What’s your favorite cartoon? I’m partial to the Flintstones.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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any Looney Tunes still commands my undivided attention
Always liked the WB Golden Age, though it appears that they’ve bowdlerized the bunch o (to me, it was 1944 through the 1950s)on Cartoon Network.
Those in-jokes between ex-Brooklynites, the Bugs and Daffy rivalry…Pepe le Pew…Foghorn Leghorn and his nemeses like the dog, the old single or widowed hen, and the youngish chicken hawk or the Einstein chicken with the big glasses…Muggsy and Rocky, the two mobsters who Bugs defeated one rainy night in an abandoned house…Sylvester and Tweety, or Sylvester and his son Junior…Marvin the Martian…
Lord, I haven’t laughed as much and as hard as when I saw them.
I always liked Hanna-Barbera’s taking cartoons out of the funny shorts to adventures with ‘Jonny Quest’ – and, of course, it’s hiarious mirror image: ‘The Venture Brothers.’
I always liked Woody Woodpecker. Mainly because he had an attitude that I liked.
Rocky&Bullwinkle was always funny too.
n/t
I liked the original Transformers from the mid-80s.
Boris & Natasha
I gotta agree with you there. Never got “Rocky & Bullwinkle” as a kid … as an adult I can see why.
Not long ago I saw a mountain-climbing episode. Rocky and Bullwinkle (and Boris and Natasha) were ascending the dreaded Wynchatakea (prounounced “whyn’t ya take a”) Peak.
I don’t know which I admire more: the imagination it takes to come up with such a pun, or the chutzpah it takes to make it public.
yes, Bullwinkle was definitely written for adults, that’s one of the reasons it has aged so well.
the Wynchataka Peak segment is a great one. Don’t forget the intrepid mountain climber Sir Hilary Pushemoff and his assistant the Indian guide Princess Bubbling Spring that Shimmers in the Meadow — “Call me Bubbles”.
they told that on themselves at least once – Rocky pauses for effect before the punch line, and another character says “go on, I don’t have the nerve to say it”.
Wow — you’re clearly an R & B scholar!
Thanks for the reminders! I won’t forget these, or the title/subtitle of one of the announced “next” episodes: “Icycle Built for Two.”
Or the Mr. Know-It-All episode I saw near the same time: “How to Tame a Lion and Get a Little Scratch on the Side.”
You don’t forget things like that.
… UNDERDOG is here!
… ooh, wa ooh, wa ooh, wa ooh …
When criminals in this world appear,
And break the laws that they should fear,
And frighten all who see or hear,
The cry goes up both far and near for
UNDERDOG!
Underdog …
UNDERDOG!
Underdog …
SPEED of lightning, ROAR of thunder,
FIGHTING all who ROB or plunder
UNDERDOG … ooh wa ah ah ah … UNDERDOG!
… ooh, wa ooh, wa ooh, wa ooh …
When in this world the headlines read
Of those who’s hearts are filled with greed
And rob and steal from those in need.
To right this wrong with blinding speed goes
UNDERDOG!
Underdog …
UNDERDOG!
Underdog …
SPEED of lightning, ROAR of thunder,
FIGHTING all who ROB or plunder
UNDERDOG … ooh wa ah ah ah … Underdog, UNDERDOG!
A great western cartoon where the lawman was a cow, the indians were horses, the bad guys were buzzards and crows, all the houses were great big hats, and most of the plots revolved around water rights. I’m partial to shows involving Arizona and New Mexico.
I also liked Alf. He was an alien who was here, and who ate cats as his exclusive diet.
I liked these because my oldest (now 21) was a little girl when these were on, and we often watched them together.
…never stopped.
As a kid, it was HB and Looney Tunes, mixed in with a dash of Speed Racer and Star Blazers.
now it’s Hayao Miyazaki, Pixar, and any of a selection coming out of Japan.
They always seem to show more imagination than live action, and have a better eye for narrative, plot and presentation. If people could make live action as riveting and creative as Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”, or “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”, you’d have trouble getting people out of the theaters…..
Robotech was pretty damn good.
The Muppet Babies.
Yes, I watched every Saturday morning when I was seven years old.
I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle, but I now enjoy Avatar, Kappa Mikey and Phineas and Ferb. Of course, someone may be along who will tell me that these aren’t real cartoons.
Looney Tunes (My husband and I will spontaneously break into whole routines from Bugs), Rocky and Bullwinkle, and I enjoy Recess. The kindergartners as cave people is great!
There’s a common set-up with the Droopy cartoons where the hapless villain, be it a wolf or a bulldog, has to keep from waking either a hibernating bear or some other sleeping critter. The comic effects are hilarious, even all these years later.
Ouch, man.
Love them all! Thanks for this thread, I’d forgotten a couple.
First place to the Roadrunner for me. Who needs voices? Many cartoon images have become embedded in pop culture and recognized by everyone, and the Acme Plot-That-Never-Works Company is one of the leaders.
Bugs and all the rest of his crew after that.
New school, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is awesome.
Reboot.
What no votes for Clutch Cargo!
Rocky and Bullwinkle fan with a particular fondness for the Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop & Son segments.
Clutch Cargo!
Shattering the boundaries between “animated” and “live action” well before it was fashionable!
Thanks, no3read, you’ve just done the impossible — made Clutch Cargo sound arty and sophisticated — to people who have never seen it, that is. For those who have not had the pleasure, Clutch Cargo was probably the most miserable attempt at animation ever produced. They must have had a budget of about $20 per episode. Maybe the stories were good, probably not, I don’t remember — but as animation, Clutch Cargo truly sucked.
You’re welcome.
I was, of course, being ironic. This business of filming people’s mouths speaking the dialogue and superimposing said mouths on static drawn images — whose idea was that, anyway?
You have to admit, though: it was distinctive.
LOL – another Clutch Cargo fan
Among my very favorite cartoons are the pre-war Popeyes. I think he actually changed over into a white suit about a year BEFORE Pearl Harbor, but anyway, they lost a lot cnof their charm then. It wssn’t the white suit, it was that the whole conception became cruder, it was just about the hit of spinach at the end. The world of the 1930s Popeyes looked just like urban America of the Depression, before they tore everything down. The characters (especially Popeye himself) were continually mumbling things under their breath that you could easily miss if you weren’t paying attention. but that were often the funniest lines in the cartoon. The animation had the quirkiness typical of the Fleischer studios, combined with growing technical sophistication. Some of the later ones were even rotoscoped. The background music was often excellent — such as the wonderful jazz score of the 1936 “Clean-Shaven Man.”
Pure camp: Clutch Cargo
Actual cartoons: Speed Racer, The Jetsons, Scooby Doo.
totally forgot Bullwinkle- on the money. it took me getting older to realize how much of Bullwinkle I did NOT get when I was a kid.