Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for May 07, 2016

Did somebody say anvil?

Don’t forget falling Acme safes.

Except there aren’t any Saturday morning cartoons anymore. Feels like they were on forever, but the heyday of kids’ Saturday programming was basically only 1970 to 1990.

Saturday mornings were the greatest. Two hours of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner. Then wrestling. The Godzilla movies. All the time my Mother and Father screaming at us kids to “GO OUTSIDE”.

You got that right, Calvin.

I was partial to Rocky & Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, & Roger Ramjet. The rest were just mindless entertainment.

Sounds like he’s watching Coyote and Roadrunner

My boys and I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons while my wife slept in. Good times for all.

1960s in the midwest: idiot cartoons all morning. Then, suddenly, wrestling. This was the marker that divided morning from afternoon. Saturday afternoon: sporting events. Sunday morning, at about 6 AM: The Pink Panther. Then you could choose between TV preachers and strange “sports” like two guys sitting in a boat fishing, and Let’s Go Bowling, before the major event of Sunday afternoon: football, or basketball,according to the season.

In those days, all the best series and movies were on weekend nights. These days, where I live now, weekend programming seems like just-any-old-muck because they know people aren’t watching.

I used to watch Felix the Cat cartoons, among many other primitive cartoons, in the early ’50’s. There were plenty of cartoons, besides shows like Howdy-Doody, Captain Video and the Video Ranger, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and many more. Saturday mornings included some of those, lots of cartoons, westerns, Spanky and Our Gang comedies and many more. Today’s shows are a wasteland compared to 60+ years ago, although I do give credit to Nickolodeon, the Cartoon Channel, etc. for bringing a lot of old classics back.

don’t forget the plungers

What about Scooby-Doo?

I sure miss those days….

I remember the prime-time Flintstones! I got so tired of them cutting to the commercial, and then Fred saying in a sad voice to Wilma, “And that’s the whole story”. I was only about 5 years old, and already I didn’t think it was funny; I just thought, “No adult acts like that.”

I remember early 50’s cartoons(don’t remem any titles) that where the toons where they really didn’t move but they used human mouths on the characters to speak the dialogue !

And not a mention of Flash Gordon (with Ming the Merciless)

I remember when I was a kid, I used to get up every Saturday morning @ 8am or 9am to watch abc kids which had Disney Channel shows. That program went off the air.

@ leftwingpatriot:Wow – your link took me to Glacier Symphony and Chorale. My parents lived near Columbia falls, MT for over 20 years. I still subscribe to the Hungry Horse News. Are you from that area?

What about Super Friends, Speed Buggy, Hong Kong Phooey or Magilla Gorilla? Sigh! Laying on the living room floor, eating Sugar Smacks (Dig Em) with the new Zenith 19" color TV. Pure childhood bliss!

I grew up before rural Texas and Arkansas even had TV available.

Thanks, Leading Edge, for the picture of Captain Kangaroo. I was GLUED to our old b&w set every morning that that show was on. Ahh, for the good old days…

El Kabong was one of my favourites. He kept hitting people on the head with his guitar. That was early 60s

Last week a few kids(at the school I work at) were arguing about the best superheroes. Spiderman, Superman, Batman, etc. One boy asked me who my favorite superhero was, and I told them Bugs Bunny. They didn’t get it, probably thinking about that abomination “Baby Bugs.”

Fortunately, growing up in the Fifties & Sixties, we had the honour of watching the cartoons as they were written and shown in the 30’s & 40’s, with all the cartoon violence that went along with it, and of course the adult innuendos that we picked up on, later in life. As it was, the cartoons were preludes to the movie houses main event and even had their run as a Saturday morning matinee. Long live, Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Elmer, Marvin and all the rest (that was just the Warner Brothers line up). There was, of course, MGM, Paramount, and a few other independents. Cheers!

…not to mention the primary components as well of our national elections ….

