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Saturday morning cartoons died in the early 90s when Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon came to prominence. The entire reason why saturday morning cartoons existed was because it was the only time of day that it was profitable for network television to show programming for children, the rest of the time it was programming aimed at families and adults with the odd after-school programming. It's also why seasonal animated specials like the Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer hold so much sway in our collective consciousness, up until that point showing cartoons for kids in a primetime slot was a big deal and aside from the odd animated sitcom like The Flintstons adult-oriented cartoon sitcoms wouldn't get really big until The Simpsons came along. Even the resurgence of popularity in the 80s with shows like He-Man, GI Joe, and Transformers was more due to laws regulating children's programming and advertising being loosened than anything else. When cable started getting big in the late 80s and early 90s that was the beginning of the end for Saturday morning cartoons, because they no longer had to be relegated to that narrow window of time when expanding media outlets meant that you could have cartoons on at all times. Even if they technically continued to exist until the mid-00s if you asked a kid in the mid-90s what their favorite cartoons were they'd doubtlessly cite Nicktoons and Cartoon Network's programming.
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Sep 29, 2014 23:43
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Oh! Answer my question next! Around what time did animated shows and movies start aiming at a younger audience?
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Sep 30, 2014 01:00
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icantfindaname posted:I was surprised that poo poo like Yugioh is apparently still popular enough to get made and broadcast Having gotten back into Yugioh after a friend asked me to teach him how to play it, I can answer a bit on this one. Konami and Shueisha (the company that owns the Shonen Jump magazine in the states) have a pretty deep partnership going on with the anime/manga/cards and it's not just up to Konami (or Nick) if Yugioh continues to play here. If SJ thinks it's popular (and it is), then it'll play. I Shueisha controls the TV stuff while Konami controls the cards. When I stopped playing in 2004, Yugioh's TCG was #2 TCG in the world behind Magic the Gathering (which has pretty much always been #1). I don't know how it is now but yeah. Really, the anime's hype has died down and most people who watch Yugioh are newbies. Everyone else who wants to play the card game just does that and ignores the anime/manga. There's talk of the card game dying out, at least in the States. This is thanks to Konami's asinine rulings and changes, splitting the Non-Japanese game from the Japanese game. Who knows though. If this happens, maybe the anime will stop in the US. This may not happen, however, because UpperDeck Entertainment showed both Shueisha and Konami how big the American TCG market is. They might not leave so easily. To end this post, there's more Yugioh anime coming.  Japan's already on episode 24 or 25 of their new one while non-Japanese countries are still airing the one from a few years or so ago. There's talk of the new anime being the last though.
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Sep 30, 2014 01:19
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Gaunab posted:Oh! Answer my question next! Around what time did animated shows and movies start aiming at a younger audience? I would guess around the time that saturday morning cartoons originally started airing?
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Sep 30, 2014 01:21
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...of SCIENCE! posted:Saturday morning cartoons died in the early 90s when Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon came to prominence. The entire reason why saturday morning cartoons existed was because it was the only time of day that it was profitable for network television to show programming for children, the rest of the time it was programming aimed at families and adults with the odd after-school programming. It's also why seasonal animated specials like the Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer hold so much sway in our collective consciousness, up until that point showing cartoons for kids in a primetime slot was a big deal and aside from the odd animated sitcom like The Flintstons adult-oriented cartoon sitcoms wouldn't get really big until The Simpsons came along. Even the resurgence of popularity in the 80s with shows like He-Man, GI Joe, and Transformers was more due to laws regulating children's programming and advertising being loosened than anything else. Mid-90s was Animaniacs, Freakazoid, Batman the animated series, Eek, the Tick, X-Men. Kind of a Saturday morning renaissance, really. Cartoon Network was bullshit at that time, all Hanna-Barbera and Toon Heads. Nickelodeon was doing nicktoons, but Doug went to ABC. Also there were cartoons on weekday afternoons from the 80s on, but I can believe that the broadcast networks have been losing viewers for 20 years and it reached a point where cable had better kids' shows. When did cable start getting good kids' cartoons? Cartoon Network was bullshit for a long time, and mostly reruns of network shows until well after 2000.
