Kids' cartoons today are horrible! I probably sound like a 60-year-old Depends model, but I'm going to say it again. Cartoons today are horrible! I'm not sure if kids are just getting stupider, easier to please, bored with animation or what, but the quality of programming that kids have to watch is wretched.
Back when we were losing baby teeth and spending our summers running amuck around the neighborhood, we had the best cartoons to watch. We had Doug, Ren and Stimpy, Rugrats (not grown up), Rocko's Modern Life, Ducktails, Darkwing Duck, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, Sonic the Hedgehog, David the Gnome (one of my personal favorites), Carebears, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs-just to name the ones that I have downloaded on my computer! I could go on forever, baby. The number of quality cartoons our generation had at our fingertips is almost a good excuse to be overweight.
While in class or working with heavy machinery, I continue to have flashbacks about when Doug lost his journal, or when the Tiny Toons went on summer vacation, or when Optimus Prime punched Megatron in his ugly puss. When I'm out on the town and some fool offers me drugs, I think back to when the G.I. Joe gang told me that smack was wack! So many memories.
I sat down with one of my little cousins recently to watch his favorite cartoons and I was literally gagging at the sight. The jokes were mediocre, the ideas were dumb, and the names were ridiculous. Take this one cartoon for instance-Yu-Gi-Oh. Actually, before I go on, you should probably have 911 ready, because I can almost guarantee you'll have a brain aneurism after reading this. First let me just say this cartoon was made into a card game. Now, let me say that the cartoon is ABOUT the people PLAYING the card game. I know. I'm confused too. My little cousin and his idiot friends all sit around watching a bunch of kids throwing cards at each other.
Other cartoons I was forced to swallow were The Fairly Odd Parents, Jimmy Neutron (alleged) Boy Genius, and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (horrible, by the way). The only cartoon that was "watchable" was Sponge Bob Square Pants, which was so zany and clever that it seemed like it could have comfortably fit in with the cartoons of our generation.
Now, I know what you're thinking: Joe, you're in college now and obviously you can't appreciate cartoons like kids do. Well, you're WRONG, egghead. The jokes from our old cartoons still make me laugh today. They were set up well and animated brilliantly. Even the ones that weren't supposed to be funny (G.I. Joe, David the Gnome, Carebears) were immensely entertaining. I could watch army guys shoot each other with lasers, wee people jump on foxes, and bears shoot rainbows out of their stomachs until the cows come home.
I weep for the future of the entertainment industry. With such dry humor and ridiculous ideas, I'll be forking over $30 or $40 to watch a Saturday evening movie about a bunch of guys sitting around throwing cards at each other. Look at what our generation is producing now as our older counterparts reach their 30s and we're graduating from college. We have great shows like Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken. It goes to show with the right pampering, our imaginations can continue to grow.