Saturday Morning Memories

Growing up I remember the CBS and NBC lineups most. ABC stuff I remember when I was real young was Pac-Man, Rubik's Cube and The Littles, as well as Scooby-Doo. I particularly remember the Scooby episode where the gang reunited for an episode. Also, I would watch Super Friends. I recall watching Droids and Ewoks a couple of times.

When I got our first VCR in early '87, I would tape one line-up and watch the other. I was really into Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and Snorks on NBC. I also recall watching Kidd Video, Pink Panther and Sons and Mr. T.

On CBS, I was a big fan of The Get-Along-Gang, as well as Muppet Babies and The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. I would also watch Hulk Hogan and Dungeons and Dragons. I also remember if I getting up during The Berenstein Bears. I would be disappointed because Charlie Brown and Snoopy would often be pre-emptied by sports in the 12:00 hour. I did not care too much for live-action shows except for Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

One morning I woke up and caught some of Muppet Monsters and I enjoyed it, tried to catch it the following weeks and it was gone. Although I was a Muppet Babies fan, I would've preferred to see animated adventures of the Muppets' in adult form.

On ABC I liked the PSA's with the yellow cowboy guy and also the song 'don't drown your food,' as well as O.G. Readmore from the Weekend Special. I also recall 'In The News' on CBS and 'One To Grow On' on NBC.

One show that I don't recall at all is Shirt Tales, I might have watched it but I don't remember it at all. I've seen clips online and its so adorable.

Flintstone Kids was best in its one-hour format during season 1 where they had different segments. Against Smurfs and Muppet Babies it didn't have a chance. My main thought watching 'Flintstone Kids' was that I wish they made a new 'real' Flintstones series instead. I initially had the same though with 'A Pup Named Scooby-Doo,' but that show was really enjoyable while Flintstone Kids was tepid or mildly disappointing at best.

Also around 1986 I watched Kissyfur, that show has been underrated. I never got into Disney's Gummi Bears, but I did watch Disney's Wuzzles on CBS. Also, I never got into Foofur for some reason either. I watched Pound Puppies but my mom didn't like me watching it because I would root for the bratty little girl, probably because everyone was against her. I would watch The Care Bear Family once in a while as well.

During the late 80s, I usually wouldn't turn on ABC until 10:30 most mornings for A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and Bugs & Tweety. Occasionally I would watch Ghostbusters, I enjoyed the comedic Slimer episodes where they made Janeane cute--that was a nice touch IMO. I avoided most of ABC's 1987 lineup, shows like Little Clowns, Little Wizards and My Pet Monster didn't appeal to me. Pretty much between 8:30 and 10 it was pretty much a two-way race between Smurfs and Muppet Babies.

I wasn't into Dink the Dinosaur on CBS and hated Beetlejuice on ABC, loved Camp Candy, ALF and AlfTales on NBC. Never watched Karate Kid on NBC, but did watch Captain N. I got bored with Captain N before too long but would tune in for the Mario portions starting with season 2.

Mod Edit: Please don't double post. Use the edit function instead. Thank you.
 
I remember more the saturday mornings lineups by from CBS with Garfield and Friends and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in head.

Our local CBC having his own cartoons lineup saturday mornings with shows as Where's Waldo, Tiny Toons Adventures, Goof Troop, Talespin, Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, Animaniacs and some Cancon programs. (As Ovide's Gang i watched religiously and enjoyed it.)

The early Canal Famille having a lineup of Disney animated specials, cartoons shorts and live-action stuffs but disappear in 1991 or 92 for rerurns of what was aired through the week.

ABC comes to my mind later. I remember seeing the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon they made, (As was a young fan, but not anymore.) of course they have the endless Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show which stays my own saturday mornings tradition for longtime but losing interest when we losted it in 2000. In case you don't know, this LT package which include omiteed cartoons scenes was one of the only ways to watched those cartoons at our cable. Teletoon don't existed before, you know.

FOX comes more later. Which is more a mix-bag. Yeah they having X-Men, Spider-Man and Animaniacs but i never liked that block because of the Power Rangers. The only shows i really liked in their blocks was Oggy and the Cockroaches and Space Goofs. But that's all!

I feel more liked the sundays lineups more than the saturday mornings lineups. Our NBC local network airing early the Hanna-Barbera cartoons package and i watched it every week and have fun with it.
 
Garfield and Friends was one of the best shows ever. Muppet Babies/Garfield/TMNT were three good, solid hours of animated enjoyment. The Hanna-Barbera version of 'Bill and Ted' was good, never watched the later Fox version. In 1990 I was primarily watching CBS, NBC's once great lineup fell apart with the destruction and end of The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks changing to the stupid "Go to the Movies" format. Never watched 'Gravedale High' or 'Kid N'Play,' but would flip to NBC for the Mario Bros. segment during the 'Captain N/Super Mario Bros. 3 Hour.'

