I'm not old enough to remember the supposed "Golden Age" of cartoons in the 1980s; I grew up in the early 90's, which I will defend to the death was better. Like, y'know, everyone will defend what they grew up with over all else, because your youth is always the last Golden Age. I thought the last great cycle of cartooning died around 2004, when all in one year or so, the Powerpuff Girls were finally overplayed; Duck Dodgers, Samurai Jack, and Megas XLR all got the axe in one season, and Dexter's Lab was adopted by another studio who threw it in the toilet. Sure, there were a few stalwart holdouts like Foster's and Billy and Mandy, but they quietly died in their own turn. I figured the great American animation tradition had finally been crushed under faux-anime and the return of cartoons that serve as little more than elaborate commercials for their own toys.
Then all in a couple years, we get Billy and Mandy: The Movie, The Misadventures of Flapjack, The Brave and the Bold, Adventure Time (which I caught a day-long marathon of and was blown away), and now this Ponies thing. It took me a while to figure out why it was that I loved all these new shows so much. The slick and recognizable animation, the top-notch character driven joke plots written with anal attention to detail, the superlative voice-acting, the complete disregard for FCC standards and practices, and jokes and references clearly written for people years (if not decades) outside the supposed target-audience.
In other words, the exact same qualities that I loved about the cartoons I grew up with. Hell, I can see a little DNA from Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life in each of them. Which stands to reason as the staff from those shows have their own studios now, staffed by people who grew up watching them. It's like 1994 all over again; it's almost a shame I don't have a kid.
Yeh, bro, this
Allow me to add some names of cartoons from that era I liked as a kid:
Johny Bravo (this one changed a great deal when it came back but unlike Dexter's comeback it was actually still good if not better)
Ed, Edd, and Eddy
Cow and Chicken <---- ahahahahahaha at all the stuff I didn't understand then, like why is there a set of blatantly naked anthropomorphic animal or demon butt cheeks in every scene possible, the guys who made that were awesome. Once, they even used the word damn
and I think had to edit that scene out to show the episode again.
Author
Topic: When did ponies become awesome? What else have I missed? (take 2) (Read 434415 times)