Remembering the toon days of my youth

When I was young, and this was well before NBC's Today had competition in the morning hours, mind you, I can recall watching cartoons for a little bit before leaving for school, and then, as I got older, with the advent of cable, catch a few toons after school before the parents got home from work. Yeah, those days are gone, as these days, local stations don't run cartoons during weekdays anymore, unless they're daring enough to program reruns of current primetime shows like Family Guy or The Simpsons or the former Fox series King of the Hill before 6 pm local time. If you want to start your day or come home after school for your toon fix, you've got to have cable or own a satellite dish. What I want to do is take you back to the halcyon days of the 70's and get a handle on what it was like.

For me, since I had to be out of the house and off to school before Captain Kangaroo came on, I'd try to catch some of the syndicated toons that then-CBS (now ABC) affiliate WTEN ran ahead of the Captain. That meant a steady diet of Looney Tunes. At one point, WTEN even tried running The Porky Pig Show on weekdays as part of its Looney Tunes package. Bugs Bunny and friends alternated with Popeye, and either way, these shorts would run six days a week, filling a half hour on Saturdays meant for a CBS cartoon series that the station decided not to run. See, I missed the era when Three Stooges films aired on the channel. I missed out on Ted Knight, who'd later become an Emmy winning actor, as local host "Windy" Knight before he went to Hollywood. Hey, what can ya do?

After school, WAST (now WNYT) was the place to be in the late 70's, as they were the local home for Battle of the Planets. Before that, WAST & WRGB each took turns carrying reruns of the live-action Batman. WRGB, the current CBS affiliate, also had something called the Laugh-a-Lot Club, and their idea of an opening was one of those mechanical teeth sitting on a table somewhere, running amok. Meh. WAST, at one point in the early 70's, experimented with morning programming, and I can recall repeats of Fury, starring a pre-Mission: Impossible Peter Graves, airing around 8.

Edit, 5/8/24: How about the intro to Battle of The Planets, just for fun?

It's just too bad the local library got rid of its microfilm machines recently, otherwise, I could pull a few TV listings from the past and begin to piece everything together. Just as unfortunate is the fact that WTEN's 5 minute newscast for kids, The Good Ship News, and its successor, Young People's News, aren't available on video via YouTube. These mini-newscasts provided the bridge to Captain Kangaroo, and, when WTEN shifted to being an ABC affiliate, it would move up an hour to lead into Good Morning, America.

Now, what was it like for you when you were a kid?

Teenage Toons: Totally Spies! (2001)

What if the iconic 70's series, Charlie's Angels, was set in high school? That is essentially the premise behind the French-produced, anime-influenced Totally Spies!, which first reached American audiences on ABC Family in 2001, and then shifted over to Cartoon Network, and finally, to Kabillion (check local listings), & Universal Kids.

Clover, Samantha, & Alex are three high school students based in Beverly Hills who are also secret agents. The series is clearly a satire on spy shows and movies in general, with a high school bent. The success of this show might be what prompted CN to commission the 2003 Teen Titans series to be done in an Americanized anime style that was almost totally (pun intended) similar to this show. While the Spies have their fans, the format was replicated and truncated by Disney with a singular high school super sleuth. Kim Possible, and we all know who'd win a fan poll between the two shows, don't we?

Anyway, here's part 1 of "The Fugitives", in which the girls have been secretly cloned, and their copies are committing bank robberies.......



Marathon, the show's producer, reports that a 6th season is on order for next year. Like, how much further can they go? Well, don't ya think it's all about proving to be better than Kim Possible? Highly unlikely.

Rating: B-.

Saturtainment: Ewoks (1985)

The "Star Wars" franchise produced not one, but two animated series in the mid-80's. Ewoks was fortunate to have earned a second season, with the last first-run episode airing in December 1986. As with sister series Droids, Ewoks was produced by Canada's Nelvana studios, marking the beginning of a considerable association with American networks. The studio would later co-produce Beetlejuice, also for ABC.

Ewoks was posited as ABC's answer to NBC's Smurfs, which was entering its 5th season. The Ewoks series was set on the planet Endor, and there were no crossovers with Droids, save for a two part story in the series' comic book counterparts at Marvel.

Techguy4u uploaded this open:



Sorry to say, I never saw the show, so I can't rate it.

Saturday Morning's Greatest Hits: Good Day For a Parade (1968)

With parades all across the nation this weekend to mark Memorial Day, why not serve up the Banana Splits' "Good Day For a Parade"?

[Adult Swim] babyfies The Herculoids (2002)

When I posted an [adult swim] babyfication of the Galaxy Trio a while back, regular correspondent Magicdog clued me in to the fact that those jabronis did the same thing to another 1967 series, The Herculoids. Well, here it is. I maintain that [as] needs to be held accountable for this glaring lack of respect. From 2002, here's "Beware the Dweed".



Rating (as if you couldn't guess): F.

Rein-Toon-ation: Toxic Crusaders (1991)

It was a popular trend in the 80's and early 90's to cash in on other popular trends by licensing them out for cartoons and/or other merchandise. Such was the case with the Toxic Crusaders, spun off from the "Toxic Avenger" movie series and licensed to Fox and producer Fred Wolf (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), who managed just 1 season in 1991.

In order to sell "Toxie" to younger audiences, the mutant hero had to be cleaned up for broadcast television, and that included giving his ever-present mop sentience. I never saw the show, so I can't rate it, but here's the open.

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Piggsburg Pigs (1990)

As we've documented before, Alvin & the Chipmunks moved from NBC to Fox, and changed animation houses, as the Bagdasarian family took the show from Ruby-Spears and moved it to DIC, additionally changing the title to Chipmunks Go To The Movies for a final season. As it turns out, Ruby-Spears made up for the loss by developing a series of their own for Fox, in conjunction with veteran producer Fred Silverman, who at one time was programming head at ABC, CBS, & NBC, and oversaw the Saturday morning lineups at the latter two networks during this period. By the end of the 80's, however, Silverman had developed his own production company, which had been quite successful.

Piggsburg Pigs, however, was Silverman's first animated series since the early 80's, and, by all accounts, appears to have been his last. Billed as a comedy series, there were adventure elements as well, as the titular swine often solved mysteries, but found time to unwind doing normal things like playing baseball.

Regrettably, the series lasted just one season, 13 episodes in all. I never saw the show, so I can't rate it, but we'll leave you with the opening, which has a pretty cool theme song........