A week or two ago I wrote a blog about my favorite Saturday morning cartoons.\u00a0 That got me to thinking about cartoons during the week that I watched and liked, so I decided to write a blog about my favorite weekday afternoon cartoons as well.<\/p>\n
With 24-hour kid cable channels, DVR, and the Internet, I don\u2019t think kids today understand how special kid-time on the TV was back when I was young.\u00a0 Aside from Saturday morning, the only other times you could get kid programming back then was either early morning or afternoons.\u00a0 Coming home from school, us kids needed to unwind, so watching a few cartoons was a great way to settle down and get ready for dinner and homework.\u00a0 Many of these kinds of cartoons were not as good, or they were reruns in syndication, but there were a few that would stand out, and those are what\u2019s on my list.<\/p>\n
As last time, here are the rules for my list.\u00a0 This list isn\u2019t in any order of preference.\u00a0 Some of the ones on this list I just have good memories of watching as a kid, and they may not be of very high quality.\u00a0 And finally, many shows were both on weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings.\u00a0 But only the ones I have better memories of watching on weekday afternoons made the list.\u00a0 OK enough of that, let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n
Transformers<\/strong><\/p>\n I watched a LOT of weekday afternoon cartoons as a kid.\u00a0 When you\u2019re a kid, you\u2019re not that picky.\u00a0 One of the trends in cartoons in the 80\u2019s was to base them off of popular toy lines.\u00a0 They still do that today, too, but it ran really rampant in the 80\u2019s.\u00a0 Boys had stuff like He-Man, G.I. Joe, and M.A.S.K., and girls had stuff like Strawberry Shortcake, She-Ra, and Care Bears.\u00a0 When I was a kid, my mom would watch a lot of the neighborhood kids at our house, so I even watched the girl cartoons since there was always one girl in the crowd.\u00a0 Just because we were kids doesn\u2019t mean we were jerks.\u00a0 We were fair.<\/p>\n Anyway, I never really did get into these cartoons.\u00a0 But one day when my dad came back from a business trip, he brought me back a Transformers toy.\u00a0 It was Ironhide, who could turn into a red van and ended up being my favorite character for that reason.\u00a0 I loved the \u2018irony\u2019 that all the other robots turned into cool vehicles like trucks and tanks and bulldozers, and Ironhide was the \u2018soccer mom\u2019 of the bunch.\u00a0 Plus he was cool in the cartoon.\u00a0 Speaking of which, after I got the toy, I decided to watch the cartoon to see what all the fuss was about, and I was hooked.\u00a0 Sure the cartoon wasn\u2019t very good, but when you\u2019re a kid, you don\u2019t care.\u00a0 As long as your favorite toys are doing cool stuff on the TV, kids will watch it.\u00a0 So for the next year and a half or so, I was totally into Transformers.<\/p>\n You know what got me OUT of Transformers?\u00a0 The Transformers animated movie, which was a big deal back then.\u00a0 I just didn\u2019t like how they killed off the old toy line to make room for new ones.\u00a0 Send them off on a mission that\u2019ll take them centuries to complete, but don\u2019t just kill them off.\u00a0 Ironhide died in the worst way, too: being shot point blank in the head by Megatron!\u00a0 I know some could argue why they did it that way, but this is still a kid\u2019s toy line, folks.\u00a0 Plus, the next season of the cartoon after that which was in the future after the movie wasn\u2019t very good either.\u00a0 So I kind of lost interest after that.\u00a0 Maybe I was just getting older and growing out of it, too.<\/p>\n Disney Afternoon<\/strong><\/p>\n OK I know this is cheating because there were a lot of cartoons in the Disney Afternoon lineup, but this is my list and I\u2019ll do it how I want.\u00a0 Some of these cartoons were out before the Disney Afternoon block, though.\u00a0 In the late 80\u2019s, cartoons that were 30-minute commercials for toys were running so rampant that even I got sick of it as a kid, and stopped watching most cartoons for a while.\u00a0 That\u2019s pretty sad right there.\u00a0 When a TV station announced DuckTales was coming on soon, I still wasn\u2019t interested.\u00a0 But as luck would have it, I was sick that Sunday that they were going to show the DuckTales premier, so my mom wheeled the TV cart into my bedroom and since I had nothing better to do, I watched it.\u00a0 I was totally impressed with DuckTales because not only was it NOT based on an existing toy line; it was very well-written and animated, too.\u00a0 So I started watching it after that and DuckTales helped rekindle my \u2018faith\u2019 in cartoons.