Does anyone else remember when waking up each Saturday morning to watch cartoons was the one thing that every kid looked forward to? Yeah, times certainly have changed, haven’t they? That still doesn’t mean that we can’t all take a break and look back on some of the more famous ones, though. You know, the ones who have gone down in history as the best to ever grace a TV screen–which is what I’m giving you today. Oh and by the way, how much did you look forward to cartoon songs? So much fun! While there might be newer characters that we all like, these will forever be classics.
5. Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toons is one of those classic, satirical shows that may not have been completely understood when younger–well, at least some of the jokes or references–but can be appreciated now that we’re all older. Back before the FCC monitored everything that people–specifically kids–watched on TV, Tiny Toons wasn’t afraid to poke fun and push the envelope of certain issues. That may sound deep for a cartoon, but I dare you to go back and watch some of those episodes and see what I’m talking about, because it was more than just imaginary animals chasing after one another.
4. Rugrats
It would have been easy for us to just list the leader of the baby pen, Tommy Pickles, but that’d be doing his cohorts like Chuckie, Phil and Lil an injustice, because these tykes together is what made the show Rugrats so successful. Who really knows what made Execs believe that a show of this concept would work–maybe the popularity of the movie Look Who’s Talking? Regardless of an answer to that, the show was a hit for Nickelodeon and audiences everywhere, profiling a toddlers adventures in a day–and I loved every minute of it.
3. Doug Funnie – Doug
To this day, we’re still waiting for the musical group The Beets to release an actual album. That’s because the songs they fictionally performed on the Nickelodeon show Doug were so catchy to sing to. While Doug Funnie might have quite the imagination, it’s what made him and his sidekicks Skeeter and Porkchop so appealing to audiences. His mini-romance for Patty Mayonnaise made his character even more relatable to all those preadolescents who watched this show on an every week basis.
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Who didn’t admire these crime-stopping, karate-chopping, pizza-scarfing turtles? With the mixture of their personalities which featured a stubborn Raphael and a partier in Michaelangelo, to their sensei–Master Splinter–these guys were both rowdy and entertaining at the same time. It’s a shame the idea wasn’t believable, but the didn’t stop millions of kids to watch them try to take down Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady and The Brain.
1. Beavis and Butt-head – Beavis and Butt-head
For anyone who grew up in the mid-’90s, this MTV duo just has to be mentioned as a classic. Although no one wanted to ever actually admit that they were like these two airheads, the fact is that the sub-cultural teenagers in the grungy ’90s were a lot like them. Sure, the show Beavis and Butt-head may have influenced a few kids to do things that they weren’t supposed to do, but isn’t that what made them so great?
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These are only “old school” if someone attended school in the late 1980s.
There was a long and rich heritage of animation on television for almost forty years before any of the “old school” cartoons appeared!