While watching Tom and Jerry on Cartoon Network, I--like a lot of us--noticed that it was virtually the only cartoon in the station's original lineup on the air today. It amazed me that in spite of the age of these animated shorts, they still have a place on television, which is good to know. So why is it that cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls, in spite of their popularity, have such a short life span on the small screen (I mean, even cartoons in the early 90s had more longevity in reruns than many of the modern cartoons that are being hyped these days!)? And what are the factors for this? Does it have something to do with the tastes of the audience, or the decisions made by the TV networks?

bizzare is in, especially on cartoon network.

Bit of both, I think. Audiences tastes change over time, and networks will always keep trying to guess what they are and usually screw it up.

I prefer when they die off young though, they don't get stale. Unlike Tom and Jerry or Loony Tunes where they've gone over every fucking gag a million times now.

I think largely because the old cartoons did the fall gags so much that the newer cartoons have to find something else to distinguish themselves, and as a result the humour is often short-lived. It's incredibly hard to keep it going writing daily, weekly or even monthly non sequitur shorts and still retain entertainment value. The modern cartoons are cheap, throw away's, designed to be run through a short period to create fan interest and then stop running a lot of times. In short, they're more cheaply, quickly and easily made to maximize the stations, and production companies profits.

The old cartoons are still around because they're the most basic form of humor there is and since they were made in an era that had a heavy focus on quality rather than convenience, they still end up looking fairly well done. Plus, no matter what era you're in, little kids will still laugh at Daffy Duck getting his bill blown onto the back of his head with a shotgun.

Those Tom and Jerry cartoons were high-budget animated shorts meant for the movie theaters... they played them before the main feature. Iba is right, today's cartoons are lower-budget and meant for TV. They're meant to be affordable and still profitable. And I think what was said before about the comedy basics being used up is very true.

There are definitely cartoons that are missing something. I've seen few cartoons as downright awful as Johnny Test. But I also think there are cartoons on the air that still have little bit of that magic. Obviously which ones they are is open to debate. But I think we'd be selling some good cartoons short to not consider their significance.

maybe one of the big things missing in today's cartoons is that they are just made with kids in mind.

Hawk is right. all of those older toons were meant to be played in movie theaters before the movies played. much like the car and mcdonalds commercials we get to see today. and since they were meant to be watched by EVERYONE in the theater, they are written with the adults in mind, just as much as the kids who were watching them. the jokes were often slapstick and featured a lot of pop culture references for the time. but there were also a lot of violent and racy jokes and scenes. and since they were made before the sixties, there were also quite a few jokes that were sexist and racist.

somewhere around the late sixties and early 70s cartoons were being primarily made just for kids. and by the mid 80s, to sell toys. they just morphed into 30 minute commercials to push product. and the ones that aren't into selling toys and games are just trying to be grosser and more bizarre than the last cartoon.

json
somewhere around the late sixties and early 70s cartoons were being primarily made just for kids. and by the mid 80s, to sell toys. they just morphed into 30 minute commercials to push product. and the ones that aren't into selling toys and games are just trying to be grosser and more bizarre than the last cartoon.

I made that point about the crappy toy-toons a while ago and almost everyone disagreed with me -_-

The gross-out stared with Ren and Stimpy and their silly retro style. I never really saw the big deal with them. The gross-out stuff was just gross and retro 50's and 60's pop-culture didn't look as good second hand. Bevis and Butthead was patently bad in production values and general aesthetics, but it was more enjoyable to me and more intellectual than Ren and Stimpy- to my mind.

Ren and Stimpy can be seen as the beginnings of a big return of the retro style cartoons and gross out humour, the sort of stuff you'd get during the day on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Bevis and Butthead heralded the wave of teen and young adult, naughtier, ruder, and sometimes clever stuff that'd be on MTV and on Adult Swim eventually.

Personally I disagree that old material having been used up is a factor. Since when was churning out old ideas in new looking packages not a formula for success? It makes millionaires in every medium.

For my money it's just that; money and time and effort spent to make something good enough for the grown ups in the movie theatres as Hawk pointed out.
Back when the classics were made, nobody had TV and kids weren't going to the movies on their own. Those animators were competing with each other to win audiences and awards for the quality of their work.

Custard Trout
Unlike Tom and Jerry or Loony Tunes where they've gone over every fucking gag a million times now.

you dont really pay attention to those old cartoons, do you. The new "versions" of T&J and Looney Tunes do rehash the old gags. But those old cartoons were really visionary and socially conscious.(sp?) go google tex avery or any of those old cartoon directors. they were speaking to their audience at the time, and thats something todays cartoons dont do. they just do stupid for the sake of stupid.

