DuckTales invented a new animated wonderland—that quickly disappeared
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As gcatalfamo and yareally pointed out, Disney had Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip n Dale and so on.
Meanwhile at Warner Brothers they had Tiny Toons, Animaniacs and of course the excellent Batman: The Animated Series. I rewatched it recently and, unlike a lot of my nostalgic favourites, it has held up beautifully.
MTV backed Beavis and Butthead and Aeon Flux. Fox backed King of the Hill and was riding the wave of some of the best of the Simpsons.
And let's not forget Klasky Csupo -- most famous for Rugrats and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, they were also responsible for my favourite "cartoon for grownups", Duckman. I love that show -- if it'd been around for the DVD era we'd probably still be watching it.
Edit: and Nickolodeon (forehead smack) with The Ren & Stimpy Show and Rocko's Modern Life.
She recently did Super Best Friends Forever, which was just as great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7ging4Nqww.
Bruce Timm, who was involved in Batman: TAS, and later The Adventures of Superman, and then Justice League Animated, is now doing Green Lantern, all of which are excellent.
I don't think we should get too wistful, because a lot of the greats are still around making material on par with some of their earlier, classic work.
I remember watching interviews Vince Gilligan, who went from writing for X-Files (and Lone Gunmen) to Breaking Bad, and back in the days of X-Files, the budgets were just obscene, which allowed them to do whatever they want. The now-ancient Superman cartoons also had a by our standards insane budget, and a lot of that probably explains why today feels slightly different, nostalgia aside. I mean, just consider back when Tom & Jerry and Donald Duck cartoons employed entire orchestras to score the sketches.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/Super...
Why do I hear so much about My Little Pony on the internet these days?
Another show along those lines is "Batman Beyond" (a dark "reboot" of Batman in which an aging Bruce Wayne enlists a young protege to be the next Batman in the near future).
In both shows (particularly Batman Beyond), if you ignore some obvious elements that point to them being shows for kids/teenagers, they almost seem like they were originally intended for adults, and then later rewritten to be targeted towards younger audiences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacular_Spider-Man_(TV_seri...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Justice_(TV_series)#Recep...
[1] emphatically not.
Most hit shows of the '00s till today are invariantly tied up in trying to peddle toys of some kind. Certainly older shows were used for merchandizing but it seems like today the toy comes first and the show is developed around it. Plot development is optional and stories need not build off one another or refer back to past episodes. Out of those the early seasons of Pokemon and Digimon weren't bad and there are certainly a few neat shows on Disney & Nickelodeon (The Fairly Odd Parents and Sponge Bob come to mind).
Aside from that it seems like a lot of shows lack the complex story telling of shows like Batman: TAS, Superman: TAS, Spiderman, Beastwars, Reboot, XMen, and the others mentioned in the article. While not really a kids show (seriously - watch this as an adult and its 10 times funnier), Freakazoid outdoes most content peddled to adult audiences.
Another thing I've observed that seems to be detrimental to animated shows is the rise of cheap soap opera style live animation in place of cartoons. Probably the biggest example is Miley Cyrus' early career (Hannah Montana, etc). These shows let companies monetize in more ways since you can create concert movies and albums and the fanbase will follow the actor/actress to multiple shows. Benda Song[1] has spent nearly a decade jumping between various TV shows on the Disney channel (and playing a pretty good 'crazy girlfriend' in the Social Network IMO). I'm sure there are many other examples (all the faces seem to look the same between Disney's shows) but she stands out to me since she's seemingly the only cast member my age in shows filled with 12-16 year olds.
This isn't anything new or particular to children's shows from the '00s; this has been going for the entire lifetime (or longer) of many HN posters.
Wikipedia has a compendium of TV shows for kids that are tied into toy lines, over the last 30+ years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Toy-linked_animated_an...
edit: On doing a little more reading, I didn't realize that this was actually banned up until 1984 when the Reagan FCC rescinded regulations on children's television. Those regulations had previously banned "program-length commercials," a category under which shows like this would have fallen.
Transformers is the most famous example. Characters would be killed off and replaced to boost toy sales.
Still, there's a difference between a show where you make the toys and then get the nastiest animation done to create a 22-minute advertisement; vs making a halfway decent show and flogging some merch on the side.
In other media, one might compare the original Star Wars trilogy with episodes I-III.
http://simpsonswiki.net/wiki/Mattel_and_Mars_Bar_Quick_Energ...
I was a kid at the time. I was shocked. I cried. About a fictional cartoon robot. I didn't feel that way again until that jerk Whedon killed Wash.