I really liked Spacecats on NBC in 1991, but it didn't catch on. I remember anticipating 'Yo Yogi' but it was kind a disappointing. In a USA Today article a Hanna-Barbera person said that the thing that went wrong with the show was that they changed Yogi into a 'whoremonger.' 'Mother Goose and Grimm' was another under-appreciated show-it really deserved an actual second season and not a second season consisting of repeats and a name-change. It was the perfect companion to Garfield and Friends. I think I sampled Pro-Stars and Wish Kids on NBC and they were awful. On ABC, I would watch 'Darkwing Duck.' Starting in 1992, my local ABC affiliate dropped the cartoons in favor of news. My local NBC affiliate dropped cartoons in 1990, luckily there were two really good out-of-town VHF-Band NBC affiliate.

'Back to the Future' on CBS, was a really cool show. Raw Toonage had potential but disappointed me. I did enjoy 'Marsupilami' the following season.
I also enjoyed the FOX Kids lineup of this time of X-Men/Eek the Cat/Batman/The Tick and the short-lived Dog City.

I was disappointed that Garfield and Friends ended but I loved The twisted tales of Felix the Cat, especially the second season where they changed the tone a bit. The Mask and Ace Ventura were good cartoons, I checked out of TMNT after Shredder was replaced as the big bad.

In 1994, certain time slots were pre-emptied. Never got to see Beetoven, Skeleton Warriors or WILDCats. My CBS station aired disney cartoons during the week instead of CBS This Morning, and on the weekends they would run an hour of DuckTales Sat & Sun from 7-8 and an hour of Tale Spin or Darkwing Duck from 6-7. One DuckTales episode would air at 1pm Sat and one episode of Darkwing Duck would air at 8:30am Sat. I think from 11-12 was when they aired the syndicated 'Iron Man/Fantastic Four Hour.'
 
My favorite Saturday Morning bumpers were the 'claymation' type ones on ABC ran from the late 80s until '91 (or '92 and those 'Posse Philosophy' punks). ABC's 1985/86 bumps were good too, they had a clown-type person performing tricks.

CBS had a couple of great sereis of bumpers, with the 83-85 video-game themed ones and the '87-89 'What A Party' one with the kids in the control room. The 'Fido-Dido' ones were so bland and boring, and CBS seemed to stick with them forever. Loved the Felix the Cat bumpers, the year before his show debuted. It was so good to see a classic character such as him be remembered.

The one thing I liked about NBC is that they would change their bumper series every season. They probably had the least flashy ones but the promo music cuts used were usually pretty catchy. I HATED NBC's 1988 bumpers- I tried to look away when they came on, they had ugly children saying "we'll be right back,' It was like a photo collage effect that was creepy and stupid, which is a shame because NBC had good promo music that year as well. NBC's 'claymation'-type bumps in 1989 were good, as well as the grinning man bumpers from 1990.:radda:
 
Catchy Sat AM commercials that were memorable included such gems as 'we girls can do anything like Barbie' for Mattel, as well as Sugar Bear for 'Super Golden Crisp' and 'Skip it' with '..there's a counter on the ball.' Also who could forget the My Buddy and Kid Sister jingles.

That's all for now, I think.
 
Back when i was four, me and my sister used to watch ABC when they showed BoneChillers, The Bugs Bunny/Tweety Show and Schoolhouse Rock. After that, dad would always take us to Discovery Zone. I always referred that over Chuck E. Cheese. Man i miss DZ :sad:.
 
My mind isn't nearly as sharp as I wish it were, but one memory stands out for me:

Around '92, my TV was on the fritz, so I watched a portable 13" TV. I distinctly remember watching "Raw Toonage" on it. Good times...
 
And then there were the shows that would come on before the cartoons. Only animated ones i remember coming on before the saturday morning cartoons though were underdog and transformers (and this was during the 85-86 season of TFs which is odd since that season aired on weekdays, though where i lived i only got weekend airngs). Other than that it was stuff like wonder woman (didnt much care for the show but i did like the comic-book style graphics and theme song) and mutual of omaha's wild kingdom (i always wondered why the kept advertising insurance at the end of each episode, it was always out-of-place).
 
Rather than mentioning the many fine shows I clearly remember enjoying on Saturday mornings while I grew up, I think one of my most special memories was the Saturday morning in 1968 when my family got our first color television when one of the first shows I watched in glorious color was George of the Jungle.
 
Well being raised an orthodox jew I never actually got to watch TV on Saturday mornings. I always felt I was missing out but luckily they would rerun many cartoons the rest of the week. But because of this Saturday mornings hold no special memories for me, at least when it comes to cartoons.
 
Since this thread has been revived, I'll address this post that I missed before.

Buck Rogers aired on Thursdays, and, yeah, I did watch. We did have channels 5, 9, & 11 from NYC on the cable back in those days, and my bro was the Kung Fu Theatre guy in the house. Watched all the toons mentioned above, of course. Funtastic World, though, aired on Sundays in most places, not Saturdays when it launched in the 80's.
 
Oh yeah, another saturday morning show i remember (of course, it also came on before the network cartoons) was hanna barbera's world of super adventure. For what it was it was an ok show, but i kept wishing theyd show the fantastic four cartoons shown in the intro. Every week they kept teasing me with those shots of the thing, torch, and galactus, only to see another shazzan or birdman or galaxy trio themed episode. Im sure they did show FF toons, but i never saw them.
 
