I love getting up in the morning and watching Saturday morning cartoons while eating a bowl of my favorite cereal. It’s sad that kids today can’t ever have those experiences. Those were the best days...
shareI miss Saturday Morning cartoons too, as well as good tv the whole family could watch.
shareI miss those Saturday mornings with my 2 daughters when we watched cartoons together. The morning was full of them. My favorite was “Scooby Scooby Doo Where Are You?”. This was back in the early ‘70s with an antenna on a mast. No cable. When I think of it we had better programming on three channels 7 days a week. Then we did the house cleaning as I worked during the week.
BTW, what were the popular cereals back then? One daughter ate Coco Puffs. The other ate Captain Crunch. There was one with different colors & marshmallows.
AlphaBits. Saturdays were the only day we got to eat sugar-coated cereal. Otherwise it was plain Cheerios.
shareYour mama was smarter than me! Today plain Cheerios is the choice for me. My husband eats Special K Red-berries every morning adding a sliced banana and dried cranberries. I don’t eat breakfast & rarely lunch. I eat my Cheerios at bedtime. Have you noticed how many varieties of Cheerios there are?
shareYes, there are almost too many flavors of Cheerios these days. I've never eaten any except the plain ol' regular ones. That and Total are the only kinds of cereal I eat now, mostly as a bedtime snack. We used to eat the Chex cereals as kids, and Rice Krispies, too. Oh, and Wheaties.
shareI loved Apple Jacks and Fruit Loops. I also liked Trix but, I did enjoy a healthy cereal once in a while like Cheerios and that cereal from Post; I think it was called Fruit and Fiber. So yummy!!! Sadly though, the Fruit and Fiber cereal has been discontinued...
shareWhat made those Saturdays so special was the fact that it was the only day of the week in which the entire morning was devoted to programming specifically targeted towards us kids. Yes, cartoons did air on local stations during the week, but Saturdays were something else. Just like the once-a-year broadcast of The Wizard of Oz or the annual presentations of the Christmas specials, Saturday morning was greatly anticipated by kids. There being no school that day enhanced the joy.
With the advent of the VCR and the proliferation of cable channels, Saturday morning's days began to be numbered. There was no longer anything special about the day when a favorite cartoon could be viewed on demand. Needing to wait for a show to be broadcast created anticipation and thus more satisfaction once it was finally aired. Nowadays with all the streaming services available there is no longer anything special about these programs. Want to watch a cartoon? Just click and there it is.
Today's attitude of instant gratification has destroyed a lot of the pleasure attached to viewing these shows. Like you said, it's sad that today's kids will never experience this. What's sadder is that they are totally unaware of what they are missing.
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You put into words exactly how I feel. I can see my girls, one a brunette, the other with shiny blonde hair, lying on the floor, their chins cupped into their hands intently watching the Saturday morning cartoons. I’m sitting in my recliner with my morning coffee in one hand, and regretfully, a cigarette in the other watching the toons with them.
How many of you recall watching a 19” tv clear across the room? Yet now we want tvs the size of a wall! (exaggerating a bit there, but you get my drift)
“What's sadder is that they are totally unaware of what they are missing.”
Do kids play hopscotch, jump rope, have swing sets, play jacks, board games, etc. in today’s times? I had finally mastered the double rope jump when I realized I wasn’t a little girl any longer...I had turned 13 and was a young lady with changing bodily functions along with the physical.
That's a good question. I don't know what sort of games kids play today. The street I live on has mostly older adults and seniors; there are maybe three houses on the block occupied by families with children. I very rarely see any of them outdoors.
Even special events like Halloween are fairly quiet. There were only three or four trick-or-treaters who came down the street last year. Fewer homes are decorated for Halloween every year.
It's pathetic that children now must be urged to take part in active play. Even the NFL has its "Play 60" campaign encouraging kids to be more active. Another sign of the times.
Maybe another reason. Kids cannot have the freedoms we had...too many snatched off the street, out of their own yards! My grandkids weren’t permitted to play in the front yard unless their mom was with them. They had to play in the back yard which was confined. When I was their age I played and roamed all over the area. The family didn’t see me until lunch and dinner time.
shareNo, they don't do any of those things anymore. Thanks to all of this technology, they've become digital shut-ins, spending hours a day obsessed with YouTube drama, social media crap, texting, apps, etc. My great-nephew is pretty much a recluse, and all he can talk about is social media and apps. There was only one time when he had a fairly normal childhood, when he spent the summer with relatives in Canada. But once he got back, he became a digital zombie.
shareHow true ...I wonder if instant gratification hasn't taken the special appeal out of many things even as adults..And it has all headed inward.
It feels like we're doing something while we're like the old pot adage of taking a trip and never leaving the farm.