The result was that since the reaction to all this was rather severe, kids were devastated, that they actually changed the storyline in the GI Joe animated movie they were producing at the time. Duke was supposed to be killed in that movie but changed it so that he actually survived instead. Of course, they show that he survived by just adding in a background voice at the end of the movie saying that Duke was going to be okay! If you watch the scene where he is injured, with the idea he wasn't supposed to survive, you can tell by the way the scene was animated that he clearly dies right then and there.
On a side note, most of the time none of the GI Joes would be killed in the comic book, just faceless Cobra soldiers. But I remember one comic where a few of the Cobra soldiers commit mass murder by shooting up several of the Joes that were being held prisoner in a pit. As usual, older characters to be replaced by newer ones to freshen up the toy line I suppose.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087225/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2 [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089110/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (had lots of turtle toys when I was a kid). My brothers and I would mix them in with other random toys, like Lincoln Logs and do cross-overs. Nothing wrong with cartoons and marketed toys in moderation and expands creativity if done right.
Even The Simpsons had toys and games.
Best show of the 90s right there. Thankfully Netflix has had the entire series on streaming for a while now. Great times.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/10l1an/i_am_genndy_tar...
I also enjoyed the political stuff & (oddly) the robot dating the cheerleader.
With that being said, I feel like animation is following music's lead, in that there's still some fantastic animated shows being produced, but they're not necessarily the most popular ones: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dan Vs., Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, (straying into adult) Archer, American Dad!, half of what Adult Swim shows, etc.
(On an semi-related note, I do feel that nostalgia is the main factor in what time period of animation people feel is best: I mostly associate good animation with late-90s/early-00s Cartoon Network shows, but I know quite a few people who do the same with 80s cartoons.)
Except she's actually un-self-consciously like that and just thinks of herself as "a normal girl." I doubt you'd actually be able to imagine what that's like, except that it's a little bit like living with an Italian Greyhound, but a lot more complicated, and sometimes she talks even less. I'll never meet anyone like that again, and I'm kinda sad and glad at the same time.
She probably thinks the same about me. (My quirks are completely different, though.)
Rap in the 90s had Biggie, Tupac, Wu-Tang, NWA, Nas, Outkast, De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and a Tribe Called Quest.
Rock in the 90s had Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Radiohead, the Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Weezer, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, and Rage Against the Machine.
It also had some of the greatest movies of all time in the 90s as well: Goodfellas, Terminator 2, Trainspotting, Fight Club, the Matrix, Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, the Big Lebowski, Boogie Nights, Schindler's List, Rushmore, and Pulp Fiction.
Now, I may be looking through with rose-tinted glasses (and having my adolescence back then, how could I not?), but let's just make it official, and not only with just cartoons. It's almost empirical that the 90s were the greatest decade of American Popular Culture.
Too bad it seems to get worse (or maybe more bland) with every generation.
Thankfully the Foo Fighters showed everybody how to do it (again) last year with Wasting Light
They just don't understand, man.
But seriously, millennials are all about 'the party'. They were really young during the roaring late 90's and weren't burdened by the issues of the 00's. If pop music is the a good measure of a generation's status, you wouldn't know of bad times from all the Katy Perry, Kesha, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber, Pitbull, and Maroon 5. Every one of those except Katy Perry currently has a top 20 hit.
Or maybe it's just escapism. Tough call.
After the 1960s came the stagflation of the 1970s.
The late 1930s saw World War 2.
I suspect that my generation will look on the 90s as a benign time, and we would be right.
The Cold War was over, the War on Terror was yet to come, the Internet was taking off and economic growth in most countries was uninterrupted for almost the whole decade.
But seriously, does anyone remember Freakazoid? I only saw a few episodes, but I remember it being very funny.
Then we had all the imaginative villains like Candle Jack and t
Last 2D animation that advanced 2D animation was Tarzan from Disney.
I guess part of this was that they were animated 'cheaply' by japanese studios, pretty much all animated shows were, including Duck Tales. Later they were getting stiff competition from korean studios, and I believe that today the vast majority of US animated shows are being animated in korea, just like most Disney 'direct to video' releases.
- Futurama (it counts as 2000s if Simpsons counts as 1990s)
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Invader Zim
- Samurai Jack
- My Little Pony (well, 2010)
I'd personally pick "Avatar: The Last Airbender" over any of my childhood "Disney Afternoon" favorites. I'm actually kind of jealous of kids growing up with better programming. The other side of the pond (no, the other pond) gave us some great stuff too, such as Shinkai and Kon.
I think Shinkai deserves special mention, because he got a theatrical release with no staff and no funding: just himself in his apartment with a PowerMac G4 (although his fiancée helped with voice acting). We'll only be seeing more people like him as time marches on and the technology becomes affordable for hobbyists.
