Yesterday I brought you Part One of a look at how children’s cartoons changed between the 1980s and 90s. We found that, in general, 80s cartoons were bold and headstrong. They were often toy tie-ins and there was the recurrent theme of transformation. So, how about the 90s?
First of all, courtesy of Youtube, here’s a video compilation of some of the most memorable 90s cartoons.
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Looking at these clips, it’s obvious how much children’s cartoons matured in just a few short years. In the 80s, humorous shows like Heathcliff had a very traditional comic book style. By the 90s, postmodernism had wormed its way into kids’ TV and hence we had self-referential shows like Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. Both of these shows combined madcap ‘zany’ humour (certainly not a new thing) with a knowledge of their own ancestry which saw the Animaniacs living in the Warner Bros studio lot tower while the Tiny Toons learnt their trade at a university run by ‘the old guard’ of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Zany humour combined with pop culture references could also be seen in programmes such as Sam & Max and Samurai Pizza Cats, but Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures, with their “the scripts were rejected / expect the unexpected” attitude, were definitely the best example of of the trend.
Traditional superheroes had been shunned in the 80s in favour of new franchises like He-Man. In the 90s, though, they were back. Superman had a bigger chin but was otherwise pretty similar to his previous incarnations. Batman had a much more serious overhaul that matched his graphic novel and movie depiction as a dark and flawed character living in frightening version of Gotham City. This was then taken further in the rather brilliant Batman Beyond at the end of the decade, which was beautifully depicted and featured Bruce Wayne handing over the Batman mantle to a kid named, er, Terry. He had an enemy called Derek. There’s something wrong with that, but otherwise it was a fantastic series.
Postmodernism and re-imaginings of old franchises didn’t mean that traditional cartoons had become extinct. Disney continued contorting their popular franchises into new shapes, such as The Jungle Book’s Baloo running a biplane based courier service in Tailspin and Goofy’s family taking a starring role in Goof Troop. They did nod in the direction of the ‘dark comic hero’ trend with Darkwing Duck, though. It was kind of like ‘Donald Duck Noir’, but not as good as that description might make you think.
In the 90s cartoons moved in a new level of maturity that suited a much more media-literate generation. 90s kids had a shorter attention span and a greater knowledge of the history of television than their predecessors, thanks to an ever-increasing number of TV channels. Could something like Batman Beyond have been shown ten years earlier? Unlikely, but by the 90s live-action dramas like Byker Grove in the UK were blurring the line between children’s and adults’ programmes. Many kids expected a bit more emotion from their cartoon heroes, or at least a bit of informed wit. The 90s gave them both those things in spades.
It’s that extra depth and wit that means I’ll always prefer 90s cartoons over their 80s counterparts. As much as I enjoyed He-Man and Transformers when I was 5 or 6, they would have been much better if they had been flawed heroes. Maybe He-Man could have been struggling to manage his diabetes or perhaps Optimus Prime could have been dealing with a painful memories of his parents’ divorce. Actually, the UK Transformers comic books did used to have stories (a little bit) like that, which is why they were much, much better than the TV series.
80s or 90s cartoons: which do you prefer?
