R.I.P. The End of an Era

Since there has been nothing to watch on television except for weekly episodes of VH1's "Rock of Love" ,which is basically "Flavor of Love" with white people, I have begun to pine for the good old days of television; especially cartoons.

I understand that I am at least a decade over the target audience but there is seriously something lacking with the cartoon shows of today. I genuinely believe that if given the choice, that kids of today would rather watch the shows of old than the shows of the present. Let's do a quick side by side comparison.

Theme Songs:
If I were to ask you to narrow down five memorable theme songs from cartoon shows from the 90's you'd have quite a hard time deciding between the "animaniacs", "duck tales", "teenage mutant ninja turtles," "pinky and the brain," the ever embarrassing "captain planet," and countless others.

Here are two of my favorites:

Now besides Pokemon and Spongebob, name another catchy theme song from a cartoon show of today. I have a hard time naming shows never mind the songs themselves.


Artistic Style
Now, I'm all for pumping out as many episodes as possible and I understand you should not judge a book by its cover, but at some point minimalism is not going to cut it. Let's compare two heroines.

Storm from the Xmen:











Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls:











Now, ask yourself which one looks like they can fight crime better? Which one can Halle Berry play in a movie? Which one takes more than 20 lines to draw? One has shading, more than 3 colors, and the other one has 10 ovals connected to each other.

Time Slots:
Remember when you used to actually want to wake up early on weekends so that you could catch the lineup of Saturday morning cartoons? I do and it was fantastic. I would sit down and watch show after show and fruit roll up ad after fruit by the foot ad after gushers ad and leave both contented and with a strong desire to beg my mom for a heavily sugared snack. Usually to no avail. But it was still great.

Since the death of the Saturday morning cartoon lineup, and the growth of 24 hr cable networks, cartoons have since started on the slippery slope of suckiness. There are only so many reruns that I can stomach. There is only so much anime that I can refuse to watch.

Overall:
There are many more reasons why cartoons of today are so much worse than the cartoons of the past but it all boils down to money. They've taken the assembly line approach to cartoons, and have made everything that much more cookie cutter. It's a shame. Once they run out of old cartoons to turn into movies, what are they going to do? Sad really. Oh well. At least we can all hum the old tunes and reminisce.