Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

How many of you enjoy watching cartoons? I’m not talking the “Family Guy” or “South Park” variety either. I’m talking full fledged kiddie cartoons.  So come on, be honest, we’re all friends here; do you still enjoy them now that you’re in your older years?  Well I sure do & I’m not afraid to admit it either.  As a kid, I was a cartoon fanatic; and now that I have kids, the little fanatic inside of me can safely come out of hiding and rejoice in the fact that cartoons are back in my life on a regular basis.  Only problem is, today’s cartoons suck!

I came to this realization a few weeks ago. Now that Ty is “of school age” (not in school, but don’t get me started), I figured it was time to introduce him to the joys of Saturday Morning Cartoons. I distinctively remember waking up super early every Saturday to indulge in the greatness that was Saturday Morning Cartoons. So as this memory resurfaced, I began to search for shows that Ty would enjoy. Although technology has altered the Saturday Morning Cartoon ritual with the invention of the DVR, I still wanted Ty to have some kind of experiences of his own that somewhat resembled the ones I had from so many years ago.

I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to locate shows during the Saturday morning timeslot. I recall that all of the network stations had kid friendly shows during this time block, but sadly that is no longer the case. I was able to find a few shows airing on network channels, but had to visit “Cartoon Network” for the quality programming. This was disappointing, as in my opinion, “Cartoon Network” programming was always inferior. After watching a few of the shows, my memory was proven correct as the available cartoons here just plain bad. Ty seemed to half way enjoy them, but his excitement was no where near where I would expect.

That was until we got to the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (airing on ABC by the way). Now these aren’t the same turtles from our day, they’ve been revamped and updated, but the same principles still apply. The show wasn’t as good as I remembered, but Ty loved it! After it was over, he immediately asked when it was coming back on, because he couldn’t wait to watch it again. Cha Ching, the magic of Saturday Morning Cartoons has been unlocked.

To hold him over, I rented the original Ninja Turtles movie and we all watched it as a family. As I said in a previous post, it was probably one of the best movie viewing experiences that we’ve had in a while. The level of excitement in Ty’s eyes was enough to make any parent proud. He was jumping off the couch (something we typically don’t allow), doing flips and ninja kicks during the fight scenes (see below video), and was actually quiet and attentive during the plot building aspects.  I couldn’t have been happier; it was like watching a little me.  The entire family got to pick their favorite Turtle. I was super excited that Ty picked Raphael, because it meant that I got to hold on to Michelangelo; my childhood favorite. Honestly, I was secretly hoping that he didn’t pick Mikey, sad isn’t it. Fefe was Leonardo & Tre got stuck being Donatello. I can always tell when Ty is excited about something because he asks tons of questions; I must have answered a million and one Ninja Turtles questions that night, and loved everyone!

I think that this practice of introducing shows to our children that originated during our childhood is a practice that is handed down from generation to generation.  My Mom introduced me to several of her favorite cartoons from back in her day and some of them still rank high on my list (Flinstones, Scooby, etc). I plan to do the same with my kids, and based on the crappy quality of programming that I’ve observed, they’ll be thanking me for it later.

Fefe & I came up with a few of our favorites. Do any of them ring a bell? Any of your favorites not make the list? Feel free to enlighten us in the comments section.

2 Stupid Dogs                                                       Loony Tunes

Ahhhh Real Monsters                                           Ninja Turtles

Animaniacs                                                           Pinky & The Brain

Bobby’s World                                                      Powerpuff Girls

Dexter’s Laboratory                                             Rugrats

Doug                                                                    Scooby Doo

Ed, Edd, & Eddy                                                   Smurfs

Flintstones                                                          Thundercats

GI Joe                                                                  Tiny Toon Adventures

He-Man                                                                Tom & Jerry 

Inspector Gadget                                                Transformers

Johnny Bravo                                                      X-Men