I was watching an episode of "Animaniacs" (which I just bought on DVD), and it occured to me how intelligent cartoons were back in the late 80s/early 90s. The didn't talk down to kids as much as cartoons today do, where characters are goofy just to be goofy. They were full of jokes that you had to actually be intelligent to understand. And then there were serious cartoons like the old "Batman The Animated Series" cartoons where things actually made sense and it seemed like a lot of what was happening could happen in real life, or was at least justified. Does anyone else agree with this?

I would agree with you on that. It seems like everything's deteriorating nowadays.

i think somewhat.. Cartoons as a whole were better before the new millennium as a whole. Its like when the 21st century hit quality went down the shitter.

Yes, absolutely. They have to be both educative and/or SIMPLE, chopping off stuff like blood and death (you know what I mean, if you remember old old old anime) or slapstick humor (Bugs bunny deteriorated because adults that watched him as kids now thought he was teaching violence to their kids, ad nauseum you know the drill).

The smart cartoons were made with viewers older than 7 in mind. With Animaniacs, The kids could enjoy the slapstick, and the adult could enjoy the jokes.

With Batman TAS, no bullshit, it's the goddamn Batman. Gritty, film-noir style, kids could STILL enjoy it.

Now we got cookie-cutter stories (I can name about 4 cartoons where the subject is a preteen girl, has brothers that annoy her, and has either blonde or red hair--and don't get me started on the kids fighting monsters with monsters of their own) that present watered down, bloodless battle all done in good taste or drama or worse: Educational shows in the style of "Les sauveteurs du monde" where the characters all look, talk and act alike, no matter what skin color they have.

I own one of the 11 outlawed cartoons due to racist content. I watch it, I laugh my ass off, and yet, I can still make the different between cartoon black people and real life black people. Because I was not babysat by the TV.

Now, not only does the TV babysit, but it makes your kids even dumber because they sugarcoat cartoon as to not traumatize the ritalin-stuffed bundles of joy.

Yes, absolutely. They have to be both educative and/or SIMPLE, chopping off stuff like blood and death (you know what I mean, if you remember old old old anime) or slapstick humor (Bugs bunny deteriorated because adults that watched him as kids now thought he was teaching violence to their kids, ad nauseum you know the drill).

The smart cartoons were made with viewers older than 7 in mind. With Animaniacs, The kids could enjoy the slapstick, and the adult could enjoy the jokes.

With Batman TAS, no bullshit, it's the goddamn Batman. Gritty, film-noir style, kids could STILL enjoy it.

Now we got cookie-cutter stories (I can name about 4 cartoons where the subject is a preteen girl, has brothers that annoy her, and has either blonde or red hair--and don't get me started on the kids fighting monsters with monsters of their own) that present watered down, bloodless battle all done in good taste or drama or worse: Educational shows in the style of "Les sauveteurs du monde" where the characters all look, talk and act alike, no matter what skin color they have.

I own one of the 11 outlawed cartoons due to racist content. I watch it, I laugh my ass off, and yet, I can still make the different between cartoon black people and real life black people. Because I was not babysat by the TV.

Now, not only does the TV babysit, but it makes your kids even dumber because they sugarcoat cartoon as to not traumatize the ritalin-stuffed bundles of joy.
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wow ok thank you for that..hah anyways yeah i agree as well i took a film course and it started with the era of 1920, felix the cat, betty bop, mortermour mouse, micky and minnie of course oh and even good ol popeye very clever

The good news is that they are releasing old stuff on DVD. I know the old Mickey Mouse cartoons are available and I'm almost positive Animaniacs is as well.

I am fresh off a child psych class and we spent a whole day talking about kid's TV. One of the things that the prof brought up was that people are way too concerned about getting rid of violence and also being too PC.

Every time something minor happens on kids TV, a big uproar happens. For example, in Power Rangers, they made the black ranger an African American and the yellow ranger Asian. However, it really has to do with the adaptation of Zyuranger. Zack's character was far better suited for the black ranger and Trini was the ideal yellow ranger. Watch some of the old Zyurangers, it seems to make sense. However, Saban seemed to get overly concious about not letting that happen again after the rangers were switched midway through the second season.

While I only recently discovered the wit of Animaniacs (thanks to Youtube, in fact) I can tell it was a very intelligent cartoon and even me, who watched only one actual animated cartoon faithfully (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes) would have liked it. The humor in Animaniacs, and also Killer Tomatoes, seems to be more on the intelligent and sophisticated side.

Now we are flooded by numbingly stupid characters who I only come to know because their presence graces every item in the grocery store. With a younger cousin who was very into cartoons up until about a year ago, I had to catch parts of some of these wretched shows and they turned me off because the humor seemed as cheap as a Yugo and the lines were too simple to even begin to develop verbal skills.

What we must do as "old timers" is raise our kids on the GOOD STUFF and not TODAY'S JUNK. Go out and buy those DVDs, keep your old VHS tapes, and make sure you use them ten years down the road when you have kids!

And as for Ritalin--yes, it seems ADD is being overdiagnosed. However, it seems as if, at least at the practice I work at, Ritalin is falling out of favor to newer drugs. The most popular one they prescribe at the office I work at is called Concerta. I think it's a little stronger than Ritalin though I'm not certain. Whatever the case, there are very few Ritalin scripts written around here. It may just be the doctors, or perhaps Concerta is a much better medicine. Maybe it works better on the borderline cases--I'll have to ask one of the docs. All I know is that I probably would be diagnosed today yet I'm not on anything and am thriving. I would never put one of my children on Ritalin/Concerta either unless they were a very extreme case.

