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Remembering the '80s cartoons

by Donna Reynolds

Created on: January 06, 2009   Last Updated: September 05, 2010

Cartoons of the eighties, were there any other kind? I was born in 1982 and for me the cartoons of the eighties were the only television that existed in the whole wide world. By 1990 I was only eight so that world I lived in hadn't even begun to shrink.The world I know today was a world I would have imagined as having flying cars and houses like the Jetsons. This world didn't even begin to exist for that kid. The only thing that existed to that kid were those Saturday morning cartoons.

Saturday mornings always meant waking up at seven in the morning to catch a glimpse at the beginning of the cartoon lineup that lasted nearly all morning. Granted, they still do have Saturday morning lineups with remakes of some of the shows that were made ever so popular in the eighties but the cartoon blocks of this generation just simply cannot compare to what we had. You would rush into the kitchen and hurry to make your bowl of Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs then plop yourself down in front of the television all within the time it took for the introduction of the first cartoon which included the run down on the day's lineup.

One such lineup follows:

7:00 Snorks

7:30 Pink Panther and Sons

8:00 Smurfs

8:30 Smurfs

9:00 Smurfs

9:30 Alvin and the Chipmunks

10:00 Kidd Video

10:30 Mr. T

11:00 The Amazing Spiderman

11:30 The Incredible Hulk

But that was only the lineup if you stuck to only one channel. And how many of us actually did that? The answer is probably zero. I know I, for one, was a serious channel surfer. I watched one cartoon on one channel then switched to a different channel to watch a cartoon there and so on. And you better believe there was a schedule. I knew what cartoon came on where and when to change the channel. Cartoons were not a joke, man. You did not mess with a kid's Saturday morning routine, not unless you wanted something very bad to happen to you. That's right, you know the tantrums we'd have.

Let me take you on a quick A-Z tour of the 80s cartoons that stood out for me.

Even though I owned a dog, nothing was cuter than the Pound Puppies and I wanted Cooler to be my dog. Let's face it he was the coolest pup at the pound. I even owned a talking Cooler who somehow reminds me now of Teddy Ruxpin, who by the way gave me nightmares. Did you ever see the way Ruxpin turned his head? It was creepy. Not only were the pound puppies the coolest puppies but there was also a really cool Great Dane around the bend with his own show. He introduced us to his cousin in

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