Remembering the 80s cartoons – Part 2

There was a time when I never thought I’d be saying things like: ‘Remember the time. . . ” but here I am, looking back on all of those hoary cartoons I watched and loved as a kid. Some of these properties are making a big comeback, like Transformers.

When I was a kid there was both a weekly line up and a Saturday morning line up of cartoons that I loved to watch. Over the years these line ups changed and there were so many cartoons that it can be hard to remember them all. But whatever the change, there was always something good to watch. My favorites:

1. Thunder Cats – my all time favorite! Even now, I still love the theme song!

2. He-man

3. The Littles

4. Star Brite

5. Alf Tales

6. Transformers

7. The Go-Bots

8. The Get Along Gang

9. Alf

10. Alvin and the Chipmunks

11. Foofur

12. The Adventures of Johnny Quest

13. Captain Caveman

14. Danger Mouse

15. Curious George

16. The Care Bears

17. Ducktails

18. Rubiks the Amazing Cube

19. Fat Albert

20. The Flintstones

21. Galaxy High – Also still a favorite!

22. Inspector Gadget

23. Hulk Hogan’s Rockin’ Wrestlin’

24. The Jetsons

25. Rude Dog and the Dweebs

26. Pacman

27. Muppet Babies

Yes, I know. A lot of these are pretty bad. When I look back now at some of those cartoons, many were nothing but cheaply made junk and I wonder why me and my friends were even entertained by them, especially the cartoons created from toy properties like Rude Dog and the Dweebs, Rubiks the Amazing Cube, Pacman or the Monchi-chiis! I even had some of these toys, such as the Rubiks cube (which I still can’t figure out to this day) and two monchi-chi figurines.

Cheap as they were, when you’re a child you can be easily entertained by simple fare. I would have slumber parties and my friends would come over Friday night and then on Saturday morning we would all get up and watch Alvin and the chipmunks, Pacman, The Littles, and all of that. I have to admit that the appeal partly comes from the catchy opening scene tunes. I still love the song for The Littles and Maya the Bee. During the week my sister and I would race home to watch Transformers, Go-Bots and Thundercats. It’s amazing what you’ll tolerate for entertainment as a kid. They can throw anything on TV and if it’s animated kids will watch it. That was certainly true back in the 80’s. When you look at the quality of the cartoons back then as far as content and execution they thrown together but they were fun to watch. As badly drawn and corny as 80’s cartoons are there was an innocence in those cartoons that I miss and don’t see in today’s cartoons. There wasn’t as much violence and cynicism. Back then cartoons were essentially made for children, not adults and I remember that just about all of the cartoons I named taught children about the value of cooperation, accepting others, friendship, loyalty and working together to achieve goals. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t violent cartoons. In fact, I think violence in cartoons got their start in the 1980’s but it has progressed since then dramatically.

If you were an 80’s child and you are looking to relive your childhood, YouTube has many of these old cartoons posted and it’s really fun watching them, noticing how dated and corny they were. But even so, they gave me so many good memories.