The Era of Saturday Morning Cartoons Is Dead 320
An anonymous reader writes Gizmodo published an article on Saturday pointing out that, with The CW having aired its last episodes of Vortexx cartoons last weekend, this is the first weekend in the United States with no Saturday morning cartoons playing on national broadcast stations. NBC stopped airing Saturday morning cartoons in 1992, CBS stopped shortly after, and ABC followed suit in 2004. Gizmodo failed to take into account the Public Broadcast Station (PBS), but during an age of instant online media access...and cable...the oversight is understandable because everyone has already moved on. TV is dead. Long live the Internet.
A little late (Score:5, Funny)
not quite (Score:4, Insightful)
billions still watch TV. Not quite dead yet
Re:not quite (Score:4, Insightful)
But those people are typically too poor to have high speed internet. They don't spend money. That's why everything is reality TV now. Anything else is too expensive to produce because the ad dollars just aren't there.
Re:not quite (Score:5, Informative)
Except for Game of Throne, and The Walking Dead, and True Blood, and The Good Wife, and Big Bang Theory and a whole host of other shows that somehow still get made and watched.
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Except for Game of Throne, and The Walking Dead, and True Blood, and The Good Wife, and Big Bang Theory and a whole host of other shows that somehow still get made and watched.
That's not "TV," it's cable.
Re:not quite (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to check your sources there. At least two of those shows are on regular TV stations.
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Really? I live in Canada, and none of those show up on regular TV stations(in my area) they're all on cable. In canada at least 25% of households also use netflix as their primary source for said shows as well and it's increasing.
Game of Throne (Score:2, Funny)
Is porn with some swords and sorcery. Which means you can't focus on either.
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Re:not quite (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. As someone with 12 years in the industry (why I am posting anonymously) it isn't that people aren't watching TV. People watch loads of TV, and if you want to watch cartoons on saturday morning you can. You can watch one type on Nick, another type on Disney, another type on Cartoon Network and... the issue is that the households with kids who decide not to get cable aren't large enough now to justify the expense vs profit.
There are two things going on here:
1. Profit-seeking.
This is cost/revenue stuff. If you can get $5 million for 10 million viewers with production costs of $4 million, you've just made $1 million. If you can get the same viewership while spending $1.5 million on cheaper programming, you've just made $3.5 million. And remember, these types of numbers aren't just about total viewers, you get much better ad prices for different demographics... an example might be The Office, which never had spectacular ratings yet the ratings it did have skewed towards affluent and younger. They could license cartoons instead of paying to have them made, but have decided they make more running other stuff.
2. Market fragmentation.
There will never be another Cheers, where 50-75% of the country watched the finale, or where everyone at work the next day had watched last night. They still watch boatloads of TV, they simply have 180+ channels to do it on hence why niche (and yes, cheaper) programming is a valid way to focus *unless* you are a network. Everyone wants as many viewers as possible, in the most desired-demos possible... but due to fragmentation, you can still win the night by targeting a specific niche, whether ethnicity or class or gender (gender, being 50/50, is often the better bet).
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It only gives you a reason to be a smug pretentious jackass to total strangers who's opinions don't have any real significance anyways.
It's ok (Score:2)
Cost of video on demand (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Real news (Score:2)
You found real news on broadcast or cable television? When is it on, and what network or channel? I must view this beast, formally thought to be utterly extinct!
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You found real news on broadcast or cable television? When is it on, and what network or channel? I must view this beast, formally thought to be utterly extinct!
It is a reality show next season. They will take a CNN and a Fox newscaster and lock em in a cage until only one is left reporting.
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Tom & Jerry's violence would never be shown today, too much violence in them.
Eh, maybe not on Saturday morning, but have you ever watched the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, etc? It's still there...
But I agree and am saddened by the loss of the true Saturday morning cartoon today. Hell, even after I was beyond-college-age I still liked to drag my ass out of bed on Saturday in the 90's to watch The Tick, X-Men, Pinky and the Brain, and the few other cartoons that kept the faith.
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No, cartoons are still around. We call them "animated" these days because they're not just limited to hand drawn and animated art, but also include CGI and other types.
And I thought the Saturday morning cartoons (something I remember doing in the 80s) were dead when the likes of Cartoon Network and other networks that showed cartoons all day 24/7 cropped up. There was no reason otherwise to wake up early on Saturdays to ca
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Nah. Those were moderate.
