The Saturday Morning Cartoons We Grew Up With

There is a ritual that millions of Americans of a certain age share, even if they've never met each other. You woke up before your parents. You padded to the living room in your pajamas. You poured a bowl of cereal — Cocoa Puffs, Cap'n Crunch, Froot Loops — and you sat as close to the television as your parents had warned you not to. And for three or four hours, Saturday morning was entirely yours.

This ritual existed in its purest form from roughly 1966, when the networks began competing seriously for the Saturday morning child audience, through the early 1990s, when the Children's Television Act of 1990 required educational programming and changed the landscape permanently. For those twenty-five years or so, Saturday morning was a distinct, specific thing — a programming block as carefully curated as prime time, aimed entirely at children, and remembered by those children with extraordinary fondness.

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (1969–1986, and beyond)

Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and the Great Dane who was inexplicably afraid of everything — Scooby-Doo debuted on CBS in 1969 and has never really gone away. The formula was simple: the gang investigates a mystery that appears supernatural, uncovers a human villain in a mask, and Scooby and Shaggy eat an implausible amount of food along the way. CBS executive Fred Silverman, dozing on a flight back from viewing the pilot, reportedly named the dog after the Sinatra lyric "dooby-dooby-doo" in "Strangers in the Night." The show spawned more spin-offs, reboots, and adaptations than almost any other cartoon in history.

The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour (1968–1985)

The Warner Bros. theatrical cartoons — originally made for movie theaters in the 1940s and 50s — found a second life and arguably their most devoted audience on Saturday morning television. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Tweety and Sylvester, the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote — these characters had been created for adult audiences eating popcorn in dark theaters, and when they arrived in children's living rooms on Saturday mornings, a new generation adopted them completely. The gags, the dialogue, the violence — all of it worked, and works still.

The Flintstones (1960–1966, Saturday reruns for decades)

The Flintstones began as a prime-time show — the first animated series to air in prime time since the 1950s — and moved into Saturday morning reruns where it found perhaps its largest and most loyal audience. The Stone Age setting with contemporary suburban sensibilities (Fred's bowling league, Barney's backyard barbecues, the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes) was endlessly renewable comedy. "Yabba-dabba-doo!" remains one of the most recognized catchphrases in American cultural history.

The Super Friends (1973–1986)

The DC Comics superheroes — Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman — plus the original additions of Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog (and later the Wonder Twins and Gleek) battled the Legion of Doom every Saturday morning and never once managed to actually hurt anyone. The show's peculiar commitment to nonviolence (a response to parental and regulatory pressure on cartoon violence) meant that solutions to crises were always achieved through cleverness rather than force. It was earnest to a fault, but children loved it completely.

Schoolhouse Rock! (1973–1985)

Technically a series of educational shorts aired between cartoons rather than a cartoon itself, Schoolhouse Rock! deserves a place on any list of Saturday morning institutions. "I'm Just a Bill," "Conjunction Junction," "Three is a Magic Number," "My Hero, Zero" — these three-minute animated songs taught an entire generation the workings of American government, grammar, mathematics, and history. Adults who grew up watching Schoolhouse Rock! report being able to recall the songs and their content decades later with perfect accuracy.

Josie and the Pussycats (1970–1971)

The all-girl rock band had adventures around the world while somehow always finding time to perform a song. Josie and the Pussycats predated the MTV era by a decade but functioned like a music video show crossed with a mystery-adventure series. The character designs — particularly Josie's distinctive red hair and Valerie's then-rare representation as a Black character in a mainstream cartoon — were influential for years.

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972–1985)

Bill Cosby created Fat Albert based on his childhood friends in Philadelphia, and the show operated on a principle unusual for Saturday morning cartoons: every episode had a clear moral lesson. "This is Bill Cosby coming at you with music and fun, and if you're not careful, you may learn something before it's done." The gang from the junkyard — Fat Albert, Rudy, Mushmouth, Bucky, Bill, Donald, and Weird Harold — dealt with real issues facing children and adolescents in a way that other cartoons avoided. The show ran for thirteen years.

"The best thing about Saturday morning cartoons wasn't the cartoons. It was the feeling — the specific feeling of being a child on a weekend morning, with nowhere to be and nothing to do but watch." — the shared memory of a generation

Why They're Gone

The Children's Television Act of 1990 required that broadcast networks air at least three hours of "educational and informational" programming per week aimed at children. Networks responded by reclassifying what counted as educational, but the spirit of pure entertainment Saturday morning programming was effectively over. By the mid-1990s, the networks had shifted to news magazines and talk shows, and cable channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon had absorbed the audience.

You can stream most of these cartoons today. But you cannot stream the feeling of Saturday morning — the bowl of cereal, the pajamas, the hour of freedom before the world woke up and made demands of you. That experience belongs to a specific time and a specific generation, and it will not come back.