Wow.. Where do I begin? Let’s see if any of this comes to mind. It’s 1984; you’re in the 4th grade; it’s Friday and you are starting to get pumped for a weekend full of fun in the sun! But first, we must plan… Planning you say? Yes, planning for what you are going to watch on Saturday Morning! Before the advent of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Kodi, Plex, etc., we had a thing called a TV Guide. This was actually made of paper that you had to flip through 🙂 Now, for those of you (like myself) where your parents frowned about spending $2.99 for the actual real deal TV Guide from the grocery store check-out line, you had to resort to the free TV Schedule found in the Daily News. While the newspaper didn’t provide the best descriptions for the programs, it did give you exactly what a 9 year old needed… An overview of what’s playing from 8am – 11am. (see below example from Wikipedia):



So now you have the lineup. You know what’s playing… But, you get a bit anxious and you notice some of the shows you love overlap each other. For example, at 9am you may want to watch both the Muppet Babies and The Smurfs. You can’t decide… Both bring their own bags of goodness. Because we didn’t have DVR, Torrents or Streaming, you had to either have a second TV with a VCR (which they were expensive) and tape the shows you weren’t watching or just hope and pray the ones you couldn’t catch showed up sometime as a rerun. Oh, the stress 🙂

Ok, you now have everything set! The shows are highlighted in your guide and you have a plan… What next? Cereal!!! “Mom, do we have anymore Fruity Pebbles??” Screw the healthy stuff (Wheaties, Grape Nuts, Raisin Bran, Chex), give me the food colored and sugared bad cousins (Fruity Pebbles, Cookie Crisp, Lucky Charms, Trix, etc.).



How our parents thought these bad boys fit into a nutritional breakfast is beyond me. Because it was good and it shut us up 🙂 Now for the schedule… Here’s what I would have highlighted:

8:00am – 9:00am Super Friends

9:00am – 10:30am Hard Decision, but I would go with The Smurfs until 9:30am and the shoot on over to CBS for Saturday Supercade (Donkey Kong, Frogger, Pac-Man) until 10:30am.

10:30am – 11:00am Alvin and the Chipmunks

I usually stopped around this time… I was too eager to go outside and play. But if the weather was terrible, I’d continue with the following:

11:00am – 11:30am Dungeons & Dragons

11:30am – 12:00pm Mr.T

12:00pm – 12:30pm The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show

12:30pm – 1:00pm Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends (I would come in from playing outside to watch this one)

1:00pm – 1:30pm Cut back over to The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show

Wow… What a treat! Our parents were stoked as they had a free babysitter for the entire morning! We were stoked as our plan succeeded! What we penciled in is what we watched! Some honorable mentioned:

-Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends
-Snorks
-Pee Wee’s Playhouse
-Fraggle Rock
-Smurfs
-The Littles
-School House Rock
-MonChi-Chis
-Fat Albert
-Super Friends
-Baseball Bunch
-X-Men
-Hulk
-Shirt Tales
-Richie Rich, Scooby and Scrappy Doo
-Turbo Teen
-Little Rascals

Yep, it was truly AWESOME!! What were some of your favorites?? Please share!