My guess is that the 2010s will be my favorite decade for animation, at least for the next ten years or so.
It gave the show's developers the opportunity to think about what did and didn't work instead of managing the politics.
I think the author suffers a bit from US-centric short-sightedness here. If the goals was world-wide syndication, then the Carl Barks stories were the most logical option, as they have always been Disney's most popular comics internationally speaking.
(The funny thing is, I still don't know any authors except Barks and Don Rosa, but I can see if a Donald Duck comic originates from the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, etc.)
For instance, the one episode they link to in the article, "Back to the Klondike" is nothing like the comic story. In the comic, Glittering Goldie stole Scrooge's gold nugget by drugging him---he goes back to town, forces Goldie to give him his gold back, plus sign an I.O.U. for the rest, with interest. The story is him going back to collect on the I.O.U. with a now penniless Goldie and him intentionally throwing a contest (via a subplot of him losing his memory) to let Goldie "win".
The show? Too much changed and I couldn't even watch it past the 10 minute mark when they introduced two new characters never in the original story. Goldie was presented as a love interest (there is no love story in the original comic) and the subplot leading to Scrooge throwing the contest was dropped entirely. Given that I stopped watching a very painful episode for me, I don't know what else Disney did to the story, but I just can't stand the show.
Okay, I can somewhat understand Disney's reluctance in using Donald, but really? Launchpad McQuack? And you really needed April's nieces in the stories? Ahhhhh!
I also can appreciate and admire the animation quality for a TV show. But I think I'm just too much a fan of Carl Barks stories to enjoy the TV show.
Stories transposed into different media are under no legal or moral obligation to produce 1:1 copies of any previous version.
LOTR was mostly well done (yes please, cut Tom Bombadil and that whole pointless detour), but they also made changes for no apparent reason.
The Harry Potter movies were perhaps the worst offender, substituting perfectly decent dialogue from the books with cringeworthy kids movie crap. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
My son and I watched DuckTales together for the first time this year. I was pretty disappointed that the discs stopped before the last season, although I did feel the earlier shows were more atmospheric and classic.
I had massive deja vu for every single frame of the GizmoDuck 5-parter. We must have taped it and I must have seen it many many times.
The other thing I really love about this show is that it's so sweet. The characters really mess up and have feelings and make important choices. Scrooge many times walks away from money for family and friends and is better off for it (he gets the money in the end too but that's not the chewy center).
* Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs
* BraveStarr
* Defenders of the Earth
* M.A.S.K.
* Thundercats
* Ulysses 31 (80s series but ran in the 90s here)
Fun anecdote:
I watched Ulysses 31 and the day before one of my Latin exams in school they aired the episode where he returns home and proves it's him via the bow.
The great thing was that the exam was an experimental one where instead of the usual translation+grammar we got a pretty long text and had to summarize it and answer questions about it. As soon as I recognized some key words (name of the hero, arcum tendere construct) I basically wrote down the stuff from the episode (-the space theme) and hoped they stayed true to the original story :D
Least painful Latin exam ever.
I always came home from school to cartoons, whether it was Looney Tunes, something from Hanna-Barbera, Transformers, G.I. Joe, old anime like Speed Racer and Robotech (Macross), TMNT, or the various Disney and Warner Bros.-inspired cartoons mentioned in the article. I still watch cartoons, and always will.
"Penfold, shush."
I miss that show.
That show was always funny. My first real taste of British humor.
I still have a VHS of DM episodes that I taped during the 80's , I still dig out the VCR once a year and watch it (with commercials) just to get the nostalgia hit.
For example, when I lived down south I would see Tennessee Tuxedo, Sherman and Peabody and several other different cartoons. But when I would visit my grandmother in Delaware I would see cartoons like Chilly Willy, Inspector Gadget and Heathcliff. The only time I would get consistent cartoons was when they came on basic cable stations like TBS. When I moved to Massachusetts they had afternoon cartoons like Dinosaucers and Denver the last dinosaur, two cartoons I had never heard of before moving there.
The big budget cartoons (Transformers, Ducktales) were for the most part a constant no matter where I lived. But the next level cartoons that I described earlier I would only see depending on what part of the country I was in at the time.
we still use some of the abbrevations from the movie (LB) but in Bulgarian when we talk to other people
And then Disney went on to expose Goofy in 'Goof Troop'.
Other than Duck Tales, I think what happened to a lot of those shows is their quality slowly went downhill in the race for syndication. A lot of them devolved into slapstick comedy that was 'too easy' for the more maturing audience.
