In the ‘80s, we lived for the weekend – we could listen to our boom boxes, go roller skating, go to the video store to rent movies, and hang out at the food court at the mall to pick up boys.
But think further back – way back to when you were younger. What did you spend your weekend doing? Riding your bike? Trading baseball cards? Sure. But, I bet I know how your weekend started on Saturday. I bet you were doing the same thing I was.
Watching Saturday morning cartoons.
My brother Mike and I would get up even earlier than we would on a school day and tiptoe downstairs so we didn’t wake our parents. We had our ritual of getting mugfuls of dry cereal (usually Apple Jacks or Fruit Loops) that we called our “appetizers” before dad came down to make us scrambled eggs with cheese.
Then it was on. The television, I mean. For hours.
See, back in the day we didn’t have entire networks devoted to cartoons; we had to wait all week for Saturday morning in order to get our animation fix.
So there we sat, mugs of sugar in hand in front of the big glowing box. Here are a few shows that were the most important and most memorable to me.
Superfriends
The theme song still makes me misty…Superman. Wonder Woman. Batman and Robin. The Wonder Twins and their space monkey Gleek.
The Smurfs
I watched the show and collected the figures like a maniac. Papa Smurf was so knowledgeable, Smurfette was so pretty and Brainy Smurf was so annoying. I smurfed this show so much.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
“I HAVE THE POWER!” I watched this with my brother but secretly loved it too.
There were of course also “the shows between the shows.” That was when we learned the preamble to the constitution and all about conjunctions/adjectives/adverbs from Schoolhouse Rock!, Time for Timer taught us that it’s way more fun to call cheese and crackers a “wagon wheel” and nobody wanted to be known as a “yuck mouth.” But that’s a whole other story.
What were your favorite cartoons of the ‘80s? Take our poll and let us know! Not all of the ones listed below were Saturday morning shows; some we watched after school like Inspector Gadget and Garfield.
Vote and we’ll let you know which cartoon is crowned king of the ‘80s!