Getting Animated

Remember when cartoons were special, Saturday morning only excursions, a veritable smorgasbord of entertainment condensed into those few hours, and if you weren’t up early enough on Saturday you just missed out? You know, unless you had one of those fancy things called a VCR (or Betamax for all you folks as old as I am who remember the now-defunct format that rivaled the VCR for about a year), in which case you could record to your heart’s delight and watch your favorite cartoons any day of the week. But you were still limited to only the shows that had been broadcast that previous Saturday.

Then something crazy happened. Cable appeared, and with it several channels dedicated to at least part of the time every single day showing us animated content. Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon Jr., Disney Channel, and the list went on and on. Suddenly, we were inundated with our favorite shows and so much more. Not only did we get Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones, The Roadrunner, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. We began to see a vast variety of cartoons that we hadn’t seen before, and before we knew it, they were expanding the format even more. With the advent of The Simpsons and Beavis & Butt-head, we began to see cartoons that weren’t specifically meant for the elementary crowd. With the blunt, adult humor of Cow & Chicken, Family Guy, and King of the Hill, the format was expanded even further, until now you can’t even recognize where it all began.

But thankfully, the DVD crazy has saved our favorite cartoons from extinction. Now we can see the old shows we knew and loved from “back in the day,” and relive our Saturday morning cartoon experience all over again, in stunning HD! This revolution makes it possible to see the episodes in chronological order, just like you did when they were being broadcast brand new on the rotating-dial black and white television sets we had when we were young. For Christmas last year my sister bought me the classic cartoon series from the ’80s, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe on DVD, and I was able to relive my childhood. Sure, He-Man had a lot of violence, but there were also moral messages along the way. Skeletor was evil. We weren’t supposed to root for him, and he was always vanquished by the end of the episode. He-Man was heroic, and he overcame obstacles to save the world and the people he cared for. Sadly, we don’t see that anymore except in programming for toddlers. If you’re marginally older, you are out of luck.

Recently, I noticed that there are still Saturday morning cartoons on one of the local channels, and I was amazed to see it. Shows like Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony reaffirm those strong values we used to see on those Saturday mornings long ago, and I hope new programming goes back to those days. Because that’s when TV was fun, educational, and worth the price.

Sam