Wow this is a random necroed thread, but still a fun topic!

For me, I have two periods when Saturday mornings ROCKED.

The first was the late 80s and early 90s when Super Mario 3, Captain N, Reboot and Sonic SatAM were in premiers. I'll admit I didn't care much about the late mornings, but the early mornings between 8:30 - 10:00 I was glued to the TV and had my "perfect rotation" so I wouldn't miss a single cartoon.

The next was the early years of WB when Superman/Batman TAS was running on Saturdays with Static Shock, The Zeta Project and YGO. Fox was also running Digimon at about the same time so it was easy to slide between the two channels and catch a great mornings worth of cartoons. I think this period easily kept me captivated from 7:00A all the way till 12:00. I seriously didn't want to leave my TV.

Sadly, in contrast today; there's nothing compelling enough to make me feel like I HAVE to get up.
 
OMG, do you know this happened to me twice! The first time i was actually up a half hour early but didn't put the TV because i "knew" it was too early and I tried to stay asleep!

I'm with you, thank GOD for DVR and the Internet nowadays!
 
Wow....reading all the great posts really takes me back. These are not in any kind of order....I remember besides Looney Tunes I watched Pac-Man, Ewoks, Gummy Bears, Rainbow Bright, Thundercats, Muppet Babies, Garfield and Friends, and TMNT. Great...now I have the Gummy Bear song in my head....ahhh.
 
I remember that the Saturday morning CBS episodes of Disney's Aladdn were scarier and not as funny as the mon-fri episodes.

I think that the overall quality of Saturday Morning started to decline in the late 80s/early 90s when we started to see less SatAm output from Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears and increasing output from DiC, Saban, Film Roman, Nelvanna and various independents.
 
I personally feel like there was a hard cut off of really good animation for a while right after Uncanny X-Men ended, or, more specifically when it went into limbo for a while returning with a different animation studio for the last 5 episodes. It's as though Saturday mornings drifted into oblivion for a while.

It wasn't (for me at least) till 2000 when KidsWB really kicked it up a notch and became a really solid program block that I was really interested in Saturday mornings again.
 
I remember getting up before 8am sometimes and catching Dudley-Do-Right at 6:30 and King Leonardo at 7 for a period on the local ABC affiliate around '89. The CBS affililate would have Kidsongs at 7 and a local show--Let's Read A Story around '87-'88. KDKA had Underdog for a period at 7 or 7:30 in the morning. WPXI would have a local show called 'Kidsburgh' at 7:30.

An old VHS that I recorded (and kept 'till it worn out a few years ago) had 'Adventures of Superman' which was taped off of channel 11 at 6 or 6:30 AM followed by "New Zoo Revue" (one of the few mornings a got up early enought to catch it).

Next on the tape was 'Muppets Take Manhattan' which was recorded a few weeks later. I woke up at 8, didn't know the movie was scheduled (seen it in theaters originally), started recording during the opening credits, missed the title though. After the movie, I switched over to NBC and taped a chunk of their line-up. As always, CBS wouldn't start their new lineup until the following week due to tennis.

Next on the tape was the premiere of the 'Fraggle Rock' cartoon. Never had HBO, so I was curious about this new Muppet cartoon since I regularly watched Muppet Babies. I don't think I ever watched Fraggle Rock again. NBC had live-action bumpers with Smokey Robinson and Jackee that season.

Next was the one-hour season premiere of 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' with a back to the future spoof where the boys visited Dave in high-school. the second cartoon was where Alvin broke Dave's bicycle while he was away in New York. Alvin eventually went to 'Public Court' against Brittany. Next, Alvin had Theodore pose as him for a chubby girl fan, until Alvin finds out the girl's dad was a music big shot. The final cartoon was weak, it involved Miss. Miller dressed like a mummy or something. The music video that morning was 'material girl' by the Chippete's.

Following that on the tape was 'The New Archies,' which wasn't bad but I don't think I watched that show again either. Had to wait another week for the debut of the ALF cartoon which was a bummer at the time. After that there were a few minutes of Animal Crackups from ABC. For some reason 'Foofur' never really interested me.

Side Note: In hindsight I wonder if '87 was the year that NBC's Sat AM lineup started to fade? I recall watching a news segment around that time about news taking over on Saturday Mornings being a future trend. I think there might've been a market or two that NBC was experimenting with this. The Piitsburgh affiliate dropped NBC's Saturday programming in favor of news around June 1989.
 
I lived for Saturday Morning as a kid. I loved Scooby-Doo, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, The Smurfs, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Muppet Babies,Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids, Laff-A-Lympics, Superfriends, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many more. Fortunately, most of my SatAM favorites are available on DVD and I've been able to get my hands on them. It's a shame that the cartoons of today aren't even close to the quality of the toons that I grew up with. I'd watch my toons from 8-12 noon over a bowl of cereal and then go outside and play with the neighborhood kids. Those were the days!
 
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