I use to anticipate particular films or books but with so much at our fingertips all the time it always seems to lack a lot of the thrill I once remember. That's just growing older I know...but it is a different world now. All we have to do is click or ask an A.I. We don't even have to be involved with our own search for entertainment..
I love technology but I wouldn't trade my childhood for the world we have today. I'm glad I was able to experience life without so much of it
Wow, I do not experience this the way you guys did at all.
I grew up in the 80s and early 90s, without cable and initially without a vcr, and Saturday morning cartoons were still amazing, and a very special thing, although I never had any feeling of it being a shared experience. I just loved the cartoons! When my family would vacation to my grandparents' lake home in the summer, they had cable, and despite the nature and lake access, I would be absolutely glued to Nickelodeon, (not to mention the wild west of endless mystery and intrigue that was several hundred to me unknown channels.) In those days especially they played a lot of one off unique cartoons, totally insane original series, and borderline experimental random stuff, as well as tons of classic cartoons from all eras. It was AMAZING. Like eyes popping out of your head and steam coming out of your ears amazing. It's from those experiences that I cultivated a life long, deep appreciation for animation, and became creatively inspired in so many ways that have been very fruitful over the years. I guess instant gratification destroyed the pleasure so much that I actually went on to pursue animation.
As time went on we eventually got cable at home, and new channels like Cartoon Network and Disney started popping up, plus major networks were starting to play both new and classic cartoons at more time slots. Exponentially, there were more and more great cartoons to be seen almost any time of the day, and I never for one moment took it for granted or got bored of it, nor did it become something mundane. I was beyond psyched to see anything I'd never seen before, old or new, and that feeling has never worn off for me.
And now that we're in an age where we can immediately access just about any cartoon past or present, I have to say, I do NOT miss the dearth one little bit. I'm over the moon about it. Every time I revisit a beloved classic or discover something new and unknown from the past I am absolutely geeked. The feeling is indescribable for me. I've seen so many wonderful lost things I had never seen. I've watched many of my favorite classic cartoons over and over, and even studied them frame by frame thanks to the magic of the internet. And then you can immediately go on to learn everything you ever wanted to know about how they were made, and the people who worked on them. It's AMAZING. It's never been better. We are SO lucky to be alive at this point in time.
I ate my cereal at the table and never got into Sat am cartoons. But monster movies? That's a different story.
shareDo you recall “Creature Feature” on Friday nights? These were the old, very old scary movies...not slasher. My two girls were besties with my friend’s two daughters. They were stepping stones in age. The four of them would sit side by side watching the scary movies while we adults were play penney ante poker. All of a sudden we would hear screaming which made us turn to look...there they were all four covering their eyes! But they continued to watch! Kids are funny!
shareOf course -- but it wasn't Fri nites on my affiliate. Someone tried to recreate the opening on Youtube, but I found the actual one after a long time.
I also remember Chiller Theatre with the 6 fingered hand. I think that might've been on Fri or Sat evening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6uzndOmPA
OMGosh! That would scare the heebie-jeebies out of me if I was a kid. When I was very young I saw the movie “The Beast With Five Fingers” (1946). That movie scared the hell out of me and still does!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038338/?mode=desktop
Most felt the same about that opening -- esp if you were watching alone as a young kid.
shareLooove that movie. It's such a goofy premise but it manages to hold a fantastic, eerie, creeping atmosphere, and Peter is just perfect in it. One of my all time favorite actors.
shareOh my gosh, kspkap!!!!! I LOVED Creature Features! That creepy beginning! 🙀 I used to collect Creature Feature cards, you know, with the stick of bubblegum inside?! My brother collected baseball cards and I collected Creature Feature cards.
It's rare to run into anyone who even know what Creature Feature is! Where I'm from it aired on Saturday afternoons.
Those were the days.
I miss the freedom of being a kid in the late 70s and 80s. Knowing all the kids in the neighbourhood and we could be at anyone's house or the playground, or any of the other places we'd go to have fun. Yeah, I miss my friends too. Now that I'm older the last line in Stand By Me really resonates. I'm still in contact with most of them with social media, but it's not the same.
I miss cartoons as well. I also miss The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.
I had to locate the last line you referenced. My time was age 15. So many changes in my life. We moved from a big city with big schools to a Florida small town with a small high school. Until that point in my life I never knew true friends...and they still are 60 years later. Trouble is we see and grieve for them when they’ve lost a child. Trouble is we see and grieve with them when they’ve lost their spouse. But the biggest trouble is when we grieve for ourselves...due to them starting to die.😢 Maybe it is better to walk away and never look back. 😔
shareMorning cartoons.
Good music.
Music videos played between programs instead of more ads.
No political correctness.
Funny comedy shows and comedians.
I just miss my childhood, period. Nothing to worry about, having a good time with school friends, having a parent cook food for me, etc.
shareSame. I also miss my toys; all of them. They were great. We had the best toys in the 1980s without question. I had so many great ones. Too many to count....
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