Last month I wrote a blog about my favorite Saturday morning cartoons.\u00a0 Then I followed it up with a blog about my favorite weekday afternoon cartoons.\u00a0 So now I\u2019m going to conclude this little \u2018series\u2019 by talking about my favorite prime time TV cartoons!<\/p>\n
Prime Time Animated TV Specials<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was a kid, watching cartoons in the evening was almost unheard of.\u00a0 But prime time cartoons did exist back then, but most of the first ones came out before I was born.\u00a0 The Flintstones first started out as a prime time cartoon, and I certainly watched that a lot as a kid (not during prime time of course).\u00a0 In fact, before The Simpsons came along, The Flintstones was the longest-running prime time cartoon.\u00a0 Did you know that another one of my favorite Hanna Barbara cartoons, Top Cat, also started out in prime time?<\/p>\n But like I said, when I was little, about the only regular prime time show for kids was The Muppet Show.\u00a0 But, especially during a holiday, if you were watching TV at night and saw the spinning \u201cNBC Special\u201d logo, you know you were probably in for a treat, as it was more than likely going to be a cartoon!\u00a0 My favorites were always the Charlie Brown ones, like A Charlie Brown Christmas, It\u2019s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, heck, I even liked the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special.\u00a0 It was a dire situation if you missed one of these because you knew it wouldn\u2019t be another year before you could see it again (this was before VCRs and DVRs and stuff).<\/p>\n I also really liked the Garfield prime time animated specials.\u00a0 Most of them won Emmys, and some of the Garfield specials were actually kind of sad or at least touching.\u00a0 Good examples include the Garfield Christmas special, Garfield On the Town, and even the very first one: Here Comes Garfield.\u00a0 The last Garfield prime time special: Garfield Gets a Life, came out at the same time the Saturday morning cartoon was airing, but the prime time special was much better animated.<\/p>\n This is a good time to talk about prime time Christmas specials, as we\u2019re in that season right now.\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to see that even the regular stations still show them from time to time.\u00a0 My favorites as a kid were the stop motion Rudolph, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and even more contemporary ones like Olive the Other Reindeer.\u00a0 VeggieTales has some cool Christmas specials, too.\u00a0 And finally, as a kid I remember being REALLY excited to watch Christmas Comes to Pac-Land when it was on at night.<\/p>\n The Simpsons<\/strong><\/p>\n The Simpsons is probably the king of prime time cartoons.\u00a0 I\u2019m certain it\u2019s the longest-running one.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t watched it in a LONG time (although I did watch the one where they were all LEGOs), and the show is nowhere near as good as it used to be.\u00a0 But when I was in middle school and The Simpsons first came out, it was HUGE!\u00a0 Everyone HAD to have a Bart Simpson T-shirt, and you can bet we were all glued to the TV when it came on at night.\u00a0 Some of my favorites include the Treehouse of Horror episodes, the one where Maggie says her first word, and the one with the Mr. Sparkle subplot.\u00a0 Lots of good stuff came out of The Simpsons, like the arcade game and the ride at Universal Studios.\u00a0 Now they\u2019ve kind of run The Simpsons into the ground, and I think it should be cancelled.\u00a0 But, I think it would be neat if they just did animated specials every so often, like maybe a Treehouse of Horror Halloween special every year.<\/p>\n Futurama<\/strong><\/p>\n This show came out when I was in college.\u00a0 In fact, there was one early episode when they went to a college on Mars and one of them said that colleges were just day care centers for grown-ups, and that made me laugh.\u00a0 Unlike The Simpsons, I never really thought Futurama \u2018jumped the shark.\u2019\u00a0 Sure the series wasn\u2019t quite as good when it moved to Comedy Central, but they were still pretty funny.\u00a0 I always liked the episodes where they made fun of video games and cartoons.\u00a0 I wish I could\u2019ve seen the recent episode of The Simpsons where they had a Futurama crossover, but I hear it wasn\u2019t that good.\u00a0 There was another show that came out before Futurama that was made by the same folks as The Simpsons, and that was The Critic.\u00a0 I watched that one a lot in high school, too.\u00a0 Normally I don\u2019t really \u2018do\u2019 raunchy adult humor, and I can\u2019t stand other cartoons like Family Guy and South Park.\u00a0 But for some reason, I felt the adult humor in The Simpsons, Futurama, and The Critic was more tastefully done.\u00a0 Oh yeah, and I should give an honorable mention to King of the Hill.\u00a0 It\u2019s cool to see a cartoon based on the region that I live in Texas.<\/p>\n Cartoon Network<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s hard for me to imagine evening shows on cable as prime time, but I guess they are.\u00a0 I certainly have my fair share of favorites on this station.\u00a0 Highlights include Dexter\u2019s Laboratory, PowerPuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Foster\u2019s Home for Imaginary Friends.\u00a0 I wish that they would\u2019ve concluded Samurai Jack properly, though.\u00a0 Now we\u2019ll never know if he defeats Aku or not.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s pretty cool that all these cartoons were done by a lot of the same people.\u00a0 The Foster\u2019s cartoon is my brother Jeff\u2019s favorite.\u00a0 Currently, there is only one new show on Cartoon Network that I like, and that\u2019s Regular Show.\u00a0 Lots of great 80\u2019s references in it, although I don\u2019t like the show as much as I used to.<\/p>\n Disney XD<\/strong><\/p>\n I never really watched much of the Disney cable channels in recent years, mainly because they\u2019re filled with dumb tween kid sitcoms.\u00a0 But about a year or two ago I discovered a really cool show that\u2019s like a cross between Phineas and Ferb and X-Files.\u00a0 It\u2019s called Gravity Falls, and if you haven\u2019t seen it yet, you really should.\u00a0 It\u2019s definitely geared toward older kids, but it is very well written and the backgrounds are very detailed.\u00a0 The only bad thing about Gravity Falls is that you have to sit through the commercials advertising Disney\u2019s other dumb shows.\u00a0 I wish they made more Gravity Falls products, too.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t even have anything you could buy when I went to Disney World a couple of months ago!<\/p>\n Nickelodeon<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t watch Nickelodeon much either (way too much SpongeBob), but I still have respect for them since the cable channel has been entertaining kids since I was little.\u00a0 A few years ago they did have a show that I really liked, and that was Invader ZIM.\u00a0 My favorite was his little robot GIR.\u00a0 I think you can still find Invader ZIM products at Hot Topic.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if it was originally shown on prime time, but the most recent Nick cartoon I really liked was Penguins of Madagascar.\u00a0 I wish they still showed that on TV.\u00a0 That show was funnier than the movies!<\/p>\n Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n And that\u2019s all for now!\u00a0 In the comments section, let me know what you think of my list, and tell me your favorite prime time cartoons!\u00a0 Thanks for reading!\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last month I wrote a blog about my favorite Saturday morning cartoons.\u00a0 Then I followed it up with a blog about my favorite weekday afternoon cartoons.\u00a0 So now I\u2019m going to conclude this little \u2018series\u2019 by talking about my favorite prime time TV cartoons! Prime Time Animated TV Specials When I was a kid, watching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12870,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868\/revisions\/12870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}