<\/p>\n A year or so later, Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers was introduced.\u00a0 Even though DuckTales was the better show, Rescue Rangers was always my favorite Disney Afternoon cartoon for some reason.\u00a0 Chip N Dale have always been my favorite Disney characters, and I even met their creator.\u00a0 Rescue Rangers is just cartoon \u2018comfort food\u2019 and always makes me smile, no matter what.<\/p>\n The Disney Afternoon block started when TaleSpin was introduced, and TaleSpin was another great cartoon with an interesting setting and was geared toward older viewers.\u00a0 After that was Darkwing Duck, which was a DuckTales spinoff and a great super hero parody.\u00a0 Unfortunately, after that we got Goof Troop, which was awful.\u00a0 The Aladdin cartoon was hit or miss, and Gargoyles was all right, but after that I didn\u2019t watch much Disney Afternoon anymore.\u00a0 But that was also about the time that Warner Bros. started stepping up their weekday afternoon animation and I gravitated more toward their cartoons after that.<\/p>\n Super Mario Bros. Super Show<\/strong><\/p>\n OK one last weekday afternoon cartoon from the 80\u2019s.\u00a0 Like I said in my Saturday morning cartoon blog, before the Internet, us gamers had to get our video game fix in other ways, and this cartoon was one of them.\u00a0 Sure it was awful, but we ate up anything based on Mario back then.\u00a0 The animated parts were at least tolerable, but the live action stuff was horrible.\u00a0 Although I do like Captain Lou Albano\u2019s (RIP) voice of Mario better than the high pitched voice Mario has now.\u00a0 I loved how they tried to make you all excited for the Zelda cartoon at the end of the week.\u00a0 The Zelda cartoon was terrible, too, but I watched it a lot as well.<\/p>\n Animaniacs<\/strong><\/p>\n In the 90\u2019s I was in high school and college and didn\u2019t have as much time for cartoons what with high school marching band and college studying.\u00a0 But I was still able to watch some late afternoon cartoons, and this was my favorite.\u00a0 Animaniacs was the most \u2018adult\u2019 cartoon on weekday afternoons, and it was hilarious.\u00a0 Favorites include Pinky and the Brain (which got its own spinoff show), The Goodfeathers, and more!\u00a0 My friends and I loved this cartoon in high school, and it still holds up very well today.\u00a0 Too bad the same can\u2019t be said with the Animaniacs predecessor, Tiny Toons.\u00a0 I watched a lot of Tiny Toons as well, but watching it again recently I have to say it hasn\u2019t held up as well.\u00a0 But I still have to give it credit because some episodes were very good (like the baby Plucky Duck ones), and if it weren\u2019t for Tiny Toons, we wouldn\u2019t have Animaniacs, as that is a spinoff of Tiny Toons.<\/p>\n Batman: The Animated Series<\/strong><\/p>\n After Animaniacs, the cartoon they would show following that was Batman: The Animated series.\u00a0 Normally I don\u2019t usually get into super hero stuff, but this one was so well-written.\u00a0 And because I watched so much of it back then, I have more knowledge of Batman than any other super hero.\u00a0 So when I go see a Batman movie, watch someone play Arkham Asylum, or review the upcoming LEGO Batman 3 and see characters like Killer Croc or Harley Quinn, I can say, \u201cHey I know who they are!\u201d\u00a0 I generally can\u2019t do that with other super heroes.<\/p>\n Pokemon<\/strong><\/p>\n I really shouldn\u2019t put this on my list, since I watched it on weekday mornings mostly.\u00a0 But I\u2019m going to put it on here anyway because I feel like it.\u00a0 Back in college when I was writing for The Dallas Morning News, I requested that I cover everything Pokemon related when it came out.\u00a0 My editor was like, \u201csure, whatever,\u201d but I knew that Pokemon would be big here after seeing how popular it got in Japan and how Nintendo was going to market it in the US.\u00a0 But my editor didn\u2019t know that at the time and didn\u2019t care either.\u00a0 So once it hit, I was writing Pokemon articles left and right.\u00a0 I like to say that Pokemon helped pay my way through college!\u00a0 To help keep myself knowledgeable on all things Pokemon, I watched the cartoon, too (hey, you would too if you were being paid for it).\u00a0 When I was in college I lived in Austin, and the channel there only showed it in the mornings.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure I drove my roommate crazy watching it every morning before class, but one funny thing happened one time.\u00a0 After a few weeks they started showing reruns again, and when they showed the first episode I was about to turn off the TV and my roommate said, \u201cWait, I want to see how it all started!