As an example, in the beginning of TaleSpin, Don Carnage is a ruthless air pirate who almost lays waste to Cape Suzette with a lightning gun. By the time you get near the end of the series, he's simply comic relief.
I think the audience also grew up and moved on to the MTV shows (Beavis & Butthead, Aeon Flux), Fox's Batman: The Animated Series, and The Simpsons put the shows focus on Homer and marginalized Bart, which was genius.
it’s surprising to look back at it today and realize just how thoroughly it was shaped by the world that required it, a space on the TV schedule that simply doesn’t exist anymore.
... makes me wonder. Looking at what channels like HBO, AMC, and Fx have done with adult programming, you'd think there would be a market for a channel that focuses on well-done animated series.
I have three kids 10, 16, and 18. In the late 90's I'd watch cartoons with the older two, and many of the shows weren't half bad (I still wish Samurai Jack had continued). Luckily, though, my youngest prefers watching sports over cartoons because I don't think I could tolerate watching most of the stuff that's on today.
http://www.amazon.com/DuckTales-Volume-1-Alan-Young/dp/B000A...
I remember thinking this show has the best graphics ever! The gold shining in the sun off the flying bird plane when they first discovered it is etched in my memory forever.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Cities_of_Gold
On the Warner Brother's side, Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Pinky and the Brain are almost as good as the original Looney Tunes (which I also loved as a kid and still do).
I know Looney Tunes was originally geared towards adults (as short films before movies), but grown ups and kids alike love them. I've recently gone back to watch the classic Looney Tunes[1] and was surprised at how much satire was in them related to the 30s, 40s and 50s. It's the kind of stuff you would only really noticed if you studied the history of the era and are somewhat aware of the pop culture then. They were definently not meant for children, but the slapstick comedy and music draw in all audiences. Looney Tunes was my first real introduction to classical music. I would later go on to play Violin (probably somewhat influenced from Looney Tunes) for a number of years in school and still listen to classical music when I program quite often.
I don't know what happened to cartoons, but nothing seems to be interesting that's also geared towards children these days. Most just seem like some half-hearted attempt to educate children while attempting to be entertaining, instead of being entertaining and also subtly educating at the same time.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_Tunes_Golden_Collection
edit: elaboration
I don't disagree entirely, but there are still some gems today that are enjoyable for kids and adults. Speaking of Looney Tunes, the new "The Looney Tunes Show" is pretty great. And there are some things on Cartoon Network that are passable, like Adventure Time and reruns of other niche shows from the past 10 years.
I think the options are fewer, or the ocean of content is vaster, so it seems like there's nothing there when there is.
How is it outside of that? Is it pretty faithful to the original Looney Tunes? I know my example could be somewhat of a hyperbole, so I would love to get another opinion on it before passing final judgment.
Other than that, it's a show I really look forward to watching. You may be disappointed if you're looking for original Looney Tunes, it's not really like that. The characters are the same, their personalities are more fleshed out and exaggerated, the times are modern and they live "ordinary" lives. Some of the reviews I've seen on Amazon for it accurately labeled it as Looney Tunes meets Seinfeld (they were being pejorative but I find the comparison apt and view it in a positive light).
Try watching an episode from Season 2 (the currently airing season) before writing it off. It will only take ~21 minutes out of your life if it's not your thing.
Thanks for the reply :)
DuckTales had to make it over 65 episodes and under budget. It had simple goals and it accomplished them.
Look at Apple at their brightest hours. You can say that the iPhone was Apple throwing down the gauntlet and rejecting the tyranny of buttons and saved us all, but the reality is simple. Touch was expensive and bad for a long time, so Apple waited until touch was cheap and good, then they solved for X. They didn't care if you didn't buy iWorks for your iMac and your iPad, they just wanted to sell hardware.
That is the secret to success for many products and avoiding it is the road to failure for many others: if affordable{solve for x();} else {do something else();}
MS and Disney have shot themselves in the foot numerous times. MS making sure they didn't hurt other product lines created huge waste and left consumers hesitant. Disney obsessed with the Disney Princess and drove away everyone but the pre-teen girl and parents didn't bother taking their kids to see The Princess and the Frog because Dad would lose his mind and empty his walled if he thought he'd have to spend another second in Hanna Montana-ville. Instead of just solving for X, they lost consumers who assumed they'd get screwed down the road somewhere.
This is a story about a finely crafted work of art being influenced by a commercial market.
Not everything on the site is a "how to succeed in business without really trying" morality play, linkbait product announcement, or self-help column. The guideline is "stuff that is interesting" and it's intentionally vague.
Just let it roll, like water off a duck's back.