The show you wanted to watch for that real psychedelic experience you needed to watch one of variants of the BJ and Dirty Dragon Show [wikipedia.org]. Now that was bizarre!
What killed it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple. They made shit and kids didn't want to watch it. They butchered shows so badly and made so many rules that it was impossible to make anything other than shit.
Cable channels killed it and the OTA stations (Score:2)
Cable channels killed it and the OTA stations make more with infomercials / sports on the weekends.
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Looney Tunes (Score:4, Insightful)
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amen, brother.
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No, it's cultimulcharism.
The cults are mulching America.
Re:Looney Tunes (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also the fact that cartoons were not obviously just advertisements for products. Yes, there was merchandising... but a Bugs Bunny cartoon stood alone... it wasn't something made to sell a Bugs doll or an Elmer-Fudd styled blunderbuss.
There is also the quality difference. The 1950s backdrops that were painted by hand versus crap where the characters barely move when dialog happens. It is nice to see a mouth move, not a square or triangle flash when a character makes dialog. Mainstream animation is junk for the most part.
The sad thing, there are still quality artists out there. You just don't see their animation work on TV because their work isn't selling something or is part of a merchandising campaign to get kids whining to their parents for yet another made-in-China toy that ends up tossed in the trash in less than a few months.
Re:Looney Tunes (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also the quality difference. The 1950s backdrops that were painted by hand versus crap where the characters barely move when dialog happens.
Do you know what killed the quality animation?
Saturday morning cartoons.
The early cartoons were shown in movies. When they switched to TV, they needed so much more new cartoons that it just wasn't possible to have any quality in the animation anymore.
When you think of 1960s and 1970s Saturday morning cartoons, don't think about the Looney Tunes that were made in the 1940s for movies. Think about Top Cat, Snagglepuss, Lippy the Lion & Hardy Har Har, Magilla Gorilla, Atom Ant, and all the other mass-produced drock from Hanna-Barbera.
Re:Looney Tunes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Looney Tunes (Score:5, Insightful)
Which has little to do with the Political Correctness Police in the USA.
If the PC crowd decided that Speedy ought to be offensive to Mexicans, then it WAS offensive to Mexicans (by definition, even if Mexicans enjoyed it thoroughly).....
Re:Looney Tunes (Score:5, Insightful)
Looney Tunes, Bugs, Elmer Road Runner etc...THOSE were cartoons.
And flinstones and jetsons... but while the looney toons violence is timeless... the flintstones humor hasn't aged well.
And Rocket Robin Hood and Hercules were from the same era and were shit.
Point is not everything pre-1970 was good, even if it was the golden age.
But yeah, the 70s and 80s had some hits ... smurfs, transformers, tom and jerry etc... but sure the end of the 80s was pretty bad... Smoggies remains fixed in my mind as the pinnacle of PC schlock.
But it rebounded, those died off, as even kids wouldn't watch them. And lots of 90s cartoons are solid ... from Tiny Toons and Animaniacs to Talespin, Darkwing Duck, The Tick, Dexters Lab....
And there's lots of good shows on today. Gravity Falls, Adventure Time, Phineas and Ferb to name a few...
Political correctness destroyed the Saturday morning cartoon
In a word no. What destroyed the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" is quite simply that the majority of people who want to watch cartoons have cable or satellite with 24 hour cartoon networks. It wasn't the internet or political correctness or streaming.
When I was a kid, saturday morning was about the only block of cartoons I could watch we lived around them in a sense. My kids? Have cartoon network, and ytv... they aren't going to even think to switch it to NBC or something for a 4 hour block once a week...
The internet and streaming, sure just more nails in the coffin, but it was already dead.
And Political correctness? Sure it set cartoons back in the late 80s, but its been 20 years since; and there are cartoons out now that are better than ever.
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Think you hit it on the head with Cartoon Network and other cable offerings.
Why would kids limit themselves to that three hour block on Saturday mornings when they can watch whenever they want on CN?
Cable TV killed the Saturday morning cartoons.
Re: Looney Tunes (Score:2)
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Why does everything have to be about the two mafias. Can't we leave the fucking politics out of any discussion. What has damaged this country more than anything is the two mafias that alternate control in DC. We switch from tweedle-dee to tweedle-dum both with great promises but things only get worse while they tell us how much better off we are. The side out of power actually cheers as the side currently in power fucks the country up. They are happy because they know that when side A screws up side B
hmmm (Score:2)
Today was saturday... and this morning my 6yr old was watching cartoons.
