Fads and Trends

B

Babee x3

New member
I was thinking of this today. It's amazing all the different fads and trends we've had over the years in kids media.

I'm not sure about the `50s, but in the `60s everything was camp like the Adam West Batman show for example. Even stuff that were supposed to be a bit darker like Addams Family and Munsters were camp.

Then in the `70s everything revolved around teens solving mysteries. Thank you, Scooby-Doo.

In the `80s you needed a lot of things blowing up and a lot of action figures to sell like He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, etc.

In the `90s, as a result of Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers, you had a bunch of martial arts stuff like 3 Ninjas and SURF Ninjas.

And nowadays everything has to include a soundtrack like Hannah Montana, Cheetah Girls, High School Musical, etc. Heck...even Spongebob released a CD. :(

I know there's more than that...but thats what we have this thread for.
 
1930s: Round big eyed characters with rubbery limbs and simple stories, it eventually evolved after Snow White to a realistic cute style.

1940s: started with realistic Disney stuff, and evolved into the Tex Avery/Looney Tunes style of wacky characters dropping dynamite and anvils style of humour.

1950s: The birth of UPA's stylistic animation, TV cartoons came out and animated cartoons had limited animation and had more angular designs.

1960s: same as 1950s really, slight differences such as more details within the angular designs.

1970s: Predictable cartoons with cliched plots and bland character designs, superhero shows and mystery shows were most popular, Ralph Bakshi started an adult animation craze with Fritz The Cat and Heavy Traffic, which lasted up to the 1980s with Tarzoon of Shame The Jungle and Heavy Metal among others.

1980s: Cartoons tried to put more morals into cartoons and blanded them down quite a bit, the start of an animation comeback came in the late 80s with Roger Rabbit and Bakshi's Mighty Mouse.

1990's: Ren and Stimpy and The Simpsons started and many followers formed, this time is concidered the Silver Age, with cartoons like Darkwing Duck, Animaniacs, Rocko's Modern Life, Dexter's Lab, PPG, Tiny Toons and more, Disney features like Lion King and Beauty and The Beast bacame very popular and Pixar's Toy Story came and invented a new genre all together known as CGI.

2000s: CGi gets very popluar in movies, and almost every studio shurns out an animated film every year, Flash animated cartoons become popular on the internet and then on TV as it was cheaper to produce, with shows like Mucha Lucha and Fosters using it quite effectively.
 
Hannah Montana, HSM, Naruto, Pokemon, Chaotic and their ilk are sadly so damn popular, it makes me wonder if the family-oriented TV series will ever be brought back from extinction at all:( !
 
Hanna Montana, High School Musical and the like are family oriented. They're primarily aimed at kids, but anything that parents can safely watch with their children is family friendly.

And seriously, you worry way too much about these things. I doubt that anyone except it's most loyal fans will be talking about Chaotic 3 years from no, let alone 10 or 20 years from now.

The family oriented TV series can't come back, because it never left. It's still as popular as ever, only the look of it has changed.
 
What I meant to say is that I want more shows that are aimed towards general audiences rather than just youths! You know, something like the pre-Turner Hanna-Barbera catalog, those classic Rankin-Bass X-Mas specials or anything that's more suited for a TV-G rating and no, those Disney Channel kidcoms/movies don't deserve a TV-G rating at all.



When a 4Kids license has one of the greatest-selling CCGs in North America and is helping Jetix takeover TD's channel space, it's quite bothersome, because 4Kids' products and costumer service are of inferior quality:shrug: !



Again, I meant the TV series that's geared towards general audiences rather than just youths!
 
But how many TV shows aimed at general audiences were there before, not counting family oriented sitcoms such as The Brady Bunch, Full House, and The Cosby Show?
 
These are the fad/trends I've notice for cartoons:

Superhero Teen - Weither its a single superhero kid trying to balance his/her social life with his/her superhero life OR a group of teens saving the world from evil, I think this one of the most used cartoon fad/trends. Examples: Danny Phantom, My Life As A Teenage Robot, Ben 10/Ben 10:Alien Force

Magic & Monsters - I notice this type of cartoon is used as much as the Superheo Teen. Examples: American Dragon:Jake Long, The Life Times of Juniper Lee, W.I.T.C.H.

