all the characters from my childhood have become icons (such as captian planet) if you talk about a cartoon character from my childhood, most people will know who youre talking about or have an idea of what they stood for. whether it be good or bad the characters are recognizable.

take a cartoon character from this generation. who the heck is Danny Fenton. these characters arent recognizable like the ones of times past. i realize that some characters (Spongebob, who by the way i despise) are well known and people recognize. but the majority of characters nowadays are just unknowns to the general public.

comment if im wrong, dont make sense, or you understand me, or you agree completely.

A lot of our cartoons aren't that well-known either.

well, they will be recognizable for the next generation. I can gurantee you that if i show a picture of a gummie bear or a snork, to my mom, she would have no idea what it was. Some cartoons are more well known than others, so yes my mom could recognize a carebear or ninja turtle but i doubt she'd be able to tell me which one it is as appose to us who cannot only name the character, but tell you their power or weapon of choice. there will be a few icons from now that will be remembered, and sure spongebob will be one of them, but i'm pretty sure there will be others.

You never forget the things you grow up with. Someday this generation will be on sites such as this one reminiscing about Danny Phantom the same way we do Transformers, Care Bears and Pound Puppies. It's just the way things are.

yeah but look at how many major pop culture icons we have compared to nowadays. i just cant pick any out

as to lorax's point my mom remembers the shows that i used to watch as a kid because i quized her one time. haha

The only reason my mom remembers (some) of the stuff I watched as a kid, was because she watched it with me, or saw me watching them.

Every generation will have an "icon" so to speak. For those in my age-range, we had stuff like Smurfs, Snorks, Carebears, etc. The kids now have stuff like Spongebob, Fairly Oddparents, Avatar, Pikachu of Pokemon, etc. For them, I'm sure they'll be well-remembered.

alright maybe, i was trying to let off some steam. i was talking to someone earlier today, and they didn't know who darkwing duck was. haha. pathetic.

Haha, I feel old now. Shoot, I felt old as a teenager, even back then, there were kids that never heard of a record player, back in the days of Nirvana and Soundgarden! One of my first girlfriends was totally confounded what those vinyl platters were, lol. I think a lot of it is the push towards newer technology, and the fact that modern kids are more sophisticated and treated more like adults moreso than even when it was medevil times. I live in a world where people make daily schedules for their 4 year olds, someone I know does.

Gummi Bears, I love those, they're still around, it just seems being a kid is no longer time for being a kid anymore with all the dentists telling your kids it's bad to eat candy cause it'll rot their teeth, leading the overly controlling parents to not even introduce them to the gummi bears, much less any other candy. I remember when I was a kid, we did not have this issue. The Dentists said "feel free to eat sweets, just take care of your darned teeth". So there goes your candy.

Anyway, as for cartoons, they will be remembered, just not by as many people, society is running faster than it ever has as far as things and fads coming and going, they go so fast now it's almost impossible to list anything past the late 80's, because it seems nothing has enough time to burn itself into the public's psyche anymore, so just a few involved will remember it. On top of that, the Internet seems to be somewhat replacing the television set in a lot of ways. I think our internet will become our television before too long.

The only reason I happen to remember a LOT of trivial, rare, and small cartoons that came out in the 80's, is because I'm weird, and like all the stuff other people thought was kinda on the lower-end of cartooning, like the Power Team with kid video, or Wowser (Dommell in it's naitive country of the Netherlands).

Yeah, none of today's cartoons even compare to the greatness of Foofur.