SATURDAYS OF THE PAST....

 When looking for content for Star Wars week and 31 days of Halloween I came across a lot of cool ads in my comic books, but these really made me want to share. I remember the good old days of when the big 3 and then they became 5 networks had great Saturday cartoons. This was a big deal. ABC, NBC, and CBS even did Fall preview specials and they did ads in comic books! Here are the ones that I Found:

 One of the greatest things about these old ads are the "Team-Ups". I mean where else will You see Spider-MAn and Mr. T hanging out with the Smurfs and Gummi Bears?

 Everyone of those cartoons from that season except for Kidd Video I have seen and in this case (unlike most of these ads) I actually watched back then. Snorks was one of my favorites as was the Smurfs. Gummi Bears I think I Did not start watching until a few years or so later when it re-aired on the Disney Afternoon. Although I had not watched the live action series until many years after this, I did watch the animated one. Plus I have fond memories of Spider-Man and his Amazing friends (and Hulk). Of course as any 80's kid I also watched the Chipmunks. One to grow one were the Saturday morning psa's, like the more popular more to know ones that would replace it.

Look what I found on youtube:

These psa's featured NBC stars like Mr. T, Betty White, etc and bring back memories as these were the ones I grew up with.

 All but Muppet Babies I never saw as a kid (except maybe Q-Bert as I have memories of it and know I have not seen it as an adult.) Other than those I have only seen bits of Pryor's Place and episodes of D &D As an adult. Out of all of these I believe only Muppet Babies was a true success. A Shame as some of these either had potential or cult followings now.

 Here we see yet another NBC ad for the fall.

This one is from a year or two before the other but you will notice a few shows that stayed around. This is when The Hulk was a part of the Spider-man package. This is also when my all time favorite Flintstones series (Flintstone Frolics/ funnies) aired. Ironically I would not see these episodes until they aired on USA and Cartoon Network (on CN as "Back to Bedrock!") You will also notice the Barbarian show Thundarr and one of my all time favorite cartoons from that era, the Shirt Tales! I should point out that even though many cartoons aired for years, most sadly only had one season and they just kept re-airing them. This practice would end in the mid to late 80s but return in present day. Don't believe me? check out Cartoon Network. Most of their programming is showing the same episodes of their current series over and over, which is a shame as it was once a great network.

My only ABC schedule that I Found. Ironically I would watch ABC a lot in the late 80s/early 90s (thanks to their preview special that aired on their TGIF (Thank Goodness its Funny) block), but I watched only 3 of these as a kid and one I think I watched on Family Channel and not ABC (Littles) and another on USA I believe (Pac-Man). I think only Scooby - doo was watched by me on abc then. Never saw (even to this day) the others.

This was the year that Muppet Babies began an hour, a format that I remember fondly. What happened is Marvel Animation (the ones who did the animation for Muppet Babies) did not finish the animation for the new Muppet Monsters series. This resulted in only 3 episodes being finished on time. CBS had no choice but to rerun Muppet Babies making Muppet Babies air an hour and guess what? They got even better ratings! CBS then cancelled Monsters as it was not needed. This was also the year that my version of the Berenstein Bears aired and the Wuzzles (a wonderful Disney toon that sadly only lasted a short time). I was not into the WWF so I didn't watch Hogan and also never saw Young Astronauts. I would not even know that the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show existed until much later (only about a decade ago to be honest.)

We will finish up with yet another NBC schedule....

 Snorks, Smurfs, Mister T, Chipmunks, Spider-Man and One to Grow on I have already talked about, but I also watched Pink Panther and Sons but sadly remember next to nothing about it now as it is one of the few that I have not watched any of in modern day. The rest I know nothing about!

 Well, that is it for today and although the Saturday greats no longer air, we have youtube, netflix, hulu, and dvd to enjoy these whenever we choose to. In fact I just might go watch some right now.