VAUGHN TURNBULL
Arts Writer

While flipping through the channels one recent Saturday morning, I clicked onto a couple of cartoons. I can’t say I watch very many cartoons anymore, except South Park and Family Guy, but I was bored so I figured I’d see what passes for weekend morning entertainment these days.

What a disappointment! The vast majority of cartoons on television these days are simple, uninteresting and have terrible story lines.

I remember back in the day, Saturday mornings were pure joy for me. Well, any day was really, because 90 per cent or more of the cartoons and kids shows that were available to be watched were first rate. Not only were those cartoons entertaining, they also taught important lessons.

For instance, who can forget learning about the environment on Captain Planet? But the thing was, the show was so well written that kids didn’t realize it was a blatant ploy to expose environmental issues because all that mattered was that Captain Planet beat down the poachers and polluters.

And how many lessons were learned from The Magic School Bus? That show was basically like going to school, but with less effort. The adventures the class went on taught about everything from the properties of light to the water cycle to the digestion process of the human body.

Shows like that were commonplace and kids loved them. It added an important aspect of learning to cartoons. Sure there were the simple cartoons where the heroes gave hell to the bad guys, but even those usually had a moral to the story. Power Rangers, for example, was sweet because they were badass and beat up on the forces of evil, but it also taught the importance of teamwork and trust.

Other beauties of kids shows seemed simple in concept too, like the utterly unreal Bucky O Hare, Darkwing Duck, Inspector Gadget, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Street Sharks, but even their plots of fighting against evil and the big bad dude is an important concept for kids to learn. It helps them to learn about right and wrong, good and evil. Today’s kids’ TV shows are falling far short of the ones of the early ’90s.

Another big issue is how a lot of the cartoons on TV today are not appropriate for kids to watch due to use of double entendres and crude content. Now as a 19 year old, I appreciate these and laugh every time Peter Griffin makes an insensitive joke at someone’s expense. But most parents don’t want their kids watching these types of shows. And this sucks as a kid. Some of my friends weren’t allowed to watch shows like South Park or even The Simpsons as kids. And were they really that bad? No. And did we watch them anyway at our friends’ houses? Absolutely. But watching South Park now, I realize it really shouldn’t be watched by kids; it’s adult humour.

I think that most kids shows on TV today are an insult to kids. Kids deserve to be entertained, and they shouldn’t have to sit through 11 more pointless japanimation shows or another program that looks like a couple guys on LSD made it (I’m talking about you Teletubbies).

When I was a kid there were so many quality kids programs that I could sit and watch TV for hours. It’s not so anymore, which whomps because those are some of my best childhood memories. YTV used to be the best channel ever. Disney afternoon was absolute magic: Duck Tales, Talespin, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, Bonkers, Aladdin, Gargoyles, and Hercules! I bet I just brought back some memories for you there. When I was writing this article it brought back some memories for me too. I had totally forgotten about Gargoyles and Bonkers, despite these being two of my favourite programs as a kid.

Even weekday mornings were great. I used to get up early and watch Bobby’s World, Albert the Fifth Musketeer and Popular Mechanics for Kids before school.
Nowadays, finding cartoons outside Teletoon is a challenge. I grew up with peasant vision; three English channels and one French one.

Now despite the fact that I had only three channels, I was still able to see a tonne of quality cartoons on weekends and early weekday mornings. And at my babysitter’s house I got the privilege of viewing YTV and all of its glories. How great YTV’s The Zone was, with Phil and that purple blob that looked like a piece of chewed gum!

But kids with peasant vision today get next to nothing to watch in terms of cartoons. CBC Kids is an utter joke and Global and CTV don’t have much for cartoons at all. Kids basically need to have cable or satellite with Teletoon or Cartoon Network to get to see anything for cartoons and kids shows.

Who ever is going to fill the shoes of Mr. Dressup and Fred Penner? These two dudes taught us all so much and conveyed excellent values and life lessons. What’s on TV now that is similar to these two geniuses? Not much. My vocabulary is still better thanks to Wordbird on Fred Penner’s Place and I’m sure we are all better at drawing thanks to Mr. Dressup. What skills can kids these days claim?

Knock-offs are lame. One successful show pops up and a flurry of similar shows follow, all of which generally blow chunks in comparison. So not only do kids already have a lack of choice for shows, but probably 40 per cent of them are very similar to one another. A perfect example is Pokemon, followed by Digimon, followed by Yu-gi-oh. This is pathetic; you honestly can’t create a good cartoon yourself or think up a new idea, all you can do is rip off an old cartoon? That makes me sad.

Some classics still remain on TV, like The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, and some new shows are entertaining. On top of this, not all retro shows were excellent either. While it was good that some old shows were secretly educational, some were too educational and therefore lost all entertainment value.

Take Schoolhouse Rock for example. This show blew, because cartoons were supposed to be fun and if they were only educational they should have taught kids about stuff like street justice. Learning about amending a bill in the U.S. constitution from an animated talking bill on the steps of U.S. Congress is not entertaining in the least.

The moral of this story is that cartoons and kids’ shows in the late ’80s and early-to-mid ’90s were, in general, great. And for the most part, cartoons and kids’ shows today are not. Kids get less selection, too many knock-offs and shows focused only on mindless fighting or with no purpose or plot at all. If they started airing the great shows that were on when I was a kid, they would certainly get watched way more than today’s shows.

It’s a great idea for networks to look into bringing back retro cartoons, whether it is in place of the current ones or in addition to them. I’d watch them; they were great.

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