The Magic That Used To Be Saturday Morning

[justanuthercap]

Grandma and Grandpa would pick my sis and I up from school on Friday after school. Hand made milk shakes and grilled cheese sandwiches. Then Gpa and I would build something in the shop or make airplane wings out of cardboard. Watch some sort of fright night theater. Next morning, sneak up and turn on Super friends, Ark 2, some cartoon with a guy with fur swimsuit and lazer sword etc. His sidekick was a Wookie ripoff. Gparents would wake up and make us orange pancakes. Build a fort in the living room to watch more cartoons.

That was Thundarr the Barbarian!!! FTW!!!!!:thumbsup

 

[RickDTM]

Looney Tunes, Herculoids, and old school Johnny Quest in the morning, Shock theater in the afternoon. DAMN good times.....

 

[jcoffman99]

For me it was all about the Three Stooges fololwed by some Abbott and Costello movies. Those were some mornings well spent.

 

[rollerboi]

For me it was all about the Three Stooges fololwed by some Abbott and Costello movies. Those were some mornings well spent.

Holy smokes, how old are YOU?

"For me I'd wake up and watch Thagg and Grok bang rocks together and chant. Then daddy would get home with mastodon meat so we could have dinner."

 

[Treadwell]

the chic from the Bugaloos was my favorite character - mmm.

Wasn't she just adorable?

My poor, but awesome dad. He'd been busting his hump for us all week, and finally had a chance to sleep in, and I'd go wake him up at oh-dark-30 to watch the cartoons with me, because I "knew" he wouldn't want to miss "Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch". He'd lie on the floor with me and fall back asleep, occasionally nudged awake again.

I saw the show again several years ago, and it is the epitome of the worst dreckish garbage made during the period. :lol

 

[n0x23]

Blue Falcon and Dynomutt Dog wonder
Captain Caveman
Groovie Ghoulies
FANGFACE
Mighty Man & Yukk
Heathcliff and Dingbat
Shazam
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl
Space Ghost

Then of course the classics, anything Warner Bros., Sid and Marty Krofft and Hanna Barbara.
When the cartoons were over it was The Little Rascals, then the Three Stooges and then it was time to go outside.

 

[TomGLFan]

Age 57; grew up in the 1960's. It was all about Hanna-Barbara sci-fi for me -- Space Ghost, The Herculoids, etc. And the Looney Tunes -- The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour or whatever they were calling it that year. ("Overture! Hit the lights! This is it! We'll hit the heights!" Then over to WPIX out of NYC for the Superman reruns, the Little Rascals, the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, Abbott and Costello, and the Stooges (but only if it was Curly.) The kids have really lost something now that Saturday morning is gone.

 

[n0x23]

I forgot one of my favorites...Scooby Doo.

It stared "jumping the shark" once they introduced Scrappy Doo, then it was over when they cut three pivotal characters.

It wasn't the same without Fred saving Daphne and Velma always losing her glasses and coercing Scooby and Shaggy with her Scooby Snacks.

 

[dropshipbob]

We'd wake up when they still had the test pattern showing and the very first thing that came on was New Zoo Review. At this point it was a re-run, but we didn't care. By the time that was over, ALL of the channels started playing the normal fair, Bugs Bunny, Thundarr, Mighty Or-bots, Super Friends, Scooby Doo, etc.

At some point we'd get a bowl of cereal...probably Fruity Pebbles or Honey Comb, try to be the first one to get the prize in the box, a mini license plate or a coin purse shaped like Fred Flintstones head. We dreaded hearing our parents wake up, their footsteps making the ceiling above us creak and pop...that usually meant they were about to make us start doing chores.

Then we'd run outside and play, ride bikes, play "Army" till someones Mom offered to make Kool Aid. We'd play all day, getting all hot, sweaty and dirty and not caring or noticing one bit! Eat dinner then go back outside and play for an hour or so, sometimes in the dark, then hit the bed wearing Pac Man pajamas.


On a somewhat related note, the other day my oldest son was watching Cartoon Network and they have a new version of Scooby Doo, it's the same formula and characters, just updated a little. You know what I saw? Shaggy and Wilma KISSING! You always kinda wondered waaaay back if they might have a thing for each other, but you never saw anything, and there they were, fully lip-locked, no doubt about it!

 

[slave1pilot]

some cartoon with a guy with fur swimsuit and lazer sword etc. His sidekick was a Wookie ripoff.

YouTube - Thundarr the Barbarian TV cartoon intro (1980)

 

[clonesix]

Has anyone mentioned Bob McCallister's Wonderama? No one I talk to these days knows what I am talking about. It was a New Yark show that played in the Los Angeles market. It had a live audience and played games and ran cartoons. Anybody?

And hoestly, saturday morning was Looney Tunes.

 

[n0x23]

Remember when they would show Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry and other characters in black face with white gloves? Then we'd go to lunch at Sambo's restaurant.