I don't watch any new cartoons, so I can't really judge....but I will ask, is it me or are all modern cartoons animated with what looks like Flash? It looks terrible. I think I prefer choppy hand-drawn animation over that.

Yeah, many modern cartoons are animated in Flash. I don't think it always looks bad. For instance, with Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends it actually works pretty well with the style. But with George of the Jungle or Johnny Test, it just looks cheap and crummy.

I don't think it's just being animated in flash that makes them terrible, rather it's the way they're animated in Flash. I've seen Flash animated stuff that looks fantastic. It's a bit like paper cut out animation (which I never liked much in the first place) but with a computer animating it automatically. 2D animation looks so cheap now.

The mention of old cartoons made me remember that I was supposed to check the old Superman cartoons from the 40's. Good stuff. Well, the first episodes that I saw so far that is :D

I think the total number is 6, or at least this many I have found, but it's supposed to be a small number like that.

As for cartoons from a bit more recent era, the best show in the early 90s... 2 STUPID DOGS :D

I think powerpuff girls were the most recent show that I was watching, then they took away the british cartoon network and replaced it with the polish version and all cartoons were dubbed :( Think anime dubbed into english, except a little bit worse AND with half of jokes being butchered by "oh we must match the lenght of text to the lips movement so just change it to whatever is short enough" approach.

So I have NO idea what titles people are speaking of, but whenever I see brother's kids watching CN I think "man, I saw better looking flash animations on the net".

There's this weird-ass cartoon with these blocky looking kung fu bunnies with a panda as a teacher (or something like that)... that... that looks AWFUL!

Cartoon Network is full of fail now. How the hell are you just going to cancel toonami without telling anybody. They could of had a farewell toonami marathon like they used to do back in the day.

Also, what the hell is up with all the live-action on CARTOON NETWORK!?

If you want to see some classics, watch toon-disney.

Gargoyles > Ben 10

I grew up in the 80's. And cartoons were just bad ass. I remember getting up at 6 in the morning just to watch saturday cartoons. Now I get up at 10 and turn the cartoons on and see how stupid they look and how badly drawn. Either i'm just not getting up early enough or cartoons now just suck balls. And they keep recycling the same shit. They got crappy versions of cartoons that used to kick ass like ninja turtles, batman and I have no idea wtf the did to scooby doo. He looks more like a bug eyed scooby poo. Leave the classic shit alone and quit ruining it! Okay now i'm all worked up.

I dunno, I think cartoons today are getting better... Johnny Test is still awful, and Ben 10 looks cheap as hell (doesn't stop me from liking it, though) but... it seems that animators are starting to actually care about making something GOOD these days instead of just sell merchandise. it's like back in the 90's/early-2000's when Hey Arnold and The Wild Thornberries were popular... gawd I miss those shows. D:

I'm not really sure what I'm saying anymore. >>

I'll tell you one cartoon that really needs to die, though. Spongebob. just. god. how long can they keep stretching it out, seriously?

Aurora Borealis
As for cartoons from a bit more recent era, the best show in the early 90s... 2 STUPID DOGS :D

I loved that show, but no one I talk to remembers that it even existed :)
Does anyone out there remember Mighty Max? That's another cartoon that no one I talk to seems to remember existing.

I agree with a lot of stuff said in here, cartoons now a days SUCK I have to keep recording old shit on my DVR to watch...although I still enjoy South Park a lot...and I am a big Adult Swim fan but even the shit on there is starting to majorly suck...I only really watch Robot Chicken, Venture Brothers, Boondocks, and Moral Oral....and of course Bleach...most of all the other shows are just horribly animated, written, and just plain suck balls. Just like the crap they show on cartoon network all freaking day that just makes me sick.

Machinehead
I grew up in the 80's. And cartoons were just bad ass. I remember getting up at 6 in the morning just to watch saturday cartoons. Now I get up at 10 and turn the cartoons on and see how stupid they look and how badly drawn. Either i'm just not getting up early enough or cartoons now just suck balls. And they keep recycling the same shit. They got crappy versions of cartoons that used to kick ass like ninja turtles, batman and I have no idea wtf the did to scooby doo. He looks more like a bug eyed scooby poo. Leave the classic shit alone and quit ruining it! Okay now i'm all worked up.