Granted, it was on youtube... but still.
Saturday Morning? (Score:2)
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have QUBO on broadcast OTA TV. Why limit yourself to Saturday mornings when you can have a 24/7 cartoon station? At times this station has been known to play shows like He-Man/She-Ra and Star Wars: Clone Wars, so overall not too bad! (though it is primarily a station for preschoolers during the day)
SMBC (Score:2)
Good. (Score:2)
In Memoriam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
90% of everything is garbage. It's just that the oceans of time wash it out, leaving only the gold nuggets. Of course, an actual ocean will also have the same effect, which is why anime became such a hit in the West.
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.
Of course not... (Score:2)
In the US there are like 5 cable channels that show cartoons 24x7 (including Saturday morning and classic toons). Nik, CN, and Disney all have new shows that air on Saturdays.
On top of that, Disney owns ABC, and has a couple of their own cartoon channels. Why would they compete with themselves?
Yes, this is a problem for those that don't have cable, but between dedicated cable and internet programming, this is more of a sign that the traditional on-air networks are becoming more marginalized that they cannot
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Though I should not be so surprised or outraged that a gizmodo article shows no research, critical thinking, or effort.
Sad but good riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was growing up cartoons meant something. Like Daffy Duck getting his head blown off or the Rabbit outwitting the dumb hunter. Saturdays were filled with the Coyote and the limitless bounty afforded him by ACME for any device necessary to attempt at catching the Roadrunner. I always wondered who delivered out in the middle of the desert and why he got it so fast? Shit now most of what I've seen from the 70s and up were warmed over commercials that were more about marketing to kids than really having fun. Sure there were the "educational" shows that came along but those were few and far between; the rest being tripe not worth even the electricity used to watch them, much less the brain drain.
When I saw Daffy's head getting blown off "censored" now it made me sad really because you can't blow up a cartoon duck anymore? Where has my country gone. So goodbye Saturday Morning cartoons full of marketing shit and hello Hentai Anime.
Still alive here in Australia (Score:2)
All 3 commercial networks as well as the ABC (government owned station) air cartoons on various of their channels on Saturday Morning (and at other times of the day/week for that matter)
Heck, its 5:30pm here and one network is airing an episode of Scooby Doo...
Kids would rather play games (Score:2)
Kids would rather experience interactive entertainment. Even from amazingly young ages they are saying "No" to do you want to watch this, and picking up the tablet (or whatever) and playing games instead. About fucking time. I expect to be old and gray before the curve catches up.
No more appointment TV (Score:2)
No longer special (Score:2)
TV is not dead (Score:2)
When "Dancing with Stars" pulls 12.8M in the number 10 spot and a 8.3 rating, there are still a lot of people watching broadcast TV. The highest ranked prime time cable show that was non-football pulled 4.1M with a 2.5 rating. Netflix has about 45M subscribers. Their most popular showing, House of Cards was estimated to garner about 15% viewership (by one ISP on day), so thats in the 6M ish range.
So while internet based viewing may have put a dent into broadcast (and cable), they are still the heavy w
Winston (Score:2)
Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Nope. It was Electra woman and Dyna girl. And maybe Wunderbug.
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Dr. Shrinker. Captain Kool and the Kongs.
Those were the pains we endured, to get a glimpse of Electra Woman's spandex-clad thighs...
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He's a mad man with an evil mind!
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I do hope I'm not the only one who can't help giggling when the news turns to the Middle East these days.
Perhaps Shazam can help?
Re:Well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And Bat-Mite.
Apologies to anyone who had happily forgotten about that little runt for years. But the "scrappy sidekick" trope was never not stupid.
Re:Well.... (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking for myself (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the Internet killed Saturday morning cartoons. I think corporate-inspired churn in pursuit of ever more income pushed out some very lovely and entertaining cartoons in favor of what was, quite frankly, awful junk. Poorly drawn, badly scored, badly scripted, and almost uniformly missing the hilarious innuendo and subtleties that were present in your typical 'toon from the nineteen-fifites and -sixties.
I would *still* be willing to sit down for a morning of road runner, bugs bunny and crew, daffy duck, foghorn leghorn, jetsons, flintstones, pepe le pew, and so on. I would have encouraged my kids to watch. But it all went away, I "encouraged" my kids to ignore the television entirely (with a lock and key), and that's part of the story of how broadcast television completely lost one family. Toons were definitely part of the problem. Between that, and the evolution of news from at least somewhat "this is what's happening" to almost entirely "this is what you should think", broadcast television became exceedingly unwelcome in my home. Cable went soon after.
