So this is a thing that's been on my mind....
Things I Wish Would Come Back to Western Animation
1. Educational content, including outright educational cartoons. Surprise surprise, it was usually leftists who bitched about things like the PSAs at the end of He-Man episodes, and I'll admit a lot of times the "educational" aspects were cheating by just preaching morals or giving lame advice.... but
some effort is better than
no effort, and honestly it
was a way to give even the most pointless garbage some redeeming value. Also, some educational cartoons--most notably
Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?--were legit awesome.
Only caveat is that I know how this would go in modern circles--"educational" would be things like discussing gender B.S. So maybe wait until the pendulum has thoroughly swung back the other way to reintroduce this aspect of cartoons.
2. Cartoons based on American history. Am I the only one who has noticed this basically never happens anymore? The last one I can think of is
Liberty's Kids, a PBS cartoon about kids living during the American Revolution.
Seems like it used to be pretty common. Hector Heathcote,
This is America, Charlie Brown! and so many others.... and why not? relatively young as the country is, America still has stories worth telling. But for some reason, these kinds of shows dried up in the last two decades.
My best guess is that the sudden disappearance of this entire genre is down to politics.
3. Characters who acted like normal people.
So I recently found out there was a Rainbow Brite revival in 2014, which wound up lasting three episodes. I didn't watch it...
the trailer for it told me all I needed to know. Just... you go from how likable this character was in the 1983s, and suddenly have her acting like... well...
that.... and right away, I don't care anymore.
On that note:
4. ORIGINAL properties.
I remember some pages back there was a lot of smack-talk about how in the 1980s "nothing got approved unless it was attached to a major IP." ... I'm not sure what crack ya'll were smoking because that's patently not true, indeed one of the stand-out things about the 1980s is just how many new things were birthed in that decade.
He-Man and She-Ra? Didn't exist before the 1980s.
Thundercats? Didn't exist before the 1980s.
Inspector Gadget? Didn't exist before the 1980s.
Garfield?
Just barely existed before the 1980s.
The Real Ghostbusters? Unless you wanna play six-degrees-of-separation, basically didn't exist before the 1980s.
Transformers? While the
toys existed (under the name "Diaclone"), the thing we recognize today basically didn't exist before 1980.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Didn't exist before the 1980s.
Stuff like G.I. Joe, which legit had a legacy before the 1980s, were in the minority. And actually of those, G.I. Joe itself is the only one that remained a thing.... I remember growing up, I didn't even know Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man got cartoons in the 1980s--with Bats and Spidey I spent a long time thinking their 1990s Fox Kids shows were their first airings ever. Superman I knew about the old Fleischer shorts but not the Ruby-Spears series.
The 1990s also has an almost-as-impressive track record, but it was also the first decade where nostalgia baiting was an actual thing that seemed to gain some sort of foothold. Which of course brings me to today where pretty much every other cartoon is a remake or revival. Like for fucks sakes there's a revival of
Toxic Crusaders on the horizon! What's next, is
Little Dracula gonna make a comeback too?
............ Maybe later I'll come up with more for this list.