T&J.

don’t forget “Winky Dink” where you placed plastic over the screen and drew!

Looney Tunes (and Merrie Melodies), The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Flintstones; and then later, George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, and yes, I remember The Beatles (cartoon)

Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cover a lot of ground, with all their different characters. So many that I’m just going to copy and past a list from Wikipedia: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, the Tasmanian Devil and many others. I cut one of my favorite obscure characters out, to single him out: Marvin the Martian.

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show had it’s share of features with diverse characters. Peabody’s Improbable History, Fractured Fairy Tales, Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties, and Aesop & Son were my favorite features.

Who remembers getting up early, fixing a bowl pf cold cereal, and trying (and usually failing) to watch the cartoons without waking Mom or Dad?

Oh, how could I forget to mention Gidney & Cloyd, from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

Dungeons and Dragons, Jason of Star Command, Space Academy, Ark II, The Secrets of Isis, Wonder Bug, Doctor Shrinker, Shazam, The Superfriends, the Godzilla or Gamera movies, or a Creature Feature.

Weekdays, Miss Frances’ Ding-Dong School was on just before or after Captain Kangaroo. In the afternoon there were various local hosts that ran Three Stooges and The Little Rascals/ Our Gang shorts, and had Cub Scout dens and the like in the studio. Also, there was a Disney hour, with Spin and Marty episodes, or Zorro, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, etc. Almost anytime you could find an old western to watch, like Gene Autry. On a Pittsburgh station a puppeteer named Hank Stohl hosted a half hour of Popeye and Kinish (Popeye cartoons and some good puppetry). Then there was the woman puppeteer who had a national show, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.

Waking up and realizing its Saturday morning is pure happiness

Today’s kids might actually enjoy some of those “old” Saturday morning programs… if you could pry them away from their hand-held crap!

Break out your 3-D glasses, and check out the 3-D Roadrunner cartoons.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joRc_UmFhi0

Ah yes, the simplicity of those earlier cartoons. They were there for the mere purpose of entertainment. Now many of them today are pure garbage, sometimes full of vulgar double sense. And the very few who are actually good are bound to make you extremely emotional and shocked sooner or later.

They weren’t cartoons, but Shari Lewis & Lamb Chop, and Soupy Sales made my weekends, too..

absolutely

Once the Bugs Bunny — Road Runner Show (1 1/2 hours) went off the air… That was the end of Saturday Cartoons. Now there are NONE on the Local Stations. And even the Cartoon Network sucks.

Okay just to clarify, are any of these new comics? I know I see some I’ve seen before, but also ones I haven’t.

Here in Northern Mexico we grow up watching Canal 5 from Mexico City with almost all cartoons and child shows up to 8:00 PM when they aired the American shows. It still is the most americanized channel here. The problem was that the repeater here used to start broadcasting until 3:30 or 4:00 PM. Still watched a lot of cartoon shows, many oldies in eternal reruns cause at some time at late 70s and early 80s time seemed to stop and very few new cartoons were available. I liked when we visited relatives in Texas because I could watch unknown cartoons.Anyway we had HB cartoons, the Tom & Jerry Show (MGM), Warner Brothers and some anime, before we used to call it that way, some of it classical now, like The Princess Knight and Triton from the Sea. A lot of shows I never saw because they were from the morning and early afternoon, but I know they aired Ultraman, which was forbidden because of its excess of violence.

When I visited the relatives in the US they aired musical cartoons called School House Rock. I used to hate them because I didn´t know enough English to understand them, but some ten years ago I watch them again and I think they wer good.They also run other cartoons about taking care of your money, I don´t know even the name of them, but it seems that they were from the goverment or the Ad Council or something. Anyone knows the name of those cartoons?

Space Angel. Supercar. Rockie & Bullwinkle. Looney Tunes. Johnny Quest. Oh, yeah!

Tried to watch cartoons with my 3-y-o grandson; every dern one had a moral, and not an anvil to be seen. Disgusting!