If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you may or may not have picked up on the fact that my brain goes on these tangents from time to time. For instance, today, it was something like this . . .
I still can’t believe I let myself get sick yesterday. Not only get sick, but call in sick. Glad I’m feeling a little better today because I don’t really have time to be sick anyway. I should’ve stayed up late last night and finished those case briefs for Dr. Johnson; now everything is going to be off schedule all week long. One little thing goes wrong and everything is out of whack because this treadmill I’m on right now is unforgiving. I think this is how George Jetson must’ve felt. George Jetson, I miss cartoons.
So, that’s how it came to be that I thought I should talk a little bit about Saturday morning cartoons today. First, let’s just think about the idea of “Saturday morning cartoons”. I’m pretty sure that’s a concept that today’s generation of kids can’t even comprehend, what with prime-time animated programs and 24 hour cartoon networks. I mean, I’m sure there are still cartoon on on Saturday morning, but I’m not sure kids look forward to them the same way that we did, back when those few hours once a week was all you had. Oh how I loved Saturday mornings.
Obviously, I liked to watch The Jetsons. And Fat Albert and Josie and the Pussycats. And the Saturday morning shows that weren’t really cartoons at all: Land of the Lost, Shazam!, H.R. Pufnstuff. Man, I’m telling you, I loved those shows. (Yes, my love of television started at an early age.)
But the very best of them all was Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Is there anyone in the last couple of generations who wouldn’t recognize the phrase, “Would you do it for a Scooby Snack?”, or “those meddling kids!”?
Young “kids”—teenagers supposedly, but I was never really buying that—who were out solving crimes in their Mystery Machine, that’s what Scooby Doo was all about. And it had all the types: good-looking hero, a pretty heroine who needed rescuing an awful lot, a smart girl, and a guy (and a dog) who were really just sort of trying to live life one day at a time, having some fun along the way, with nothing to “heavy” to come along and mess things up. You sort of have to wonder how they even became such good friends. It’s like they were the Breakfast Club of the 70s or something.
It sounds a little goofy, and, honestly, it was a little goofy, but that didn’t keep it from being an awful lot of fun. Heck, I bet I’d enjoy watching an episode of Scooby Doo even today. It makes me sort of sad that kids of today won’t know the fun of waiting all week for their favorite cartoon, getting up early on the day they could be sleeping in, and sitting glued to the television set for just a few hours every week, seeing their Saturday morning favorites. Those really were the days.
What were your Saturday morning favorites?
