and Sharon Stone are both fawning over Freakazoid and they end up getting into a cat fight over him. I get kind of a weird feeling looking at that now.
 
Actually, speaking as someone who was watching television cartoons from the late Fifties, I will say that, for the most part, they were unwatchable when originally produced.
 
I did say "most part". I would like to see a modern Space Ghost with a a fully developed explanations for what they were all doing out there. Although I admit Blip would take some doing ....
 
Yeah, the original one is-- Think of the characters' clothes (somewhat), expressions and activities such as dancing generic 1960's dances to generic 1960's music. Some of the more recent incarnations aren't dated yet, but they probably will be eventually. Scooby-Doo's not exactly renowned for its clever, timeless writing.
I'm not trying to say the original is bad or anything, I enjoy watching it a bit, but it is fairly dated.

Speaking of dated, I just made a post in the "Under-rated Cartoons" thread about Rock and Rule, and it applies here too. That's a very dated movie, largely for the same reason something like the Jetsons or Back to the Future II is dated-- if you try to set something in the future, parts of your current culture will unavoidably seep into it. Hence the Jetsons everybody listens to 60's-style jazz and says things like "galactic groovy", and in Rock and Rule all the rock music played sounds like it's from the late 70's. It's still a fun movie though.
 
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