I have a strong feeling that Cartoon Network purposely does those things. They've never much cared for time-shifted viewers and like changing their weekly schedule on a constant basis.

Did you send away for the decoder card? My little brother did and I found it a couple of years ago while cleaning out the attic and then misplaced it.

Nope, never got the decoder card. I did send in a few cards to play "TV Powwwww!" but they never picked me. I WAS on TV with Captain Mitch in 1983 though, when he came to my school for a week. But I don't have a tape of it.

Even though I'm a grown adult and haven't watched Saturday morning cartoons since probably the early 2000s, it does sadden me a little that this era has ended. Something that was a staple of so many childhoods since the 70s is gone now. Kids growing up today will never have the same Saturday morning experience we all had. Yea, the curious ones can watch some of it, like the ABC bumpers, on YouTube but to them, it's just stuff that exists in cyberspace. They'll never have the same feelings toward it we do. The same could be said about after school cartoons, which also seem to no longer exist.

Yes, a lot of the Saturday morning cartoons we grew up watching are on DVDs, but watching them on DVD just isn't the same. To me, the Saturday morning experience wasn't just the shows; it was the bumpers, commercials, and the show. It was the whole thing.

I'm glad I bought the Schoolhouse Rock set. Interplanet Janet ftw.

Interplanetary Janet rocks. A solar system Miss in a future world.

Boy, this makes me feel very sad and old at the same time. I was one of those young kids who jumped up at the crack of dawn every Saturday morning just to watch cartoons. It used to drive my Mom and Sister crazy. I'm trying to think of the highlights of all the things that I used to watch back then.

Scooby-Doo, (which used to be very scary to me when I was younger) The Super Friends, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show, Fat Albert, Smurfs, Josie and the Pussycats, Pink Panther, Jabberjaw, Shazam!/Isis, Scooby's Laff-a-lympics, Hong Kong Phooey and of course, American Bandstand in the afternoons.

With 24 hour cartoon networks on all the time now, my five year old will never know what joy those Saturday Mornings used to bring to kids.

Just found out about Hub. Too bad.

Does Discovery Family have any original programming/cartoons?

Discovery Family still airs Hub programming during the day I think.

They still air cartoons on Discovery Family, though I strongly suspect they will get axed from the schedule sooner or later.

What's the attachment to the commercials? Weren't they all toy commercials?

My kids still watch a ton of cartoons (though I think that's mainly because I love cartoon), but I've noticed that the young kids channels have no commercials, then the channels for kids who are a little older have a couple of sponsorships, and it progresses until you get to the normal cartoons that have tons of made for tv and toy commercials, and I see firsthand how they affect kids (if I'm not around to fast forward through them).

On a selfish note, I'm kinda glad there are so many ways to watch cartoons now. Especially for serial stuff, setting a DVR or catching up on Netflix is soo much better than missing an episode of Robotech and not being able to see it again for months (or trying to decipher current-day Cartoon Network's stupid schedule changes and reruns).

Were you ever a child and remember the excitement generated by seeing the new toy commercials? Commercials were half the fun.

Yeah, I was (and heck, the Sears catalog back then was awesome as well, for toys I would never ever see at retail). I understand missing the old toy commercials for nostalgic reasons, but there is no shortage of modern day toy commercials now, except that they're 24/7 just like the programming.

But as a parent, I now fully embrace not having commercials when watching Netflix. And I love toys.

I loved flipping through those huge catalogs.

Oh yeah! I loved the Sears and JC Penny Christmas catalogs. At least one of them called them Wish Books, right?

I was that age in the late 60's and very early 70's. I remember plunking down first thing in the morning and sitting there til mid afternoon. Mom didn't like it, but she knew where I was and I wasn't getting into trouble. That was back in the day before cable, 3 channels was all we had.

Trivia Challenge: For those that can remember the Banana Splits, who remembers the name of their super duper musical instrument with 20 instruments in one? I think it was on a cereal box, but they had a record album and for some reason I can remember that goofy name 40 + years later.



Yes I have that memorized, I didn't have to look it up.

I used to play a game in which I could select one item from every page of the catalog's toy section. If there was nothing I wanted on a particular page, I could save the pick to stack up later when I got to a page of action figures or army men.

Damn, I remember having this catalog in my house. Spoilered for size.

There's an archive of those old catalogs online somewhere.

ETA: Here it is. Doesn't have all of them from the late 60s to early 80s, though.

http://www.wishbookweb.com

Sweet! I remember several of those. Hopefully a virtual collection will suffice and I won't scour ebay for old catalogs!

I remember really liking Danger Island. As a kid it was a pretty intense serial. The skull make up on the cannibals really freaked me out.

I actually remember that one. I was really into AFX/Tyco slot cars and I always asked for the same thing every year. They always came out with new and bigger sets in the Xmas catalogs.

Agree with this 100%. As a child of the '80's, I have fond memories of not only Saturday morning cartoons - but also watching cartoons after school.
However, in those days, all most of us had were the old crummy CRT TV's with poor PQ & color, commercials, and bad reception. And, as another Robotech fan, it was extremely frustrating to miss episodes of that great show due to not being home at the right time, limited showings of the series, etc.

Now, watching a series on DVD and/or a streaming service is far better than my experiences back in the day - these cartoons have been remastered with excellent (for the most part) color, PQ, and sound, and you don't have to worry about missing episodes, taping shows, or commercials...

Some of my favorite cartoons from the '80's: Superfriends/Super Powers, Thundarr the Barbarian, Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe: ARAH, Thundercats, Robotech, Voltron, Star Wars Droids & Ewoks, etc.

And, the '90's had a lot of great cartoons as well, including: Batman the Animated Series & Pirates of Dark Water...

Also enjoy the 20XX re-vamped Thundercats, G.I. Joe, and the 2003/2004 Star Wars The Clone Wars micro-series...

Oh man that '84 wishbook brought back a ton of memories.. honestly that had to be the peak of all the different toys: cabbage patch, pony, gi joe, go bots, he-man, blackstar, robots like - verbot, knight rider, A-Team, tyco race tracks, -- that was one of the best Christmas' ever... I still have some of those toys.

Go through the whole catalog to the end and check out how $$$ VCR's and tapes were.

When did the big catalogs die out? They seem to have suddenly stopped production of them in the early 1990s. My older relatives would all have them out on their coffee tables around the holidays.

According to Sears "Reflecting modern trends in retailing, the company decided to stop producing the general catalog in 1993."

I wonder what the modern trend was? Malls? More stores and competition in the marketplace and everyone didn't just shop at sears / other anchor stores.