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Most of the cartoons of the 70's were crap. Remember the old Sp
Iron Curtain (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think the cartoons from 70s were crap, that means the Iron Curtain worked well, "protecting" the west from any positive imagery from the Eastern Bloc.
You should really watch some toons made in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union. Dozens of excellent, funny, well-animated toons that were friendly, didn't promote violence, and were fun to watch even for adults. Reksio, Wolf and Hare (Nu pogodi!), Krteek, and lots of other titles that would leave Hana Barbera in the dust and could easily compete with Disney's shorts - if only given a chance.
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
If you think the cartoons from 70s were crap, that means the Iron Curtain worked well, "protecting" the west from any positive imagery from the Eastern Bloc. [..] You should really watch some toons made in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union.
I dunno... I hear that "Worker and Parasite" didn't play too well with US audiences ;-)
Re:Speaking for myself (Score:4, Insightful)
So what? Everything must be PC, sterile, and conflict free? This attitude is the reason TV, movies, (and probably games soon) are so goddamn boring. They all play out like soaps now.
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I look at the Yellow Submarine cartoon and think " I bet they used a lot of LSD"
I look at the old spider man and Star Trek cartoons and think" I bet they used a lot of antacid".
So in the US, it was all cartoons, all the time? (Score:2)
Assuming that you consider [the Japanese] getting vending machines with used panties [..] less fucked up.
From what I've heard, those *did* exist (and still do to a limited extent), but even at their peak weren't remotely as common nor as prominent as most people in the west seemed to believe. Apparently most of the ones around were associated with nearby sex/erotica shops, i.e. generally more out-of-the-way locations.
Back to Saturday morning cartoons... I get the impression that this is (or was) an American cultural phenomenon(?) In the UK, both the BBC and ITV showed a lot of US import cartoons when I was a
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I would *still* be willing to sit down for a morning of road runner, bugs bunny and crew, daffy duck, foghorn leghorn, jetsons, flintstones, pepe le pew, and so on. I would have encouraged my kids to watch.
A lot of those cartoons (particularly the road runner ones) entered an era of self-censorship (OMG we can't show the coyote getting blasted to smithereens) that if you hadn't seen the original, the re-runs are confusing.
That was an age of innocence that we just can't seem to re-create.
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I think corporate-inspired churn in pursuit of ever more income pushed out some very lovely and entertaining cartoons in favor of what was, quite frankly, awful junk.
Your nostalgia is misplaced. I watched cartoons in the 1960s, and other than the Bugs Bunny Roadrunner Hour, it was crap back then too.
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So you didn't watch Rocky & Bullwinkle and Roger Ramjet, or you were too young to get the Cold War satire?
Re: Speaking for myself (Score:2)
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In the mid 1990's the government mandated that children's programming be educational.
That killed every good cartoon on network TV. Cable isn't subject to those laws. Corporate greed is killing those shows though for the reasons you listed. Also, cable just isn't a big money thing for the average show. They don't have the budgets that network shows have.
I buy box sets of the good shows so my daughter can watch them when she wants. And the best part is no ads and there are rarely still existing products
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In the mid 1990's the government mandated that children's programming be educational.
Did they really? I was under the impression that they mandated a certain amount of Educational/Informative Children's Programming be shown per week. Hence the Sunday morning cartoons in the time slot when the network didn't have any sporting event or important programming to show.
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I think you should put "educational" in scare quotes. Some of the crap that gets the E/I tag (aka HEY LOOK WE'RE SHOWING THAT EDUCATIONAL STUFF, SEE?) is hard to call either educational or instructional. Especially those "teens do teen things at school" sitcom shows (well "sit" anyhow, not much comedy). Mostly it's just three hours of "wildlife" (aka look at these random cute and token non-cute animals) shows. Which are also shoehorned onto the weather sub-channels on Sunday mornings. One of the channels he
e/i killed it. (Score:2, Troll)
All they could legally put on the air after e/i enforcement was stuff that PBS would run, and most of it was PBS Rejects so bad you'd wish you were watching PBS.
Remember that TV is not allowed to entertain kids anymore. It has to Educate them. Showing violence like Ninja Turtles just encourages kids to make Nunchucks out of sticks and beat each other senseless, and that's Bullying! and Bullying is Bad!! We need to rise above hate and teach kids that sharing is caring and what a Black-Tuffed Marmoset is inst
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I would *still* be willing to sit down for a morning of road runner, bugs bunny and crew, daffy duck, foghorn leghorn, jetsons, flintstones, pepe le pew, and so on.
