'90s American Cartoons

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My Little Pony: friendship is Magic lead to me looking into older cartoons again, and I am surprised at how AWESOME they were. Hopefully it causes the style to be used again, closest you get outside of MLP is Amazing World of Gumball lately.

So far I have rekindled an interest in Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and the awesome Megas XLR (Gundam that self parodies itself with a Jack Black Pg style character is an awesome combination!)

Then there's the more serious shows like Duckman and Rocko's Modern Life.

I'm not a nostalgic person at all, but these shows just seem so much better overall than most TV meant for adults today. Anyone else finding this?

My favorite show at the time was The Tick.

The Tick was insane haha.

This video has me convinced people used animation in cartoons in far more interesting ways at the time...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmkxsQnNujI[/youtube]

Teen Titans is pretty good as well, forgot to add that to the list. Don't like the anime art style parts, but everything else is awesome...Raven is basically Daria in an interesting show hehe.

About the only show (cartoon or otherwise) I distinctly remember from the 90s was Animaniacs.

I didn't really watch much in the way of tv at all then.

Here are some of my favourite 90's animated shows:
The Simpsons
South Park
Batman TAS
Beast Wars: Transformers
Animaniacs
Hey Arnold
X-Men
Spider-Man TAS
Pokemon
Digimon
Recess
Pinky and the Brain

Surprised nobody mentioned Invader Zim yet.

Definitely check it out.

Invader Zim seemed quite good, but I've only seen the first episode so far. Kinda missed out on it as a kid.

I love the The Tick too! Others I like are South Park (still going but started in 1997), Beavis & Butt-Head and "Big Guy and Rusty."

One more, Ren & Stimpy.

"Eek! The Cat!" and "Bobby's World" are two of my favorites:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-e5R9bJZwk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSX9bqsifR0[/youtube]

Who remembers these

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqGQyMF5a_0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqgJ6wzSW8k&feature=player_detailpage[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuos9YvAcsY[/youtube]

The Magic School Bus, Captain Planet, Rocko's Modern Life, The Rugrats...so many shows that I remember watching as a child.

Animaniacs was the best. Also Pinky and the Brain, and Tiny Toon Adventures.

The funny thing is, when Samurai Jack came out in the early 2000s, my friends and I hated it. For us, it was the 'new' thing we couldn't get into, a new style of cartoon that wasn't anything like the good stuff we had had in primary school in the 90s.

I never did end up watching Samurai Jack in full, but I'm just throwing this out here to indicate that sometimes cartoons that are on at the time, aren't interesting to you because you've grown a bit older and are in a different stage of your life.

We now look at the 1990s as a cartoon renaissance period, but I remember that, at the time, a lot of older people (15 and up, but especially folks over 40) completely blasted the cartoons that were on at the time, saying they were stupid, gross, and ugly (and most impotantly, not 'as good' as the cartoons that came before). This is, of course, a sweeping generalisation; there were cartoons with a high standard of quality, then there were others that were a bit more lackluster, but it mostly boils down to taste.
I'm quite fond of Animaniacs and Hey Arnold, but I never could get into Rugrats.
I acknowledge that Batman and Gargoyles were solid, plot-wise, animation-wise, and stylistically, but I preferred X-Men and Biker Mice.

At the end of the day, I was a 3-12 year-old sitting on the couch on a Saturday morning with a bowl of porridge, having different concerns and interests than I do now. Watching cartoons back then, I was the target audience. I no longer am, so a disconnect with cartoons is something to be expected.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPFSNu_QNs[/youtube]

Funny thing is, when Animaniacs first came on TV, I was 21 and married. While I can't sit and watch them for hours on end, I would point out that many cartoons are made for an older audience as well as kids. Thank goodness for that. My littlest likes some very unpleasant ones indeed... but the new My Little Pony shows are something we all like, including my 11-year-old son.