Top 3 - Nostalgic Cartoons

I also write for another blog: Sweep the Leg. On that site, two friends and I regularly compare our Top 3 of various pop culture silliness. One week was Favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons.

Who doesn't think back fondly on Saturday morning cartoons? (Especially now that we're all adult with kids of our own and realize Saturday morning cartoons for what they really were: a babysitter so our parents could sleep in.)

It pains me not to include Transformers or School House Rock -- which taught me more than college ever did --  on this list. But I could only pick three.

Here they are:

#3: The year was 1984. I was eleven. I was just discovering that boys were not all stupid (although I would re-revise that opinion in later years). Ralph Macchio had totally changed my world in Karate Kid. My favorite Saturday morning cartoon that year? Kidd Video.

That’s right, posers. Kidd Video. In case you weren’t one of the 26 people who watched that show. Here’s a little taste for ya…

Can you believe it? – they were taken to the Flip Side to become some fat guy’s “musical slaves”. Does it get more dramatic than that?

But what was especially important to me was that this show was half cartoon/half live action. No fully animated shows – that was for children much younger than me, a tween. And Kidd – was he just like totally hot or what? And they were in a band. Sadly the show was only on the air with new episodes for one year. Kidd Video we hardly knew ye…

#2 Super Friends in all its various titles (Challenge of the Super Friends, All-New Super Friends, World’s Greatest Super Friends… I’m sure there were also other variations I can’t remember).

The Justice League of America vs. The Legion of Doom. I can still hear the theme song in my head. This awesome show (awesome, even despite Zan, Jayna and Gleek) permeated my childhood. I can barely remember a Saturday morning without it.

#1: G.I. Joe – especially in the early years (you know, before I discovered Kidd Video). I was raised in South Florida – the only girl in a neighborhood full of boys. So believe me when I say I could jump, run, play football, climb trees, hop fences and shoot fake guns like the best of them. We played G.I. Joe all the time. I was Lady Jaye. And I kicked butt.

The cartoon had its faults, of course, like the fact that bullets and lasers blazed everywhere but no one ever died. But I loved it; we all loved it. Available action figures just made it more awesome. That, and all those PSA tag lines, memorized by a generation:

“Now you know – and knowing is half the battle.”

To read my friends' Top 3 Nostalgic Cartoons:
Anthony: http://sweep-the-leg.com/2012/08/07/the-threeway-top-3-nostalgic-cartoons/
Adam: http://sweep-the-leg.com/2012/08/07/the-threeway-top-3-nostalgic-cartoons-adams-take/