\u201d\u00a0 I always recorded the episodes on videotape, and then I\u2019d bring them to my little brothers to keep and watch when I would visit home.\u00a0 They were always excited about that.\u00a0 Even though I don\u2019t watch the cartoon anymore, I have to say that it is one of the better video game based cartoons out there.\u00a0 And certainly one of the longest running ones!<\/p>\n Toonami & Cartoon Network<\/strong><\/p>\n After college, it was a little difficult for me to find a job at first, especially since I\u2019ve been blind in my left eye since birth and can\u2019t drive a car.\u00a0 So for the first couple of years after college, I mostly helped out around the house, taking care of my little brothers and such.\u00a0 We watched a lot of afternoon TV when it was too hot to go outside, so I watched a lot of things with them like Power Rangers and Digimon (that cartoon was actually pretty good).\u00a0 When my brother Jeff was in school and too young to walk home by himself, I walked to and from school with him every day.\u00a0 In the afternoons, we\u2019d watch cartoons together, too.\u00a0 Around this time, kid\u2019s anime was getting really popular, so in the afternoons we\u2019d watch a program block on Cartoon Network called Toonami.\u00a0 Jeff enjoyed a cartoon called Zoids, and we both liked watching others like Hamtaro and the original Dragon Ball (which is much better than DBZ, I think).\u00a0 Other stations followed suit, and we enjoyed watching stuff like Digimon and Flint: The Time Detective.\u00a0 But I finally got a job about the time that Jeff was old enough to walk home from school by himself, so that was the end of that!<\/p>\n Keeping it Local<\/strong><\/p>\n One last thing I wanted to talk about is something else that kids today don\u2019t get to experience, and that\u2019s local kid\u2019s TV programming.\u00a0 This has been around since the 50\u2019s and 60\u2019s, and usually starred a host dressed as a clown, cowboy, spaceman, or even King Koopa (yeah), hosting an afternoon block of cartoon shows.\u00a0 There were two of these I remember when I was a kid.\u00a0 One was called Peppermint Place, and starred a dapper gentleman named Mr. Peppermint wearing a red and white striped suit and his raccoon puppet friend Muffin.\u00a0 This show was really more like Captain Kangaroo, though.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the man who played Mr. Peppermint passed away a year or two ago.\u00a0 Another one was on a local station during weekday afternoon and it was called \u201cBJ and Lester\u2019s Cartoon Clubhouse.\u201d\u00a0 They mostly played classic cartoons, from well-known stuff like Looney Tunes and Popeye, to lesser known ones like Deputy Dawg and Woody Woodpecker.\u00a0 In between, BJ and his dog puppet Lester would show kid\u2019s illustrations and pictures of viewers\u2019 pets and such.\u00a0 The neat thing is that these folks are still around today.\u00a0 The man who played BJ works in local theater.\u00a0 I know this because a friend from work knows who he is, and he sent her a text letting me know how he is doing.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the guy who did the puppeteering for Lester the dog has Alzheimer\u2019s now.\u00a0 If any of you reading this lived in the North Texas area in the 80\u2019s, you might remember these shows, too.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s one of the reasons why I like Mystery Science Theater 3000 is because it feels like a local TV show, especially the Joel episodes (but then, it started out as a local show, too).<\/p>\n Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n And that\u2019s all for now!\u00a0 One thing I wanted to also mention is that when I was a kid, they showed a lot of old cartoons as reruns in the afternoon, and that\u2019s how I was familiar with stuff like Wacky Races, Scooby Doo, Top Cat, etc.\u00a0 Of course, now that I have a full time job, I don\u2019t get to watch weekday afternoon cartoons anymore.\u00a0 But that\u2019s OK, there are not a whole lot of new cartoons I care to watch anyway.\u00a0 In the comments section, please tell me what you think of my picks and let me know your favorite weekday afternoon cartoons!\u00a0 I think next time I do a cartoon blog; it may be about my favorite prime time cartoons!\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A week or two ago I wrote a blog about my favorite Saturday morning cartoons.\u00a0 That got me to thinking about cartoons during the week that I watched and liked, so I decided to write a blog about my favorite weekday afternoon cartoons as well. 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