Most of that was never actually Saturday morning cartoon fare (except occasionally in reruns). So I'm not sure how qualified you are to comment on it ;)
But I agree that the Internet did not kill Saturday morning cartoons. It was a coincidental two-pronged attack of 24-hour kids/cartoon cable channels and the horribly sad but true fact that Saturday morning informercials just paid better.
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Actually, in the '60s and '70s all of that was Saturday morning fare. It was bundled up into an hour long show with a small bit of newly done 'glue' to hold it together. It was re-runs, but all new for the audience they targeted. The various cartoons came and went, but the Warner toons were a constant.
I'd argue that's not the case (Score:2)
I see where you're coming from, but why did 'corporate-inspired' awful junk work through the 70s and 80s then? We watched tons of it and I can say, in retrospect, that it was mostly thrown together tripe with few redeeming qualities (though some of it elicits nostalgic feelings for me). About the best of it were the Japanese conversions, though cheaply dubbed and often spliced to the point of near incomprehensibility, they tended to go a bit deeper with character development.
Here are some cartoons I recall
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I disagree; it wasn't the quality (or lack thereof) of the cartoons that killed the Saturday Morning block, or at least not directly. It was dedicated children's-TV channels available on cable. TV studios - and advertisers - no longer found it profitable to spend so much time and money when that market was already captured by channels that were focused entirely on their wants. NBC, CBS and ABC just couldn't compete with Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and the Disney channels.
If it was a lack of quality that ki
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I miss the original Funky Phantom [youtube.com] and Jabberjaw.
Those were truly the highlights of a distant, golden era...
Re:Speaking for myself (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Speaking for myself (Score:5, Informative)
I say this as an Australian: All the good cartoons these days seem to be Canadian. Check out Total Drama, Almost Naked Animals, and Kid vs Kat for a few good examples.
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"On the other hand, as a modern (japanese) equivalent of Space Quest,"
Nope. SD is pretty much Cowboy BeBop with Excel Saga mixed in.
Re:Speaking for myself (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does everyone keep using the Flintstones as an example of (good or bad) Saturday morning cartoons!?
Flintstones was a prime time ABC show in the early 1960's. If you think of it in *that* context is was a trend-setting and brilliant forerunner to the current (and mostly over the hill) prime time family-unit cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy...
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Interesting - I was just going to say that the 80s were the heyday of Saturday morning cartoons! I guess it didn't bother me that they were "advertisements" as you say. I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons faithfully every single weekend. As for today, I wish there were good prime time cartoons that were kid friendly.
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And then there was the Sid & Marty Krofft [wikipedia.org] stuff. Particularly the acid-trip-mascot-costume stuff like H.R. Pufinstuff (which I was surprised to recently find out was a recycled mascot from the San Antonio Hemisfair world's fair).
But on the other hand, they did do Land of the Lost, which seemed to have some sort of back-story behind those crystal panels, but I was never able to watch it regularly enough to figure it out. All I remember is the girl would always do something stupid, get lost and/or almost
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You know, for a regrettably short time, one of the dish network (or DirecTV, I forget) channels was all martial arts movies, all the time, seeming to specialize in the no doubt less expensive B&W productions from China, Japan and Korea. That was a blast. Of course it didn't last long. Esoteric in the first place, and the quality was, to be kind... highly variable. But still. :)
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When I was looking to see when the football games started this morning it was all home gyms and face cream infomercials. I'm not sure a reasonable person would call those either educational or informative.
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I tend to agree with you. I just wish there was a little more substance and less slapstick...hell, even the same amount of slapstick and some substance to boot!
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You're belief is incorrect, for younger kids, anyway.
Re:Rose Glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
So it was fine for you to watch and enjoy them as a child but not for a child today because you subscribe to the ridiculous "imitation" dogma? Are you a violent racist wife-beating asshole or just an asshole?
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On the other hand, you watched them and grew to know it as crap. Your children, not being exposed, will not learn to recognize it, and as adults they may be more likely to fall prey to it.
There's something to be said about playing with risky or shameful behaviors in safe env
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Perhaps if you removed the sand from your vajajay and then watched all those shows you might enjoy them a bit more
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TLDR;
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I'm currently watching Sword Art Online and Hamatora, perhaps you can point out the racism to me.