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Sep 30, 2014 02:37
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Gaunab posted:Oh! Answer my question next! Around what time did animated shows and movies start aiming at a younger audience? I think as long as toy tie in shows have existed, which would be the 70s. Disney wasn't aiming specifically at children, and Looney Tunes shorts were shown in movie theaters to adults. In the 90s cable networks started making shows that weren't strictly toy cash ins. As for anime, lots of the 80s-era toy shows were anime or very similar to their Japanese counterparts, like Transformers, Voltron, He-Man, etc. In the 90s there was a big influx of more Japanese toy shows like Pokemon and clones, along with shonen adaptation shows like Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Naruto, etc. Basically up until CN and Nickelodeon started commissioning their own shows TV animation existed for the sole purpose of selling toys to children, outside of the odd TV Christmas special icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 03:25
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Jack Gladney posted:Mid-90s was Animaniacs, Freakazoid, Batman the animated series, Eek, the Tick, X-Men. Kind of a Saturday morning renaissance, really. Cartoon Network was bullshit at that time, all Hanna-Barbera and Toon Heads. Nickelodeon was doing nicktoons, but Doug went to ABC. Also there were cartoons on weekday afternoons from the 80s on, but I can believe that the broadcast networks have been losing viewers for 20 years and it reached a point where cable had better kids' shows. Cartoon Network started doing original programming with the "What A Cartoon!" blocks that launched stuff like Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls in 1995. They were well beyond the "Hanna-Barbera back catalog" era for at least a couple of years before 2000.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:48
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Is there any time frame on when the Wakfu Blurays are coming out? I didn't get a chance to back their kickstarter so I'm not sure if they're going to be kind of a rarity upon release.
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Sep 30, 2014 05:37
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...of SCIENCE! posted:Even the resurgence of popularity in the 80s with shows like He-Man, GI Joe, and Transformers was more due to laws regulating children's programming and advertising being loosened than anything else. This is sort of difficult for me to articulate, so bear with me because even I get that this is all over the place... Even though cartoons of the 80s and through a bit of the 90s were toy commercials, they also had a lot of action themes to them. I seem to recall that in that era there was a vocal criticism of cartoon violence and other inappropriate material in children's programming started becoming more heard. Power Rangers, Batman, TMNT, etc. There was also many of the E/I requirements for broadcasters, too, that I don't think the cable channels had to similarly abide by. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E/I has some more info on it.) I wonder if US TV saw the success of things like Pokemon, Yugioh, DBZ and figured just licensing, dubbing and editing down an existing anime program was cheaper than producing something new. But I think a problem is that (and not to stereotype anime) is that despite editing anime for US audiences, they still might have had elements or qualities that remained that would make them difficult for airing on the typical Saturday morning environment. But I think there was where a sort of a gradual change might have started to happen. A lot of the anime shows weren't just going to have their kid audiences, but also a teen and adult audience. There would often be either releases or even late-evening airings of 'uncut' version of the programs, too. In addition, cable with its various hours the shows could be aired gave them a chance to segue from cleaned up animation for kids to animation that allowed for a bit more violence, emotion and situations that just wouldn't fly on broadcast television for a teen+ audience. Kids never had to 'outgrow' cartoons, because there was content there to grow with them. But appealing to different demographics wasn't unique to anime. Spongebob, Invader Zim, Airbender, etc. were all shows that similarly had kid, teen and even adult audiences. Even stuff like Ren and Stimpy being so revolutionary in the early 90s as a show that was sold on a kid's network to a kid audience, but found massive pop culture success with teens, young adult, etc. I look at things now like Adventure Time, Regular Show, etc. and none of them feel like you could put them on in the 'kids only' window of traditional Saturday Morning cartoons. Something could maybe be said of the Simpsons, Critic and Duckman in the first half of the 90s trying to make animation geared for an older audience, but other than Simpsons none of them ever really caught a family/kid audience.
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Oct 1, 2014 08:28
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Jack Gladney posted:There aren't any more saturday-morning cartoons, are there? That makes me very sad for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. If you mean cartoons on non-cable networks, no, that died with the death of the Vortexx block on The CW http://www.toonzone.net/2014/05/exclusive-traditional-saturday-morning-programming-ends-fall-saban-brands-pulls-plug-vortexx/
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Oct 1, 2014 13:30
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Cardboard Box A posted:There are cartoons on 24 hours a day, including Saturday mornings. There are still cartoons really early on Saturday mornings on a couple of the major networks, but they're mostly geared toward preschool-aged kids. Nothing nearly like the heyday of the 80s / early 90s.
