Maybe I’m just getting old and feeling nostalgic. But, man, do I long for the days of Saturday morning cartoons. I’ve thought about that from time to time for years now.
I remember the first time I boldly dared to engage a co-worker in a discussion of Saturday mornings growing up and how much I miss the Smurfs battling Gargamel or G.I. Joe squaring off against Cobra Command in million-bullet wars featuring zero deaths.
As I waxed poetic about my youth, the power of those Saturday mornings and how much it sucked that today’s kids will never share that experience, the exasperated co-worker said, “Jesus, dude, you realize we have the Boom channel now, right? You can watch that shit anytime you want.”
Whatever. I don’t want to watch cartoons on a random Thursday afternoon while scrolling through the 786 channels on my iPhone. There’s real power in slogging your way through history lessons on Sacagawea and the atom during a monotonous Wednesday in fourth grade.
Power in the trusty sword of the ThunderCats’ Lion-O staving off Mumm-Ra. Hooooooooooooo! Power in Brainy Smurf outsmarting the dim-witted evil wizard Gargamel. Power in Fred and Wilma magically solving a case in which, let’s be honest, only one person could be the villain on “Scooby-Doo.”
Those were simpler times. We didn’t have access to millions of terabytes of information. Most of us were at the mercy of three networks. We were lucky to have “Looney Tunes,” “Hulk Hogan’s Rock N’ Wrestling,” “The Real Ghostbusters,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Mr. T.”
I’m not making any of those titles up. They’re all real. And they’re all fabulous.
My brother and I often traveled with our parents on business trips, which meant we didn’t always get to watch cartoons on Saturdays. Most of the shows my parents did were on weekends.
But during those Saturdays we were home, the schedule never changed. We rolled out of bed at 6 a.m. with glee (the complete opposite of waking up at 6 a.m. for school the previous five days) and watched cartoon after cartoon in the mid- to late-1980s.
What better way to begin your Saturday than with the “Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour” for an hour while munching on a “part of your nutritious breakfast,” Lucky Charms?
We’d chase that with the “Smurfs,” “Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies,” “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” (might as well have been a cartoon), “Fraggle Rock,” “Alf,” “Teen Wolf,” “Karate Kid” and “Beetlejuice.”
All that died in the early 1990s when shows like “Saved by the Bell,” among others rolled in. Technology changed. With cable and satellite, you could watch “A Pup Named Scooby Doo” at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday. Long gone were the days of sprinting home after school to watch “He-Man,” “Inspector Gadget” and “G.I. Joe.”
We’ll get by with “SpongeBob,” “Ren and Stimpy” and “Batman: The Animated Series.” Those are fine cartoons, but it’s not the same as Shaggy and Scooby, She-Ra and Marvin the Martian.
Guess that’s all, folks.