NEWSFLASH! Animaniacs and Batman The Animated Series are some of the only intelligent cartoons ever made!

i agree 100%. i remember writing something on this not too long ago, but im too lazy to try and find it. but regardless, i've started to buy my favorite cartoons from my childhood on dvd, and while watching them i actually do notice that even simple things like the vocabulary used inthe shows isfar more advanced than cartoons today. when watching cartoons today, i feel like they are definitely dumbed down for kids, which is unfortunate, as cartoons could provide a useful tool for simple things like building a bigger vocabulary for a child, as well as entertaining them. no matter how u look at it, cartoons back in the day were just far superior in pretty much every respect. yoooooo joe!!

Today's cartoons are pretty dumbed down for children. My kids don't even want to watch them. They rather watch the older cartoons.

MacPlus512 (is that right?) I'm currently raising my kids on the older cartoons rather than letting them watch the garbage on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network these days.

In a word, yes. Cartoons are definitely stupider than they used to be. I remember the "Wheel of Morality" on Animaniacs. I bet a kid today wouldn't even know wtf morality meant....But yeah, cartoons are just lame these days, they're just 30 minutes of animation with nothing but goofiness in them and no real plots...

I will have to go even further back and say that many cartoons for children in the 80s were far more advance than anything on TV today (not counting anime).

Three shows that I remember watching religiously:

The Seven Mysterious Cities of Gold
Spartacus
(The somewhat obscure) Swiss Family Robinson

All had complex plots that stretched over months, and involved the use of words that had more than two syllables.

I can even recall shows like the Adventures of the Little Koala, Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, and Dr. Snuggles being far more mature than what is currently run on Nick, Disney, and the Cartoon Network.


I would seriously want my kids to watch all of these shows as opposed to the intellectual garbage that my nephews watch today.

i dont even think the word *cartoon* fits the crap that is on these days.

The Real Ghostbusters... before they were reborn... was a great 'smart' cartoon. The animation feels a little rough, but it really had some good humor in it

Another of note is Tiny Toons... along the same lines of Animanics, but came along afterwards... it was smart & very entertaining. I think Animanics & Tiny Toons re-created the best of 'classic 'toons' from the days of Warner Bros.

Animaniacs and Batman are great examples of cartoons that are enjoyable by people of many ages. Even when i watch some episodes of Animaniacs, i'm amazed by how smart the jokes were.
I think intelligence in cartoons are cyclical. In the 70's, the cartoons were among some of the best in Saturday morning tv with great plots and characters. When the 80's came, you had some people arguing that cartoons were on the air only to sell a product. Of course there was some cartoons during this time that were great, but it was overshadowed by the commericalism aspect.
Today, you could argue that today's cartoons are similar, that some cartoons are on the air to only sell a product (a good example are the Bratz cartoon). i know it sounds terrible that i'm comparing the cartoons of the 80's to the 00's, but i'm only comparing the agenda not the cartoons themselves. I'm sure that there are cartoons today that are intelligent, there just hard to find.

I agree with you totally. Now watch TV today and you get a bunch of watered-down Japanese Animation, ultra-stupid cartoons, or the "Rugrats".

I saw the stupid cartoon of all time and it's name is Pucca... I mean WTF was the cartoonist smoking when he came up with this storyline?

Unfournetely,the classic animation revoultion of the early '90's is no more,and children today perfer talking sponges and poorly done aniame dubs then smart programming.

Depends on how far you go back. I was a toddler when the 70s ended so I can't speak much for that decade, but the 80s, while certainly more creative than a lot of the stuff today, I wouldn't go so far to say it was more intelligent. People look back on the 80s with rose colored glasses much of the time. It had it's share of greatness, but people often praise things like Real Ghostbusters and Transformers and point to them as bastions of 80s cartoon superiority while conveniently forgetting the garbage that aired back then. And when the 80s produced garbage, it REALLY went all out. For every Ghostbusters or Gummi Bears there was drek like Monchichis and Little Clowns of Happytown. Even in the case of my beloved My Pet Monster, I can see how halfassed and how dissapointing it was compared to what it could have been. I realize the only reason I care about that particular show is sheer nostalgia factor and the fact that I practically worshipped the toyline as a kid.
There is good and bad in every decade, though I admit that in the 00's you really have to dig for the good stuff in the sea of Poke/Digi/Yugi clones. The 90s had some great stuff. I'd put Gargoyles head and shoulders over ANYTHING produced today for example. The 80s was creative if nothing else, and the 00's well, like I said before a bunch of pokeclones with the occasional halfway decent show ( Spongebob ain't that bad ). So while I agree that shows in the 80s and 90s were more interesting than those today, I realize there was pure crap hiding among them even then.

It's not only cartoons, but live action tv shows as well. I mean that shows like "You can't do that on Televison" or "Are you afriad of the Dark" are alot better then "Zooy 101" or "Unfabulous".

Easily. Why in the hell do so many shows these days revolve around kids going to school. You'd think after coming home after another day coping with the drudgery that is a typical school day the last things kids would want to watch is shows revolving around the exact same damn thing they just spent all day doing.