I am probably the only person over the age of eight who still gets up on a Saturday to watch morning cartoons. At 10 a.m., you can count on me to be up and ready to start my day off with some qubo, a programming block from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m., on NBC. Over the years – despite a very passionate affinity for animation – I’ve noticed my interest in televised cartoons wane, even disappear, at times. Which has led me to wonder: Has the age of cartoons disappeared for our generation entirely, or is there still hope for the future of animated TV? For the answer, we’ll have to hop into our figurative time machine back to early mornings of old. And for this we will go back to one year in particular: 1998.
Rachel Poletick. Cartoon fanatic. First grade.
At six years old, I never slept in for a moment. Waking up at 5 a.m. and snuggling under a blanket in my living room with all the lights turned down, I turned on ABC Kids, PBS, Disney Channel or Nickelodeon and began my journey out of the real world and into the world of 2D.
I did not realize then that I was bearing witness to what is now known to the children of the '90s as the Golden Age of Cartoons.
One (Every) Saturday Morning
Back in the day, some of the best cartoons on television were not only for cable subscribers. Ask any child of the '90s to name all the animated series they loved and Arthur will virtually always be on the list. The show that taught us how to spell “aardvark” is still on television – what with a few changes to character voices (which have been met with a resounding “Arthur sounds like a girl!” response) – and has run for 15 seasons to this point.
Another show still being shown on qubo is The Magic School Bus. This show, no longer with new episodes, is one we can all credit to wasted afternoons in science class when our teachers were absent and substitutes had to make up a lesson plan without any prior knowledge of the subject. Ms. Frizzle gave us lessons about bat sonar, dinosaurs, how food is digested and how to make rockin’ themed outfits. But most of all, she educated us in the art of making learning interesting.
But other network cartoons were not so keen on forcing viewers to be well-rounded, learned individuals, and that is what made them cool. ABC’s One Saturday Morning lineup featured Pepper Ann and Recess, both shows set in schools but with apathetic main characters (Pepper Ann and TJ) and slightly androgynous supporting characters (Spinelli Pepper Ann’s “sister” Moose) among others. The shows followed a prototype, but primarily functioned on their indifference towards educating their audience. Though One Saturday Morning’s slogan was “Illuminating Television,” the focus was on illuminating the imagination rather than critical thinking.
And this prototype of the more amusing than educational carried over into the cable networks which were home to the shows that aired not weekly, but daily, and dominated our lives before and after school.
Football heads, funnies, wallabies and babies
Before it was replaced by the buzzing of my cell phone, my signal to wake on weekday mornings was the screeching voice of Helga Pataki yelling “Hey Arnold!” Every morning at 7 a.m., my eyes would open to an episode of the football head and his cohorts. This show, among others – Rocko’s Modern Life which always aired slightly too early for an elementary school student, Rugrats which was slightly too late – would become the basis of the '90s cult of animation. Different shows signified different times during the day. The Wild Thornberrys and Rugrats were indicative of a day spent home from school eating Kraft macaroni and cheese and feigning a debilitating stomach ache. Rocko’s Modern Life and Doug meant I had gotten up earlier than normal. But Hey Arnold! was the norm and to this day the most treasured of childhood classics.
The Nicktoons of the early '90s gave us characters we could identify with from Helga and Arnold to Doug and Patti, locations we could make sense of from the Pickles’ house to P.S. 118. But the outliers, from Aah! Real Monsters to The Angry Beavers with their odd casts of characters and strange stories that teetered in similarity to what we now associate with Tim Burton and Adult Swim, were great in their own right. But what happened to Nicktoons? Did the Golden Age every really end?
But I’m too old for this
Even at six, I was still complaining I was too old for Playhouse Disney. While shows like PB&J Otter stimulated my senses and gave me reason to use my noodle, if anyone ever asked – I was way too old for Rolie Polie Olie.
Yet somehow, 13 years after the fact, I admit to being a loyal fan of the yellow round-headed boy and his yellow round-headed family. And despite early resistance, I’ve lately succumbed to Playhouse Disney, now known as Disney Junior, as well as other cartoon counterparts which would ordinarily be aimed at a much younger audience.
In second grade, there was a girl in my class who called herself Stevie. One day she told the entire class she grew out of Barney & Friends by the time she was three. She would later insult childhood classic Blue’s Clues, permanently frightening me out of ever telling anyone that I liked Steve and his pal Blue. But in recent years, my desire to show solidarity with old cartoons as well as openness to new animated television has led to an appreciation not only of Blue’s Clues, but of more recent shows which Stevie might have deemed unworthy.
Disney Junior’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Little Einsteins may not be up to Rolie Polie Olie standards, but they are quite tolerable on the CGI animation scale. And while Nicktoons have rarely equaled their predecessors in quality, post-1998 concessions must be made for the pop culture genius of The Fairly Oddparents, the tween empathy of As Told by Ginger, the inventiveness of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and even the quirky artistry of ChalkZone.
So maybe our Golden Age has ended. The childhood classics we knew, loved and still covet have made us muse on the past and scoff at the future. But for the few of us still holding onto the last vestiges of animated television, the age has not quite ceased.