Movie Based Cartoons - Sometimes if a movie is popular enough, cartoon version of the movie is made. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Examples: Ghostbusters, The Mummy

Comic Book Based Cartoons - Another popular cartoon fad/trend. Even though most of the series don't always sticked with the original comics, most of them end up being enjoyable to watch. Examples: Spectacular Spider-Man, X-Men The Animated Series/Evolution, Justice League Unlimited, Legion of Superheroes, Teen Titans

​
 
The 1930s starting with the character of Egghead, who evolved into the character known as Elmer Fudd. Egghead was a dumb adult character. Chuck Jones and Tex Avery transformed the character into Elmer Fudd, the dolt we know him as.

I would have said Porky Pig, but he's not explicitly a dumb adult. He became more or less a naive childlike figure after his initial appearance as a stuttering child.
 
Also, in the late 90s the FCC stepped in and demanded that broadcast networks put on at least three hours of "educational/instructional" programming for children. From this spawned the trend of cheesy "average-kid-with-average-school-life" cartoons which dominated much of the air waves from then to the early 2000s, as well as that little "E/I" logo you see on Saturday morning television to this day.
 
You're into action stuff,huh?

I know dialouge is sometimes repeated on different shows.Example:

"Wait for it...wait for it."

Has been used how many times?

And of course...

"Not the face!Not the face!"
 
Here are some trends as I see them:

1930's: The first eruption of cel animation as a viable entertainment medium. All roads led back to Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney.

1940's: The explosion of animation as an American art form. Competition and the wartime economic boom made experimentation, and niche-marketing (from social satire to superheroes) the order of the day. The main trend among studios was for each to establish its own identity and art style and move away from the visual homogenization of the previous decade.

1950's: The post-war economy caused a slump and the trend was economization and seeking out new markets. Many studios closed up their animated short departments, and the first treatrical cartoons were repackaged for television.

1960's: The use of limited animation made original animation for television economically viable, and creativity began to boom. Trends were toward the new and novel concepts for programs and the need to fill air time grew.

1970's: The twin whammy of rising animation costs and the advent of grass roots advocacy groups voicing concerns about violence in children's programming led to a Dark Age for cartoons. Trends leaned toward conflict-free, educational, creatively stillborn and embarassingly cheap-looking cartoons designed to offend nobody (except people who liked cartoons).

1980's: The blowback against the advocacy groups ushers in the era of the half-hour toy commercial, as programs were built around merchandise instead of vice versa.

1990's: The globalization of American animation flowers as American companies outsource animation to Japan and Korea, anime explodes into the U.S. and the market expansion from cable TV provides inroads for Canadian and European animation that didn't exist before.

2000's: Cable creates a large market for "adult" animation but Americans still fail to see cartoons as anything other than kids' entertainment, largely due to the prevalence of juvenile, frat-boy humor in the supposedly "adult" cartoons. The anime market peaks and begins to implode. Flash animation replaces more expensive methods, creating a lot of bargain-basement junk whose very cheapness is its main selling point in a hyper-competitive cable market. The era of 2-D animated feature films ends, replaced by a massive eruption of CGI product that hasn't looked so homogenized since the 1930's.
 
I just saw Vanessa Hudgen's new music video and all I can think is, "man you never saw stuff like this back in the `90s." Seriously. It's like every kids tv show these days NEEDS a soundtrack. Back in the `90s all we had was "Go Green Ranger Go".
 
-Pop-culture references. Started with Tiny Toons and Animaniacs in the early 90's, and has continued to this day (reaching the absolute nadir in Family Guy's incessant "remember the time...?" cutaways).

-Belch and fart jokes. Remember when you literally couldn't feature farts in G-rated movies? How long ago that seems. :( One thing I greatly enjoyed about Kung Fu Panda was the complete lack of body-emission jokes.
 
Looney Tunes and Tex Avery MGM cartoons were making pop culture references of the day decades before the silver age shows. Aside from animation buffs and film historians, who today would know what "Open up that door!....You notice I didn't say 'Richard'?" meant?
 
Back
Top