Saturday Morning Cartoons: A Retrospective Of My Childhood

I don’t want to write about my run today, even though it was interesting enough for a post. Instead I’m going to steal EJG’s topic: Saturday morning cartoons. I loved Saturday morning cartoons so much because I hated school so much more. I separate my cartoon experience into four different categories based on my watching experience: weekday cartoons (don’t matter), classic Hanna Barbera (pre-1980), Warner Brothers, and The Transformers.

In the late ‘70’s I would race down from my upstairs bedroom to the den in the basement as soon as I got up and watch cartoons until Don Cornelius showed up on the screen at around noon. My favorites were the Hanna Barbera shows. I loved the Laff-A-Lympics the most. It was a spoof on the Olympics and Battle of The Network Stars. The characters were separated into three teams depending on how they fit into the Hanna Barbera universe. I remember there was a Yogi Bear team with Yogi, his crew, and Huckleberry Hound’s* crew. There was a Scooby Doo team with Scooby, Scrappy, and a bunch of other weak ass bitches. And there were the Really Rottens, who I think were made up just for the show. The show was dumb but I remember it seemingly going on for two hours, and I was happy.

In the early ‘80’s I would rush down from my upstairs bedroom to the den on the first floor – we now lived in Florida – as soon as I got up and watch the more sophisticated stylings of Bugs Bunny and his crew. I loved Bugs punking Daffy Duck. I loved it even more when they would punk Elmer Fudd together. Who the hell would sell Elmer Fudd a shotgun? Probably the same people who sold Yosemite Sam his pistols. If anyone ever needed to switch to decaf, it was Yosemite Sam. I never had a use for Porky Pig or the Road Runner, and I got frustrated that they showed so many Road Runner cartoons. Wile E. Coyote’s failure to learn from his mistakes drove me up a wall.

I had almost given up cartoons when in the fall of 1984 I was sitting with my sister who had just discovered Kids Incorporated. We didn’t change the channel or turn off the television after her show went off because that would have required getting up and walking over to the T.V. We didn’t have a remote yet. What followed changed my life. Looking back on it, I can’t believe it was on at 9:30 in the morning on broadcast television. The Transformers had the coolest theme song I had ever heard. It was about 50 foot robots trying to kill each other. The head bad guy had a 30 foot bazooka strapped to his arm that he used indoors and his name was Megatron. Yeah, I was all in.

*I stirred up some memories thinking about Huckleberry Hound and I am no longer interested in the rest of this post, but I’m too lazy to start over. Huckleberry Hound and the greatness that was the Hanna Barbera ‘60’s needs its own post.