>Crossexamining The Rebuttal

I pointed out the myths of 80s animation. Jorge criticized my reaction to those myths but, for some reason, we find some common ground:

The cartoons of the 1980s are just as good and just as bad as anything that came before and after them.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The best 80s cartoons, nay, the best 60s, 70s, 80s, 90 and 2000s cartoons cannot compare to cartoons from the Golden Age of Theatrical animation. NONE. And the WORST of the golden age cartoons are as good or slightly better than the BEST cartoons from the 70s and the pre-Renaissance 80s.

So, in other words, you pretty much agree that the cartoons of the '80s are just as good AND just as bad as anything that came before and after them as I stated it. See, you broke the decade in half, the "pre-Renaissance" and the "Renaissance" whereas I see the decade as one decade, warts and all. What's good was good and what's bad is bad. So, the statement, in your eyes was not "further from the truth," but simply "the truth."

Still, they're seen as being responsible for everything bad that has ever happened to the animation industry to this day, which is not only an atrocious charge, but also an incorrect one.

Nope, actually the 60s and 70s are blamed for that. Nobody has ever accused the 80s of being a root cause of the decrease in quality of animation. Compare the creativity and writing and animation skill of a TV cartoon from 1960 and 1970 and you'll see a huge drop in quality. People enjoy cartoons from the 60s but that was the decade when things started going downhill. Cartoonists lost the most creative control over cartoons in the 60s than any other decade. They went really bad really fast. (Scooby Doo should be proof of that.) Then in the 70s things remained really bad. Every cartoon had bad animation, cheesy voice acting, and was a rip-off of either Scooby Doo or Superfriends.

In other words, you, again, agree on my point that the myth that 80s animation was the root of everything bad in the industry. The 80s are always seen as "all out bad" from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 1989, and you pretty much proved my point that it wasn't. Again, I defended the decade, not just parts of it.

The only thing is, the 80s also introduced toy marketing and garish colours.

The 80s introduced garish colors? Hardly. They just used it more. The late 70s had the purples, greens, and pinks that became so prominent in the 80s. The 80s introduced toy marketing? No. Hot Wheels was the first series directly based on a toyline, and that came in the late 1960s. The 70s had more toyetic series. It's just that the 80s toy-based series remain on the consciousness of the public because, for some reason, they resonated with the viewers. Because those shows were so intertwined with the decade, people tend to think that ALL or MOST 80s cartoons were based on toys and video games.

Most Saturday morning cartoons based on merchandising were based on video games rather than toylines, made either by the sibling studios Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera (Pac-Man, Saturday Supercade, and Dragon's Lair) or DiC (Captain N, Super Mario Bros. Super Show, Power Team, and Pole Position). Everything else was either a comic title (Smurfs, Snorks, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Plastic Man, Heathcliff and Marmaduke, Garfield and Friends, Super Friends, and Superman), a television show (Punky Brewster, ALF, The Dukes, Laverne and Shirley, Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, Fraggle Rock, Mork and Mindy, and Ed Grimley [well, Ed was seen on both SCTV and Saturday Night Live]), fad (Rubik the Amazing Cube and Monchichis), marketing properties (The Get Along Gang, Strawberry Shortcake, Rude Dog, Shirt Tales, and Care Bears), movies (The Real Ghostbusters, Teen Wolf, Star Wars: Droids and Ewoks, and The Karate Kid), popular celebrities (Mr. T, Wolfman TV, and Camp Candy), fake musicians (Alvin and the Chipmunks, Meatballs and Spaghetti, The California Raisins, and Kidd Video), popular kid-friendly books (CBS Storybreak and ABC Weekend Specials), The Bugs Bunny Show in many forms, revamps of popular characters (Alvin and the Chipmunks, Muppet Babies, Flintstone Kids, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Pink Panther and Sons, The New Archies, and Beany and Cecil), and the occasional original idea (Wildfire, Galaxy High, Kissyfur, Foofur, Gummi Bears,

Ducktales led to a rise in interest of "Baby-fied" versions of popular series. Most of these were atrocious. Flintstones Kids, Tom & Jerry Kids, Muppet Babies and their ilk, however, were not up to snuff.

To be fair, Tom and Jerry Kids came about in the 90s.

But DuckTales didn't lead to rise in "babyfied" shows because it WASN'T a "babyfied" show. DuckTales brought the comic world of Carl Banks to animation, a world where Donald Duck wasn't always the star. DuckTales, for what it's worth, was one of the best, underappreciated shows from the 80s and set a standard for what a comedic adventure series could and should be. Excellent writing, beautiful animation, and a strong cast of characters and vocal talents. I don't know where that "babyfied" sentiment came from regarding DuckTales, because there weren't any babies on the show. Huey, Dewey, Louie, Webby, and Bubba weren't babies, just adventure-loving kids.

The show that did create the "babyfication" in animation was Muppet Babies, which was inspired by the imaginary scene created in The Muppets Take Manhattan movie. If Muppet Babies wasn't such a smash hit, there wouldn't have been a Pink Panther and Sons, The Flintstone Kids, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Tiny Toon Adventures, Yo Yogi, or Baby Looney Tunes.

A Pup Named Scooby-Doo was a combination of the innovations of Ducktales and Mighty Mouse. After that show became a hit, Tom was put in charge of Tiny Toons for Warner Animation. While I hold no great love for Tiny Toons, it was innovative and many people do love it.

I thought having nostalgic feelings about a show was wrong. Now explain how and why Tiny Toons became successful.

It did spring from 80s innovations. It was a combination of the revived interest of classic cartoons that came from Roger Rabbit, the cartooniness and pop culture hipness of Mighty Mouse and the baby-fication and high quality animation of Ducktales. From this series sprung tons of talent, and several series, Animaniacs, Freakazoid!, Pinky & The Brain, and my childhood favourite: Histeria!

It's like I said, the 80s had a lot to do with molding the animation industry to this day, but people fail to recognize that.

Meanwhile, writers from Tiny Toons and Mighty mouse went on to create Batman, which was the other side of Warner Animation at the time, and from Batman sprung a new breed of dramatic animation, less cheesy than the 80s stuff.

And all of those writers were at an indy company known as Filmation. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm both worked there as did a lot of animators and animation writers and enjoyed their experiences at the studio that gave the world Masters of the Universe, the original Ghostbusters, and others. John K. worked there too, but he hated it. He hated everywhere he was. When Filmation shut down, many of the artists worked on other shows, including with Ralph Bakshi and his two projects Tattertown and Mighty Mouse, both for Viacom. When Warner Bros. relaunched their animation unit, many of those same animators and writers went there.

(B:TAS) was cinematic, adult and very dark, unlike the 80s Ruby-Spears version of Superfriends (which was darker than the 70s Superfriends but not as innovative as Batman: The Animated Series.) Mighty Mouse was again the springboard for it, where Bruce Timm got his start. The voice acting for Batman, for instance, was like a movie or a dramatic series, not a cheesy superhero.

Hanna-Barbera did all the seasons of Superfriends, including the final season, Super Powers: Galactic Guardians. Alan Burnett, who completes the trio of gentlemen who developed Batman: The Animated Series, oversaw production of the final two seasons of the Superfriends franchise, which was rechristened Super Powers. Again, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini were at Filmation first before they were on Mighty Mouse working on "lesser" shows like Masters of the Universe and Bravestarr. Filmation was one of the best places for animators to be at in the 80s. Yeah, the animation was cheaply done, but it was a training ground of sorts for creators, writers, and animators, especially in an era when animation was moving out of the country at a fast pace.

Let's wrap this bad boy up.