Its better if you don't even bother to get up on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons, you may end up barfing in your cereal...the new turtles are pussies, poor scooby doo doesn't even know what happened to him and most of the Batman cartoons should be destroyed...why do they keep making super heroes pussies in these new shows?? anyone see the new spiderman cartoon they have now??

It's a grab bag, really. I'd almost bet money that if anyone here over 20 went back and watched the cartoons they liked as a child, they'd find that at least half of the cartoons weren't very great at all. Not only do we usually remember things better than they were, but as kids, most of us didn't have very high standards. But I think there are some cartoons that still hold up. And I think there are good cartoons on the air now. You just have to look beyond all the bad ones.

Sadly, most cartoons made specificaly for kids date very quickly once the generation they're made for begins to outgrow them. Their longevity will be prolonged for a little while thanks to the nostalgia factor, but sooner or later they'll be replaced by something newer, tailored to the next generation of kids.

Do cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory or The Powerpuff Girls really have a significantly shorter lifespan than their predecessors? I'm not so sure. My kids were avid fans of He-Man and Thundercats back in the day, but where are they now? The current generation of kids have never heard of them (and, if you look at the quality of the animation and voice acting, that's probably a good thing!) When was the last time you saw a Yogi Bear or Huckleberry Hound show on TV? Does anyone even remember Quick-draw McGraw or Secret Squirrel or The Impossibles?

Kids grow up, move on and the next generation wants something of its own, not the previous generation's cast-offs. The shows that do last (like Tom and Jerry or - gaaah! - Scooby Doo!) will always be the exceptions rather than the rule.

DAJB
Do cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory or The Powerpuff Girls really have a significantly shorter lifespan than their predecessors?

Nope. Those two are keepers. :)

Not all modern cartoons are crappy cannon-fodder. Many are great stuff. Those are two good examples. Both Dexter's lab AND the Powerpuff girls weren't originally made specifically for children. In the early series of those two projects, they clearly had a broader audience in mind. Both were really quite clever, with a lot of smart references, and allusions. Especially Dexter.

Later on however, for some reason (it's pretty obvious why though), those two projects became obviously more skewed towards much younger audiences, pretty much exclusively. Especially the Powerpuff girls. It was quite funny really, in that the Powerpuff girls had earlier been a lot more tongue in cheek about itself with some quite borderline humour hidden in there. It was a bit weird for it to go a bit straighter and actually get closer to being what it was sort of making fun off.

They're not the first. Even a show like the Rugrats began as something a little clever than what it ended up as. It had a broader appeal originally, clever humour, subtext, clever ways of telling their stories... and later on developed into something more exclusively kiddy. Which was quite different to what it was.

And when these projects became more deliberately and exclusively kiddy, they lost a lot of their longevity. Because as you say- stuff made for kids is usually tied in some way to that generation.

--------------
In these cases we can say executive control and marketing demographic is the spoiling factor: the non-creatives getting more involved than they should be.

DAJB
When was the last time you saw a Yogi Bear or Huckleberry Hound show on TV? Does anyone even remember Quick-draw McGraw or Secret Squirrel or The Impossibles?

All those except The Impossibles are on boomerang, even Hong Kong Phooey is!

The guy who made Dexters Lab and Powerpuff girls,[Craig McCracken i think} both of which I was a big fan of, also does a few cartoons that are on Spike and Mikes Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation....almost 80% of the Powerpuff cast was in his cartoon called No Neck Joe, if you haven't seen it check it out! He also did the awesome show 2 stupid dogs! The original name of powerpuff girls was THe Whoopass Girls...fun little fact.

Meh. At least cartoons keep kids off of the Disney channel.

Daiconv
Gargoyles

:D

Mushroomcomix
Mighty Max?

you talking about Fantastic MAx ???
the baby that had access to a spaceship

No, he's talking about Mighty Max, one of many cartoons spawned from a toy line. He had a Viking bodyguard and a anthropomorphic bird friend, they went on wacky adventures and battled Tim Curry.

Custard Trout
No, he's talking about Mighty Max, one of many cartoons spawned from a toy line. He had a Viking bodyguard and a anthropomorphic bird friend, they went on wacky adventures and battled Tim Curry.

That's the one! I actually liked that show as a kid.

New cartoons are missing refinement.

When the most sophisticated cartoon show on TV today is Spongebob, you know something's wrong.

I look at stuff like Madagascar Penguins and ask myself "why." I wouldn't have watched that crap when I was a kid.

Meanwhile, Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, all that stuff I watched as a kid - I still love them, and I respect them. But most of what I enjoyed in my teen years has pretty much died.