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Oct 1, 2014 20:41
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raditts posted:There are still cartoons really early on Saturday mornings on a couple of the major networks, but they're mostly geared toward preschool-aged kids. Nothing nearly like the heyday of the 80s / early 90s. DBZ and Justice League still air reruns alongside the current version of Beyblade Beyond. ( I think we're now on Bakugan dinohunters)
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Oct 1, 2014 20:49
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Gaunab posted:Oh! Answer my question next! Around what time did animated shows and movies start aiming at a younger audience? I would actually argue that, at least in America, this has its roots in the 50's and the Comics Code Authority. They weren't regulating animation per se, but the attitudes and practices that began there set the tone for a LOT of other kinds of media. Before that comics and animation was still seen as cheap and disposable, but didn't carry with it the "kids only" label that persists to this day.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:28
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Well, I just learned this now checking twitter but apparently the Ben 10 franchise is dead. According to NickandMore they're gonna start burning off episodes of Omniverse starting next week at 6 in the morning. https://twitter.com/NICKandMORE/status/516570237026971648 I'm a little surprised actually, since I thought Ben 10 was still fairly popular. Apparently not though. Gonna miss it, I was enjoying this series.
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Oct 2, 2014 00:16
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cartoons123 posted:Well, I just learned this now checking twitter but apparently the Ben 10 franchise is dead. According to NickandMore they're gonna start burning off episodes of Omniverse starting next week at 6 in the morning.
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Oct 2, 2014 00:21
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I've been watching all the seasons of all the Ben 10 series on Netflix, and I just gotta say, it's a pretty solid show. The first series is, undoubtedly, the best. But the series seems have grown in maturity and stories with the audience that started the series, so that's pretty cool. Still though. There's a charm and humor, and sense of adventure to the first series that I just can't help but be drawn to.
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Oct 2, 2014 00:51
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I'm glad it's dead.
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Oct 2, 2014 01:22
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I liked Omniverse. It's a cartoon for boys that had an episode where the messages are "girls will break up with you if you are a immature" and "your ex have moved on and so should you".
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Oct 2, 2014 03:14
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The MSJ posted:I liked Omniverse. It's a cartoon for boys that had an episode where the messages are "girls will break up with you if you are a immature" and "your ex have moved on and so should you". AT did it better. Ben basically forgot to answer the phone and this cost him his relationship apparently. No-one mentions that he was distracted on planet Iga-liga-zu.
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Oct 2, 2014 03:41
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Julie actually broke up with Ben because he was too busy playing Sumo Slammers to pay attention to her while talking on the phone.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:12
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The MSJ posted:Julie actually broke up with Ben because he was too busy playing Sumo Slammers to pay attention to her while talking on the phone. He nearly dies every other week. Cut the mothafucka a break. My problem with Ben 10 is that it tried to find a middle ground between alien force and the original when it could have focused on Ben 10,000 well before they were on name change 7. I haven't watched most of this show, but it seems to me that could have gotten a self contained miniseries while the main cast breathed.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:29
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cartoons123 posted:Well, I just learned this now checking twitter but apparently the Ben 10 franchise is dead. According to NickandMore they're gonna start burning off episodes of Omniverse starting next week at 6 in the morning. Yeah, i honestly haven't seen toy stores actually restock on Ben 10 merch in ages. Kinda blows, but alas, it's nice to have the last stretch in order, and it opens with the big multiversal crossover.
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Oct 2, 2014 04:53
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ArmyOfMidgets posted:Yeah, i honestly haven't seen toy stores actually restock on Ben 10 merch in ages. They went the Spiderman route?
