Opinions | Defending The 80s (Part One)

Originally Posted 12/07/06 by Jeff Harris

What do you think of when you think of the 1980s? Reaganomics? Yuppies? MTV and VH1 actually showing wall-to-wall videos?

The movies? The video games? The prime time shows? The toys? The clothes?

Probably all of these things, but if you were a child or teen of the 80s, you remember the cartoons a little more. Those Saturday morning preview shows in primetime weeks after school began. Cartoons with theme songs you could sing along to. New cartoons in the mornings and afternoons every single day, even Sunday mornings. The USA Cartoon Express airing at 6 PM in the east every weeknight. Disney Channel free preview weekends every four months beaming in Donald Duck Presents now and then. Tom and Jerry and Flintstones airing on WTBS at :05 and :35 past the hour afternoons. VCRs popping up in numerous households. The second coming of Japanese animation reaching a new high with Robotech, Tranzor Z, and the theatrical release of Akira. A variety of cartoons on many outlets from many studios every day of the week. No educational mandate, which meant that kids actually liked what broadcast television was airing, though we weren't mad when Schoolhouse Rock, One To Grow On, and In The News aired between the shows.

Yes, most of cartoons in the 80s were good. However, when it comes to any discussion on eras of animation, the period between 1980 and 1989 is always considered the worst ever. And every time someone gives a reason you always hear these excuses:

- They're too commercialized and created solely to sell toys and other merchandise.

- They weren't bland to look at and weren't very creative.

- Nothing good came from the decade.

Granted, the cartoons of the 1980s were the animation equivalent of yuppies compared to the shows that came before them, but that's not to say that they're bad. The cartoons of the 1980s are just as good and just as bad as anything that came before and after them. 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. In fact, I think that today's animation industry is built up from the legacy the studios and shows left behind, whether its familiar brands introduced in that decade, veterans that worked on those shows, or the generation of animators that were children and teens of the '80s inspiring them to create and work on their own shows, either in traditional studios or own their own independently.

You don't see many people defending 80s animation. Can't see why I don't at least try.

Let me tackle the excuses, starting with that whole "too commercialized" excuse.