***** ******, and this was in the '70s and early '80s!
I had absolutely NO concept of what Racism even was at the time and yet I was completely inundated with it on a daily basis...absolutely insane! :wacko

 

[hankey01]

I used to read those ads on comic books and wish so badly I could see those shows!!!!!!!!! Many of them weren't even aired in Canada.

When I was younger we had about 3 channels by antenna that had to be turned. What we did get Saturday mornings was crappy Rocket Robin Hood, Max the 3000 year old mouse, and the old 60's Spider-man.

When we would visit my grandparents in Calgary OH MAN was I up at the crack of dawn excited to watch ACTUAL cable television and REAL CARTOONS!!!!! I was the only one up for a while and would have to have the TV so quiet I had to sit 3" from it. All worth it!

 

[CessnaDriver]

I used to read those ads on comic books and wish so badly I could see those shows!!!!!!!!! Many of them weren't even aired in Canada.

When I was younger we had about 3 channels by antenna that had to be turned. What we did get Saturday mornings was crappy Rocket Robin Hood, Max the 3000 year old mouse, and the old 60's Spider-man.

When we would visit my grandparents in Calgary OH MAN was I up at the crack of dawn excited to watch ACTUAL cable television and REAL CARTOONS!!!!! I was the only one up for a while and would have to have the TV so quiet I had to sit 3" from it. All worth it!

Wow, I haven't thought of Rocket Robin Hood since I was probably five! LOL

I remember this short song really well for some reason.........
YouTube - Rocket Robin Hood Interlude - "Countdown" song

I think it was a weekday morning thing though for me.
Can't remember now.


I remember just being tortured to fits turning the antenna to pick up Los Angeles stations for Godzilla flicks. Nothing sucked more then having the signal fade to snow in the middle of an epic battle.

 

[jcoffman99]

Holy smokes, how old are YOU?

"For me I'd wake up and watch Thagg and Grok bang rocks together and chant. Then daddy would get home with mastodon meat so we could have dinner."

LOL. Will be 34 on Monday. The local DC channel used to show them when I was a kid.

 

[Jet Beetle]

Back in Belgium, we would get different national channels, like France, Netherlands etc. Wednesday afternoons and holidays were kid's heaven. Shortly after noon until sometimes 5pm you could watch cartoons and television shows nearly uninterrupted. Sometimes it was a matter of channel surfing to get the better stuff. The French channels had some of the best programming and some indigenous cartoons alongside Japanese and American imports. By the late 70's the Japanese anime shows like UFO Robot Grandizer and Captain Harlock were so much more exciting than Hannah-Barbera. In the 80's French kid's shows were dominated by cheap Japanese imports. Anything from Sentai to Dragonball, but concerned parents and the government cracked down on them and insisted on a wider portion of indigenous cartoons which lacked the edge and freedom of storytelling as well as a return to the "safer" US imports and tons of reruns of old US tv shows like Silver Spoons and Diff'rent Strokes.

The era of Wednesday afternoons and 3-5 pm afternoon slots being dedicated to kids is now mostly gone, except for dedicated channels. They still get the 5-8 AM morning slot, but as more lucrative targets are found, slots for children's tv is increasingly under pressure.

I'd have killed to see those Japanese shows when i was a kid.

I have some french kiddy show around here caled COLARGOL

- about a little bear who was raised by birds - man the puppet work on that show is awesome. I believe PINGU is french as well

- great claymation. Ahead of its time

 

[JtotheP]

Thanks for this thread--It does remind me of the best years of my like. Nothing better than a bowl of cereal (monster cereal preferrably) and the line up of the Saturday morning cartoons. Superfriends, Scooby-Doo, Laugh olympics, even the Smurfs.

 

[Qui-Gonzalez]

YouTube - Thundarr the Barbarian TV cartoon intro (1980)

Ookla, Ariel....RIDE!!

Oh, and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl were my first celeb crushes.

 

[Wes R]

YouTube - Thundarr the Barbarian TV cartoon intro (1980)

THundarr is still on Boomerang but either there weren't many episodes or they didn't get them all. I remember seeing another like this that was post apocalyptic but it had some blobs living deep in the earth that helped the humans. i saw it once in the early 90s.

For me it was always looneytoons, i think transformers was on sometimes on saturdays, later on it was the ninja turtles. Saturday morning cartoons pretty much died with the birth of nicktoons, cartoon network, and the demise of foxkids and kidswb. in 1999-2001 foxkids was the place to be on saturday mornings. it was mostly anime but it beat most everything else. In the 90s i remember after cartoons was Gamepro TV and then music videos.

 

[Treadwell]

THundarr is still on Boomerang but either there weren't many episodes or they didn't get them all. I remember seeing another like this that was post apocalyptic but it had some blobs living deep in the earth that helped the humans.

You might be thinking of The Herculoids.