I remember getting up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning to watch the hours of cartoons each network had on. Scooby Doo, Smurfs, Snorks and many others waited for me on those mornings. I would get up and watch one channel and with the VCR – yes, VCR – taped another.
When those were over, I turned to USA for the Cartoon Express. They had the classic cartoons like Huckleberry Hound, Hong Kong Fooey and the Laff-A-Lympics. By the time Saturday afternoon had come and the The Muppets were over, it was almost time for dinner.
When I became an adult, I saw a drastic change in Saturday mornings. Maybe it was the proliferation of basic cable and channels like “The Cartoon Channel,” which are dedicated to cartoons, that killed off the network cartoon cavalcade. Snorks and Smurfs have been replaced with talk and news shows.
Saturday morning cartoons were a childhood staple for decades, but have gone the way of the pay phone as technology and media expanded and eventually took over. There’s still a few places that have early morning cartoons on Saturday, but it’s not the big three: NBC, CBS and ABC. I also must admit my tolerance for what passes for early child cartoons these days has shortened. I may have grown up watching Voltron and other Japanese imports, but I can’t stand Pokeman for more than an episode or two.
The classics live on in DVD form and my children get their share of old school cartoons like He-Man and the Smurfs and love them just as much as I did when I was a kid. I know the world evolves and changes as it must, but I feel a little loss at my children not having the same Saturday morning rituals that I did. It’s a different world that’s for sure. I must sound like a dinosaur reminiscing about prehistoric times.
Who knows what the future holds for cartoons and children as technology continues to grow? My kids watch Spider-Man and Yo Gabba Gabba streaming on Netflix and if our computer is taken by one of us crazy grown-ups working, then they can switch to the phone or one of the other 10 multimedia devices we have in our home.
But, in a way, I guess some form of Saturday morning cartoons have survived. And they don’t even require a VCR.
About jessi