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Oct 2, 2014 05:00
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I remember liking the original Ben 10, then really falling off with the sequels. The original just seemed like it had much better writing and a much tighter premise (although I know that "summer vacation" can't be endless I guess). And for what it's worth, I thought the character designs/animation of the original was a lot better as well. From the first episode of Alien Force, the whole show just changed, and there was no magic and Kevin wasn't a bad guy who had mutant powers, it just turned out that everyone was an alien. It's also where the show got really obvious in its merch-driven nature with its "ditch all the aliens, reload with new forms" thing. (I mean, I know that the show was always trying to sell toys, but the shilling feels more blatant in the sequel series)
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Oct 2, 2014 06:16
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TwoPair posted:From the first episode of Alien Force, the whole show just changed, and there was no magic and Kevin wasn't a bad guy who had mutant powers, it just turned out that everyone was an alien. I didn't like that either. Alien Force was... okay. Like, it was an incredibly meh show. I enjoyed it, but I really wouldn't have cared if it got unceremoniously cancelled. The writing for the characters also provided almost nonexistant chemistry. It felt like everyone had good chemistry with Ben (except, ironically, Julie), but any interactions not involving Ben were totally hollow. The Gwen/Kevin romance was just like "oh, they're dating. That's silly. Whatever, show." Even Grandpa Max just kind of felt like he was just there, and his interactions with everyone else were just plot and never actual character moments. There were a couple good episodes, but almost all of them were callbacks to the old show, like the one where Charmcaster came back. I guess Doctor Paradox was pretty cool.
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Oct 2, 2014 06:21
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Jsor posted:I didn't like that either. Alien Force was... okay. Like, it was an incredibly meh show. I enjoyed it, but I really wouldn't have cared if it got unceremoniously cancelled. I could have done without Gwen beinga quarter energy being.
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Oct 2, 2014 06:32
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Ben 10 has been long due it's date with Greg.
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Oct 2, 2014 08:00
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After the original series, the new forms he got, or at least the ones that got shown most often, were always more humanoid, or at least bipedal. Always the humongasaur, ice moth creature, and crystal alien.
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Oct 2, 2014 08:00
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For those of you who grew up watching Boy meets world, Girl meets world is an enjoyable show. My kids liked it a lot as they are about the same age the kids in the show. While I related to what the parents were dealing with.
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Oct 2, 2014 14:34
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Just give Max Tennyson his own show, he was the only real enjoyable part of Ben 10 anyway.
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Oct 2, 2014 15:40
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^Or a Ben 10K series. At least one starring his kid with Ben in a Max role. Jsor posted:I didn't like that either. Alien Force was... okay. Like, it was an incredibly meh show. I enjoyed it, but I really wouldn't have cared if it got unceremoniously cancelled. Exactly this. And the animation was so stiff all the time. That's what I really dig in Omniverse, Derrick J. Wyatt came in so the art style's funky and the animation is way more fluid as a result. Also what they did with Kevin and Gwen, they actually have good chemistry whenever they show up (which isn't that much since they got sent to another town so Gwen would be in the college that was shown in the original series and Kevin can work in an auto-shop, both living together and getting all the brooding out of them while Gwen becomes a superhero on her own right with magic and martial arts) and Rook (the by the book cop you'd expect in this space buddy cop show) gets some pretty good interactions with everyone. Dr Christmas posted:After the original series, the new forms he got, or at least the ones that got shown most often, were always more humanoid, or at least bipedal. Always the humongasaur, ice moth creature, and crystal alien. Omniverse's first arc actually jokes about this. Crystal Alien doesn't show up at all, the Ice Moth one is only used when there's an alien that can beat only him and Ben's always trying to use Humongosaur but the omnitrix gives him a different one each time. And the selection's just improved, aliens new and old get shown off pretty much equally and Upgrade's debut involves turning Rook's vehicle into Optimus Prime. Plus more Rath, AKA Tony the Tiger in Steroids Rage voiced by John DiMaggio, with an episode featuring a joke about all Alien Force aliens being naked (though they all get clothes in Omniverse, sans Rath) where Ben just gets this big realization that he's been running naked everywhere.
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Oct 2, 2014 15:50
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joebuddah posted:For those of you who grew up watching Boy meets world, Girl meets world is an enjoyable show. My kids liked it a lot as they are about the same age the kids in the show. While I related to what the parents were dealing with. Huh. I was wondering how that show would turn out. Seemed a little too gimmicky and trying to appeal to now grown up fans of Boy Meets World by saying "Hey here's more of that thing you like", but I'm glad to hear that it's apparently good all on its own.
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Oct 2, 2014 23:02
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TwoPair posted:Huh. I was wondering how that show would turn out. Seemed a little too gimmicky and trying to appeal to now grown up fans of Boy Meets World by saying "Hey here's more of that thing you like", but I'm glad to hear that it's apparently good all on its own.
