My earliest childhood memory of television is sitting in my bedroom watching an old square tiny black and white tv set watching Saturday morning cartoons. I barely remember all of them but I have fuzzy memories of a few shows I watched on that set. Scooby and Scrappy Doo, Heathcliff, Transformers and a show that I never saw after that day but I had one of the toys, Popples.
I ended up watching a lot of cartoons as a kid just like every other kid did. However it didn’t take long for me to realize I was having more engagement with what was on screen when it was live action stuff. I preferred the long forgoten 3-2-1 Contct, Today’s Special, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and so on.
I did watch cartoons too of course. Every Saturday morning they were on the TV. This was a mixture of that’s just what was on and I had 3 sisters who also had a say in what we watched. My two younger sisters were super into cartoons while my older sister always acted like they were beneath her.
Obviously I got into a few shows. Especially those that had toylines to go with them. I guess somehow, maybe this was their design idk, but I had this mentality that if a cartoon didn’t have toys it didn’t count or wasn’t a real cartoon.
My first attempt at giving childhood cartoons a second chance was when I got heavy into collecting Transformers toys. I picked up a full set of the G1 cartoon on VHS. I grabbed a few random cartoons I rememebered off the file sharing programs of the time and tried to watch a few. I quickly felt a sense of I don’t know weirdness. I don’t know how to explain it but it was a mixture of nostalgia, longing for those days and I think I am too old for this. So I deleted all of them and decided to focus on getting all of the various Transformers cartoons I could.
At that time the only Transformers cartoons were the original, the Beast era, 2001 RID Car Robots and the currently airing on tv at the time Armada. Then I discovered the Japaense anime ones and had to grab them too. This took me down a brief rabbit hole thinking if regular cartoons were beneath me maybe I could give anime a try. Long story short, nope.
Then a couple of years ago, right before the Pandemic started, I got fully back into collecting toys. After a while I started watching toy channels on Youtube and this inevitably took me down the path of cartoons based on those toys. Not long after building a sizable collection of toys from my childhood I stumbled upon a random post on Bluesky. Someone I followed who is heavy into retro video games and toys shared a website that recreated actual old school over the air TV broadcasts. As I sat there flipping channels on a virtual CRT, complete with static transitions as you changed channels, this took me back in time and I loved it.
It only took a couple of days of time travel before I started getting the itch to revisit some of those cartoons based on toys I had as a kid or was starting to collect. This kicked off a heavy round of grabbing every cartoon I knew that had a toyline associated with it. After a while I expanded my animation quest to pick up some adult stuff like Futurama and Daria.
It didn’t take long before the combination of toy collecting and accompanying Youtube channels, the time travel TV simulator, and watching random episodes of those Transformers, GI Joe, TMNT and He Man shows, I began to soften up. I started going from a hardass who felt strongly that cartoons were for kids and not my thing. I had that attitude even when I was a kid.
I haven’t gotten to the point where I can say yay cartoons are hip. I don’t know if I ever will get to that point. Anyways I am here at the point where I have at least softened up enough to expand my exploration of stuff I barely remembered to a few things I knew about I eventually got to where I am now. Fully enjoying watching all of the cartoons from yesteryear. I feel like I can settle into a strong appreciation of these shows. I never had a problem with animation or the work that goes into making a cartoon. I just had this strange sense of these are not for me.
Today I am back in the regular habit of enjoying those old school Saturday morning cartoons. I have even gone back to eating sugary cereals. Yes I know it is a middle aged situation of me trying to revisit and hold onto my youth. Still, at this point in my life this is where I want to be, for now.