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Oct 2, 2014 23:23
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Always thought that giving ben more than ten aliens was stupid since that's what they based pretty much everything in the beginning around. Him having to use just a limited number to solve problems seemed more interesting than him getting one that fits into whatever predicament he's in at the time. I was never a huge fan of the show though. I've said before that to me most Man of Action shows have cool concepts but bad execution.
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Oct 3, 2014 00:40
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I'm sad to see Omniverse end; Alien Force and Ultimate Alien downright sucked but I was really enjoying Omniverse. (At least, when it wasn't trying to be a harem anime.) But honestly, Ben 10 has been going for like a million years now and it's probably for the best. At least they'll probably air the final episode; that's better than what Generator Rex got anyway. :v
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Oct 3, 2014 01:17
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icantfindaname posted:I think as long as toy tie in shows have existed, which would be the 70s. Disney wasn't aiming specifically at children, and Looney Tunes shorts were shown in movie theaters to adults. In the 90s cable networks started making shows that weren't strictly toy cash ins. As for anime, lots of the 80s-era toy shows were anime or very similar to their Japanese counterparts, like Transformers, Voltron, He-Man, etc. In the 90s there was a big influx of more Japanese toy shows like Pokemon and clones, along with shonen adaptation shows like Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Naruto, etc. The tie-in issue goes back much further than that. The Sugar Crisp bear and other cereal mascots had their own show in the early 60s, for instance. If anything, the 70s were the decade of cracking down on that type of nonsense, since the FCC placed a ban on children's show characters appearing in ads on the same show (which goes back to the beginning of US broadcasting). Stuff like He-Man and GI Joe was made possible mainly by Reagan-era deregulation.
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Oct 3, 2014 02:03
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EasyEW posted:The tie-in issue goes back much further than that. The Sugar Crisp bear and other cereal mascots had their own show in the early 60s, for instance. If anything, the 70s were the decade of cracking down on that type of nonsense, since the FCC placed a ban on children's show characters appearing in ads on the same show (which goes back to the beginning of US broadcasting). Stuff like He-Man and GI Joe was made possible mainly by Reagan-era deregulation. Just imagine if you could tell Hasbro's execs in the 80's, "You think this half hour toy commercial poo poo is good? Under the first black President - Who is a Democrat, mind you! - you guys are going to have your own network."
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Oct 3, 2014 03:12
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JethroMcB posted:Just imagine if you could tell Hasbro's execs in the 80's, "You think this half hour toy commercial poo poo is good? Under the first black President - Who is a Democrat, mind you! - you guys are going to have your own network." 80s Hasbro Executive: "Is our Transformers line still popular in the future?" Time Traveler: "Yeah Transformers is crazy popular in the future. There's even live action movies based on it!" 80s Hasbro Executive: "Oh wow! And how successful does our My Little Pony line become?" Time Traveler: "...you might want to sit down for this"
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Oct 3, 2014 03:24
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I don't really see a need to regulate merchandise driven franchises. If it's a good show, it's a good show. There are issues with it, like studios not funding some products because they can't be merchandised as easily. That's unfortunate, but plenty of good merchandise-driven shows and movies have been good. Perhaps most notably Toy Story on the movie side of things.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:25
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Macaluso posted:80s Hasbro Executive: "Is our Transformers line still popular in the future?" 80s Hasbro Exec: So these Transformer movies, explain them to me. Time Traveler: Well they hired a noted, uh, psychopath to direct them...There's an extended masturbation joke in the first one, but the product placement is out of the park. You guys barely have a financial stake in the movie after getting PepsiCo and GM to underwrite a ton of it. They keep that up in the second one, where there's there's a robot with testicles. In the third film.... 80s Hasbro Exec: Hot drat, a third film? Time Traveler: Yeah, in the third movie, well...you guys don't know what "9/11" is but...there's a lot of that, it's super tasteful and in the fourth movie there's a vagina monster that spits "slizz" on one of the robots, and then the robot calls it a "bitch" and kills it with a gun. Oh, and by that point there's blatant alcohol product placement in your movie based on children's toys. 80s Hasbro Exec: But how's the BO? Time Traveler: Boffo BO.
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Oct 3, 2014 03:39
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